Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream gave us fall season props, so I built a Halloween hedge maze

I still wish Nintendo would give us a bigger Living the Dream update, and how I used a few new props should demonstrate why.

I am still loving Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream. Since its launch earlier this year, I have played the game with my spouse just about every other day, leveling up our island, building or adding any new ideas that come to mind, and taking care of our happy and constantly-growing island community. We’ve often talked during our sessions about how we wish Nintendo would add a big content update of props and new options to Living the Dream, and while it wasn’t a big update, the turning of the fall season gave us something: a few new decorations for fall fun. It was enough to give me an idea, too, so I went and made something new and exciting with those props as the focus just to demonstrate what we can do when we have more. I made a Halloween hedge maze.

What we got and how it can be used

The recent update to Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream came with the change of the fall season. It’s not actually listed in Nintendo Support’s patch notes, so you might not have noticed it unless you were actively playing, but a bunch of new props were added. Fall orange-leaved hardwood trees, ginkgo trees, red and yellow hedges, olive hedges, cosmo flowers, dried up weeds, silver grass, and, best of all, colored Jack-o’-lanterns were added to the game. To access any of them, you just need to go to the Wishing Fountain and the Quik Build amenities page of wishes. All of these things will be available for wishing, and each wish will grant you a free instance of the item, but you’ll buy more at the Quik Build shop. The Jack-o’-lanterns, in particular, have eight colors to choose from.

This update immediately got my brain ticking. I love doing new things with Tomodachi Life and I had fond memories of county fairs and fall festivals, be they in my hometown where we had a great one in grade school, or at the official Texas State Fair in Dallas where I lived for a while. As I looked at these new props, I thought, “could I recreate that vibe for my Miis?”

The answer is yes, and I did! I took the props and a patch of land that my Miis had been moving in and out of for a while and turned it into a proper hedge maze, mechanically functional and everything. It has rest stops, twists and turns that lead to dead ends, and a center goal that opens to a lovely restaurant park full of bells and whistles for guests who conquer its challenge.

I used inflatable arches to mark starting points (including an easy “cheat” point marked with an appropriate pansy arch), flowerpots and fencing to bar off otherwise tights squeezes and secure barriers and even a fun colored system to let participants know when they’re close to the center. The park features two rest areas and a “defeat bell” on either side if our explorers give up, and in the center is a restaurant, fireworks installations, a victory throne, picnic and dining tables, and a restaurant to toast your success. And finally, there are plenty of pumpkin installations around the maze to keep it sufficiently spooky. The pathing in my maze means the Miis can get through without getting stuck for the most part, but it also keeps them from cheating and cutting through tight areas or getting to weird spots.

Some tips if you want to try!

There are a few things I did to make creating my Halloween hedge maze an easier process. First, make sure you’ve got a considerable amount of cash for all of the props you’ll need for the occasion. I spent around $3,000 of the in-game currency on this maze. Secondly, you’ll want to decide what you want to center the maze on. I centered mine on a Tomoria restaurant and built the park around the restaurant to start. Once you’ve got your centerpiece for the goal of the maze, the next step is to cordon off the space you’ll use for it.

As I went, I decided on where I wanted the entrances to the maze to be and leveled out the ground from each entrance to the center. You can use the Island Editor batch tool to grid your space with nearby roads or paths, and then you can use the paint drop tool with your floor of choice to make the ground uniform. I chose clover to start. As an aside, if you made your centerpiece and feel like you need to move it, you can use the "Batch Mode" in Island Editor to grab multiple props and move them all at once in their current configuration.

From there, you should create the entrance to your maze goal and then start using the hedges to make paths away from the maze towards your entrances. You’ll want to bar off the maze goal area itself since it should be a reward and inaccessible. You can do most of this with the hedges, placing them in lines and at 90-degree angles when you want to create twists and turns. If you find yourself with a gap that a hedge won’t fill, you can use flowerpots and a piece of fencing to block off a single square and fill in the gap. You can make your maze a big zigzag, or you can do like I did and make actual dead ends, which I marked with flowers to let my Miis know they went the wrong way. For extra flavor, I created rest stops at each side of my maze to act as half way points where my Miis could rest, have a sip of water, or just take in the sights.

Once I finally framed my paths, I filled in the ground with dirt pathing where my Miis could walk. The rest stops had fresh grass pathing, and the restaurant park goal zone has gold pathing to make them all unique. I also used the colored hedges to convey how close my Miis were to the center goal: green at the outside, yellow as you get closer to the middle, and red hot when the goal is in reach. And between some carefully placed lanterns, the Jack-o’-lanterns, some ground lights, and the fireworks installations, there is abundant lighting that makes the whole installation very pretty at night.

It's so good... May we have more?

I’m really happy with how this latest project came out. It’s nice anytime to see my Miis interacting with the new installation, wandering through, resting, making it to the throne, or getting together at the restaurant in the middle. It gets even prettier as the day goes on and the sun drops, and it’s another cool venture in a long line of them since we started Living the Dream. This was just a seasonal spin, and we made a whole new attraction of our own design with it. It continues to make me wish Nintendo would drop a proper content update. We can do so much with a few odds and ends. I’m dreaming of the day when Nintendo graces the toy box with a fresh wave of goodies.

Stay tuned to the Tomodachi Live: Living the Dream topic for more news and content.

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