This Switch game is blowing up because Nintendo didn’t censor it

The Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream demo went live for Switch owners on Wednesday, and though it only offers a sliver of the surreal life sim, clips and screenshots of the game are already blowing up on social media. Given Nintendo’s reputation as a strict, family-friendly brand, you’d think that the Japanese publisher would enforce all sorts of rules for what people can and cannot put into the game. Instead, fans have been delighted to discover that Tomodachi Life kinda lets them do whatever they want — and the game is all the better for it.

For those who didn’t play the 2014 3DS game that started it all, the Tomodachi Life series is best described as The Sims meets Animal Crossing, but with Mii avatars. In it, you oversee the day-to-day happenings of an island full of residents. These characters can be created by the player, or they can be imported from other user designs — if not the player’s own friend list. Though the brand hasn’t had much of a presence in the decade since the 3DS game, the original sold millions and was quietly one of the most successful games on the portable platform.

A huge part of what made Tomodachi Life click was its unusual sense of humor. As the day progressed, the game would show you interactions between residents. These could range from run-of-the-mill encounters, like chats over coffee. The interactions could also be ridiculous, like the Tomodachi event that put your residents into a rap battle, or the ‘pity party’ where Miis would get together to recount absurd mishaps. And between the silly voices and the freakish Mii creations you could put in the game, Tomodachi Life stood out in a crowded life sim genre. Even now, many years later, you’ll occasionally see a Tomodachi Life clip on the internet. The quirky Nintendo game has become a cult classic for the terminally online.

From the moment Nintendo introduced the world to the jester Hugh Morris, it was evident that Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream had an eager audience that had been starving for over a decade. Clips of the Nintendo Direct from last year easily racked up millions of views as viewers fell in love with the strange, playful tone of the life sim. But now that folks have access to the Switch demo, it’s increasingly looking like Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream might have a breakthrough moment that pushes it from a niche darling into a mainstream attraction, on par with heavyweights like Pokopia.

The things people are posting online from the demo are as hilarious as they are shocking. Players are taking advantage of the ability to put basically any idea or Mii design into the game. While this does mean that a first-party Nintendo game is now being associated with curse words and risqué topics, the Switch game couldn’t possibly have better grassroots marketing.

What makes all of this remarkable, though, is that screenshots and clips of the Switch verison of Tomodachi Life are exploding on the internet despite there being no easy way to upload media from the game via the console. Most people are pulling out their phones and recording the game manually. The gameplay isn’t in 4K, but that low fidelity just makes the enthusiasm feel all the more genuine.

Sure, many of the videos are a particular interaction where the game is spitting out some of the most childish words possible. But what’s out there is a strong proof of concept for the overall experience. Between Tomodachi’s permissive gameplay, its deep character customization, and the power of platforms like TikTok — which did not exist when the first game came out — it’s looking like Tomodachi Life: Living The Dream is about to be the game of the summer.