As a cozy social simulation, most of the time you spend in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream is focused entirely on the lives of each Mii living in your little community. Not only the character creation, but also in watching each Mii interact with the world and friends around them. Once you start having a lot of Mii residents, this can take a lot of your time, but sometimes it’s still nice to have something to break up the gameplay loop a little.

During the time I was playing Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream for review, as well as since the review was finished, I have loved seeing how my virtual community has grown and changed. I’m not sure that I would enjoy it as much, however, if not for all the quick minigames that are offered. Sporadically, one of the Mii characters will invite you to join them in one of 12 minigames in the game. If you’re busy, you can certainly say no. But if you win a game, you get some potentially great rewards.

“Coin Spin” Minigame

“Coin Spin” is easily the most basic of all minigames offered in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. It is literally what it says. Your Mii will ask you to pick from Heads or Tails, and then they spin the coin. If it lands with what you picked facing up, then you win!

Winning any of these minigames will let you pick from one of three bamboo boxes, each of which contains items. Some of the items are a little lackluster, but others are impressive and can be wonderful gifts for your Mii friends.

Losing a minigame will award you a consolation prize that will be either a roll of toilet paper or a box of tissues.

“What’s Missing” Minigame

The “What’s Missing” game is made of three rounds where your Mii will show you pictures. Each round, two items will be shown, and you are given three options at the bottom of the screen to pick out what is missing. There is a short countdown so you have to work quickly, but really the quiz isn’t very challenging.

Out of the three options you are given to click on, two of them are the items in the picture. As long as you don’t pick either of the shown images, you win.

“Shadow Quiz” Minigame

“Shadow Quiz” is a minigame where there are three rounds of your Mii presenting you with images of items, but the item is entirely blacked out each time. In most cases, it isn’t too difficult to make out what the object is, until it gets to food items.

When the shadowed item is a food, “Shadow Quiz” can become incredibly frustrating, as most of the foods are either on a round plate or a round bowl, and angled in a way that all you can see in either instance is generally a black circle. Unless the choices provided are very obviously not a food, it is nearly impossible to answer correctly.

“Double Shadow Quiz” Minigame

As one would expect from the name, “Double Shadow Quiz” is the same as “Shadow Quiz” but with two blacked-out items overlapping each round. This actually makes it a bit easier, however, as there are still three choices provided each round, and you select two of them. So, rather than picking out what two items are shown, you can just focus on ruling out what isn’t there.

“Pixel Quiz” Minigame

At least for my Tomodachi Life game, it feels as though “Pixel Quiz” is the one that comes up the most frequently. Over three rounds, we are shown one of the items in the game that has been heavily pixelated, as well as three choices of what it could be.

It is fun to see that items that you make at the Palette House in the game will be added to the random inventory of “Pixel Quiz” and other minigame choices, so you may even recognize your own creations coming up every now and then.

“Mii Shadow Quiz” Minigame

“Mii Shadow Quiz” is essentially the same as “Shadow Quiz” only, instead of seeing black shadows of items, you see blacked-out shadows of the Mii friends you have created who are living on your island. Again, you are presented with choices of who it could be, and it can feel pretty fun to see these characters you made in this format.

How challenging this game is will depend entirely on how varied your Mii characters are. If you make all your islanders look pretty varied in heights and styles, “Mii Shadow Quiz” could end up being a pretty easy minigame to win. However, as your population grows, and you can have around 70 Mii figures to rotate through, this game can start to get much more difficult.

“Zoom Quiz” Minigame

Once again, this minigame makes use of the large variety of items that are in Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, as well as items that you’ve made at the Palette House. Your Mii will show you an image of one of these items, but it will be zoomed in to an extreme amount, where it may not be so easy to figure out what it is.

Thankfully, once again, we are able to have three choices to decide between. Even then, this can get pretty challenging depending on what is zoomed in on.

“No Repeats” Minigame

Probably my Mii character’s second favorite game, “No Repeats” is another that I saw come up a lot. It’s a fun one that works to test your memory, and sometimes will have little sneaky ones to look out for.

Essentially, this game will have a Mii say the name of a food, and then you have to select one of three dialog choices with another food that hasn’t been said during the game. It will continue to go back and forth between you and the NPC until someone repeats the name of a food. Just watch out for instances where the food choices include two very similar items, and you have to pick quickly.

“Poke The Ferris Wheel” Minigame

After you’ve unlocked the Ferris Wheel in your Tomodachi Life island, a new game is unlocked with it, “Poke the Ferris Wheel.” Here, one of your Mii characters will be inside a gondola on the Ferris wheel, and you have three times to spin the Ferris wheel and have it stop with the gondola containing your Mii at the bottom.

To spin the Ferris wheel, you can power up your finger and poke it. After three times, if your Mii isn’t on the bottom, then you lose.

“Bowling” Minigame

Honestly, the “Bowling” minigame is one of the most adorable, in my opinion, simply because of the fact that your Mii characters become bowling pins for you. The game mechanics are simple, with you rolling a bowling ball towards the Mii-pins and trying to knock them all over.

It isn’t always so easy to successfully knock them all down, but it certainly puts a smile on my face trying. It doesn’t seem like it would be too comfortable for them, though.