Nintendo’s first mobile phone game, MiiTomo, skyrocketed to become the most popular iPhone game after only being up for 24 hours. Described by Nintendo to “spark one-of-a-kind conversations between you and your friends,” the game has already become popular enough to get people talking.
Fans of Nintendo’s 3DS game TomoDachi Life will recognize key similarities between it and MiiTomo. The concept of creating a Mii (Nintendo’s version of a player avatar) of yourself that lives in their own little space, talking to friends and playing games was started in TomoDachi Life and brought into this mobile game.
However, players had a lot less control in TomoDachi Life than they do in MiiTomo, which despite how it sounds, is actually a good thing.
In TomoDachi Life the sheer number of things that could happen out of the player’s control made the game interesting, similar to leaving your Sims on a free roaming mode and just watching them do whatever they want.
MiiTomo is more of a social media kind of experience. There’s less to do and the main focus is answering questions about yourself and your friends, and hearing your friend’s answers to questions their Mii has asked them. You can also dress up your Mii and complete daily missions, although the missions usually aren’t any more complicated than “listen to 5 answers” or “answer 3 questions.”
Answering questions with your Mii is a lot of fun, and I love getting to answer questions about my friends since I know they’ll get to see them later. The clothing options also change every day, so there’s always a variety of new styles to put your Mii in.
I do, however, wish there was more to do in MiiTomo. As mentioned before, the game MiiTomo is based on, TomoDachi Life, gave the player less control but there was definitely more to do (even if a lot of it was just you being a third party observer.) Miis in TomoDachi Life could get married, have kids, visit each other’s houses, go to restaurants and much more. Your interactions in MiiTomo are limited to other Miis coming over to your house, but all you can do when they’re there is answer more questions, and play the 1 mini game, MiiTomo Drop. MiiTomo Drop is kind of expensive to play, so don’t expect to get to spend a lot of time on it.
However, not all of this is nessesarily a bad thing if you’re not looking for anything too involved. The best way I can describe it is a mix between a Facebook chat and Snapchat, but slightly more interactive and cute. The Miis are fun to watch and interact with (even if it’s limited how you can interact with them) and answering questions about yourself is surprisingly addictive. Even if all I can do is buy outfits, I do still try to collect as many coins and game tickets as I can.
I would recommend downloading MiiTomo if you’re a fan of social media apps, and want one that’s a little more quirky and game like than just texting. Hopefully in the future we can have more connectivity or games to play in the app, but for now it’s simple fun that I don’t mind having on my phone.
