In the previous episode, I joined the Miitomo community, set up my Mii and preferences, and was ready to experience whatever Miitomo had to offer. And what does it have to offer? Friend interactions!
Of course, you need to add a load of friends first. This can be done in a number of ways, but the simplest is to link your Miitomo account to Twitter (or Facebook, if you’re one of those sorts of people) after which Miitomo shows you all your friends from that service who have accounts with Miitomo, ready for you to invite. You can also scan in QR codes (provided by friends from their Miitomo app), or meet actually in person and add each other via local wifi. How retro.
Visiting Friends
Soon, your friends’ Miis will come to visit and pester you with All The Questions. And tell you things other friends have told them, because they’re incapable of keeping secrets.
You’ll know if they have secrets to blab if they’re dreamily thinking about other Miis. It seems Miis think about other Miis a lot. It’s a bit creepy, but then much of Miitomo is intrinsically creepy so…
Answering questions will give you money, and visiting people will let you answer more questions. As will listening to answers. And randomly, doing nothing at all. Visiting people and answering enough questions (and so on) eventually triggers gifts from Nintendo which come in the form of more money, tickets to play the Miitomo Drop game, and sometimes clothing.
Speaking of questions, these are the sort of probing, hard hitting investigative questions Nintendo have come up with…
Tapping on yourself or your friends reveals further insight into their psyche, with either them asking you questions or you being told the results of questions they’ve been asked (or those “facts” others have told them) but eventually they seem to clam up and need to be bribed to reveal more information by giving them sweets, which you can earn in the Drop game. Which brings me to:
The game
Yes, there’s actually a game in Miitomo. It’s not a very good game, and is a game of luck more than skill, but it does provide a way of winning those all important items of clothing (which change regularly) and sweets. Mmm, sweets.
It’s a very simple pachinko style machine, where you pay either a game ticket or 500 coins per go and drop a Mii with the aim to land on a platform with the clothing on that you want. If you miss, sweets are your consolation prize. Frankly, it’s a rubbish “game” and only worth playing with tickets as you can’t use them for anything else (yet) anyway. Save your money for the shop instead.
The shop
This is where you buy “trendy new threads” for your Mii. If you’re like me, you’ll be pleased to find out that there are no gender restrictions on clothing, so your boy can wear skirts or whatever. See exhibit A, right.
Although Nintendo are pretty generous with the coins necessary to purchase your natty ensembles (at least to begin with), fickle fashionistas may find themselves running low on in-game funds (especially if they’ve poured them down the toilet that is Miitomo Drop), but luckily you can buy more! With real actual money!
That’s right – Nintendo have embraced the evil IAP model of profit generation and allowed you to fritter away your pounds on fake money to use on silly costumes for a thing that isn’t even real. This is why we, as a species, are doomed. Just look at this:
Is this what humankind has come to? Good grief. Naturally I’ll not be giving them any money.
Anyway, with new clothes purchased, it’s time to take part in the other main event in Miitomo.
Miifotos
There have been a few littered about this post (and Part 1), but here is where all your work, toiling at the answer mines day in, day out to earn coins to dress up your avatar, finally pays off. You can put your Mii, and up to four other Miis, into pictures with custom backgrounds, poses and expressions. Or you can just let Miitomo generate a random one for you, which you can then tweak.
These pictures are called Miifotos, and you can share them in Miitomo, save them to your device, and post them to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and so on.
And you’ll want to, because you can create some belters.
And that’s it! Questions, a rubbish game, dress-up and photos. Nintendo have created their own Facebook-meets-That-Kardashian-Game and it’s utterly terrible, hilarious, addictive and the worst thing ever. Good god Nintendo. What have you done?
