Miitopia

Miitopia is a role-playing video game with life simulation elements. Its cast of protagonists, non-player characters, and antagonists is fully customizable as Mii avatars, created gradually as the story progresses. These avatars can be made from scratch or imported through a number of outlets. In the 3DS version, such methods include transferring Miis from the 3DS' built-in Mii Maker application, importing existing Miis from Tomodachi Life (2013), selecting Miis from the user's friends list, scanning a specialized QR code, or searching through an online database of player-made Miis.

For the Switch remaster, the player can transfer Miis from their Switch or use a similar online database accessible through the Nintendo Switch Online service. The remaster also introduces "makeup" and wigs that permit further Mii customization in the form of additional hair types, eyes, facial features, and miscellaneous shapes.

The Dark Lord reigns terror over the land of Miitopia, forcefully stealing its inhabitants' faces and attaching them to otherwise peaceful creatures to become hostile monsters. The main protagonist, a traveling Mii of the player's choice addressed as "the hero", arrives in the village of Greenhorne. The Dark Lord abruptly attacks the town and steals the faces of its citizens. At the request of a divine guardian, the hero chooses a character class and ventures to stop the Dark Lord and recover the faces of their victims.

As the hero rescues Greenhorne's citizens, they are joined by adventurer companions and meets the Great Sage. The team enters the kingdom of Neksdor, but the Dark Lord attacks, kidnapping the hero's companions and rendering them without a class. After the guardian gives the hero new powers, they journey through Neksdor, meeting three new companions. The team continues on to the Realm of the Fey, where the Dark Lord strikes, stealing the hero's companions and their class once more, prompting the guardian to provide a new group of classes.

Miitopia was developed primarily by Nintendo Entertainment Planning and Development (EPD) for the Nintendo 3DS. Its in-game backgrounds, weapons, and clothing were designed with assistance from Good-Feel. The game's core production team began relatively small but grew to approximately 30 in-house members alongside a number of third-party developers. Some graphic designers hailing from Tomodachi Life's development team also provided assistance.

The initial inspiration for Miitopia originated from StreetPass Quest and StreetPass Quest II, two adventure games included within StreetPass Mii Plaza, a built-in 3DS application, that involved sending Miis obtained through StreetPass on a journey to rescue the player's own Mii. In light of their popularity among players, the idea to create "an enhanced version" of the StreetPass Quest games was formulated, and both games' developers would go on to become the directors of Miitopia. Despite the StreetPass Quest games' influences, StreetPass features themselves were not included in Miitopia since the probability of StreetPass functioning as intended could differ between regions. Producer Kouichi Kawamoto, who also directed StreetPass Mii Plaza, additionally agreed with an interviewer's comment that since most Miis acquired through StreetPass will be of strangers to the user, empathizing with them during an adventure would become difficult.

Miitopia received "mixed or average" reviews from critics on both 3DS and Switch, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Both platforms received a "fair" rating from fellow aggregator OpenCritic, with 28% and 35% of critics recommending the 3DS and Switch versions respectively. Famitsu awarded the 3DS version a score of 31/40.

Miitopia's offbeat tone and life simulation elements were met with praise and direct comparisons to Tomodachi Life. While acknowledging its influences from traditional Japanese role-playing games, Mundy of Pocket Gamer felt Miitopia was moreso a casual, social experience akin to Tomodachi Life. In describing the Miitopia's personality system, Jeff Cork of Game Informer called it a hybrid between Tomodachi Life and "an old-school RPG". While Jonathan Leack from GameRevolution draws a similar comparison between Miitopia and Tomodachi Life, his opinion of the former was less favorable, feeling that the interactions between characters in Miitopia were "let down by uninteresting writing" and were less humorous compared to Tomodachi Life. Caty McCarthy of USgamer likewise felt Miitopia was inferior to Tomodachi Life, writing that its comedy and gameplay was too repetitive to replicate the latter's whimsical personality.