Tomodachi Life

Tomodachi Life is an unusual life simulation in which the player populates an island with Mii characters modeled after themselves, family, friends, or purely invented personalities. These characters live together in shared apartments, go to work, sleep, eat, and experience all kinds of absurd situations - from sudden outbursts of love to arguments to strange dreams they generate on their own. The player only partially intervenes in their lives, mostly observing and occasionally steering, which gives the game its characteristic feel of unpredictable theatrical grotesque.

Unlike classic life-sim titles, there's no clear goal or progression here - the game works more like a collection of short scenes and interactions that unlock gradually as the island grows and new residents arrive. The text-to-speech engine, which generates the characters' speech with synthetically distorted voices, is one of the game's most distinctive and memorable features and gives it its characteristic humor. The player can assign clothing, apartments, and personality traits to their Miis, which affects how the individual characters interact with each other and what scenes play out between them.

Tomodachi Life became a surprise hit on 3DS precisely because of its unconventional nature and the sharing of absurd moments among players on social media, where users posted screenshots of the most bizarre lines and situations. It's one of the few titles of its time that isn't built on challenge or competitiveness but purely on observation and the fun of unpredictability, and that's exactly what sets it noticeably apart from the rest of Nintendo's 3DS catalog.

Why play: An unconventional and often comical simulation where the main fun is watching what your own digital copies get up to.