Well I was absolutely destroyed after my visit with my parents and grandfather yesterday (as in, tired) so I didn’t end up doing a post, but I’m back in the saddle with some bare minimum writing today. I think I am going to try to prep a concept for a new short story sometime this week, but I haven’t done so yet, so instead I’m just gonna rant for a while about what I want from post release content in Tomodachi Life.
Honestly I kinda of doubt we are going to get any post release content in it. Rumors say that game was shelved for a year after being finished, and they also handicapped any positive reception it could have had by not including a censor and not implementing any online functionality. The game is essentially a fancy meme generator, the idea that you wouldn’t include any built in method to share your creations is ridiculous. Just straight up shooting themselves in the foot. There are two big reasons I can see for this, the first, is the fact they did not include a censor. I hardly would say I WANT a censor, but obviously Nintendo isn’t going to allow online content sharing without one, so thats step one. But I also suspect that they might be concerned about people recreating copyrighted or trademarked material, and there probably isn’t as easy a fix for that. That being said, that never stopped WWE from allowing people to create copyrighted and trademarked wrestlers in their games, so I doubt that Nintendo -can’t- do it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that was a mark against it, the possibility of needed to enforced DMCA or other claims. Still, thats number one in my post release desires: allowing the easy uploading of screenshots, and ideally create an in game method of sharing creations online.
What else would I want? In general the game allows for extremely flexible creations of almost every gameplay element, so it might seem like not much is necessary, but I do nevertheless have a wishlist. Firstly, I think they should add in a way to tattoo your Mii. They already have face paint, but that only allows tattoos on the face and only the front of the face. My Mii is bald, however, and I personally have a scalp tattoo wrapping around my head. Being able to place tattoos on your head anywhere as a stamp would be cool, and if they could also add functionality to allow placing them on your arms too to be shown when you wear a sleeveless shirt or your legs in shorts or skirts, that would be awesome.
Another thing I’d like is non-human body part options in the character creator, We already have elf ears, and again with face paint you can simulate horns, antlers, and animal ears reasonably well, but a wide selection of 3D animal shaped ears which can have their color selected, as well as horn and antler options, would be great. I’m sure there are some in clothing already, although to be honest, I have not unlocked any, only some animal hoods and a kitty hat, so I’m not sure. Tails and wings too as permanent features would be nice, although these I know ARE available as clothes so they are less important to include. Oh, and while you are at it, allow for separate color selection for noses. Noses currently cannot be recolored separately from skin and cannot be painted on, and allowing either or both would open up customization a lot. Finally, I also want more and better beard options, but I don’t really expect that. I’m just salty I cannot have a full hobo beard like I do in real life without it looking weird due to the miss match of color between the polygonal beards and the flat texture beards.
I think a wider variety of shapes in the house editor and interior styles wouldn’t go amiss. Neither of these are absolutely necessary, since creative use of the existing editor definitely allows you to make almost anything you want, but not necessarily anything you want -well-. A big interior option I find myself missing is something like a cave grotto - my town is filled with Fraggles and honestly its weird that people can have a whole yurt and sheep in their house but not live in a cave, and the house interior editor just lets you make new wallpaper and floor, not place cave like furniture as well.
I have not filled my town up with Miis yet, so I don’t know exactly what happens when you hit 70 Miis, but I assuming it doesn’t expand to 150 Miis, I’d like some method of having more. They could put in apartment buildings and just make sure no more than 70 are out at any given time, assuming that the 70 Mii limitation is at least somewhat a technical issue. They could also implement a neighborhood system where you can start a second neighborhood, and people will visit between the two, but again, no more than a certain number in each town at a time. Even just having a way to have a second town on one account would be nice, i.e. save slots or the like. To my knowledge the only workaround right now is having a second account on your Switch, which is better than Animal Crossing only because in Animal Crossing there is a strict one town per Switch limit, instead of being able to make a new account.
Obviously more little perks and more gifts would also both be welcome, and new clothes of varieties which cannot be customized (full body, unusual shaped hats and accessories, etc.) would also be good too. Any sort of paid expansion would need a whole new aspect of gameplay, so I am mostly only considering here stuff that might come in free updates, but I definitely would be down for a paid update as well if it did include a new gameplay vector or online play. I’m loving the game and I got my money’s worth but it does feel like a game that could be so much more popular if Nintendo would actually support it properly.
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