Technologies

Nintendo’s Made a Weird Animal Crossing. Tomodachi Life Has Me Living Like an Odd God

I’ve been collecting people into my human zoo and conducting social experiments. Tell me this is OK.

On an island in the middle of a distant ocean, I’ve been collecting people to live together. I experiment on them. I watch them react to foods I feed them and strange outfits I put on them. They call me Divine One.

I call this island Togetherness. This is totally fine, right? Everything is fine.

This has been my existence with Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream, Nintendo’s oddest Switch game in quite a while. A sequel to a Nintendo 3DS game I never played, it’s a life simulator — sort of like Animal Crossing, if Animal Crossing were absolutely unhinged and populated with people you created yourself.

It’s also a place where Miis — Nintendo’s game avatars that have been around since the Wii — are in the spotlight. You make them, have them meet each other, watch them do weird stuff and just… keep going. They offer an astonishing amount of customization and even come with their own creepy generated voices, which you can tune to be as annoying as you’d like.

I found comfort and joy just a few weeks ago with Pokémon Pokopia. This time around, it’s more about laughs and chaos. Don’t expect much agency in Tomodachi Life. You’re not personally «on» the island controlling a character like you are in Pokopia or Animal Crossing. Instead, you’re the creator — building a world and introducing both helpful and chaotic elements.

It reminded me of something I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Then, as I was watching a TV show with my kid he’d never seen before, it hit: It’s The Good Place.

Which is why I created Miis based on all the Good Place characters. I made Chidi and Eleanor fall in love and get married. And Tahani and Jason live next to each other.

For the other island residents, I made Miis named after all the prescription drug ads I saw on Hulu while watching The Good Place. Dupixent, Breztri, Nurtec, Tremfya…they’re all here and doing great, mostly.

«Ant farm» was the thought I had as my island slowly grew — more residents arriving, new facilities emerging, introduced by the game via news headlines: a clothing store, a home goods store, a food shop, a news station. As you go, new features start to unfold. Surprises. Sometimes island residents fall asleep and have dreams you can watch, and objects manifest from them: a toy robot, a makeup kit. Sometimes a Mii interrogates me about my childhood obsessions.

As you go — feeding Miis things that make them happy, helping pick them up when they fall or playing games with them (red light/green light, guessing games) — you earn money, and they level up. Weird custom sayings or gestures can be layered on. You can give them gifts or send them on little vacations (just to take selfies that I save to my Switch). You can suggest topics for them to talk about — phrases inserted into chats like Mad Libs, such as «Weird Al» or «smooth grandma.» At one point, Jardiance and Lybalvi became obsessed with talking about Sam Darnold. Or was it Kisunla and Neffy?

I felt myself becoming a bit drunk on my power. A bored god. All these Miis multiplying as I added more — calling me Divine One (my choice), doing their little weird things. The bizarre daily rituals made my kid and me laugh, but it’s also a game that sort of taps out after a half-hour session. You do what you can, buy stuff, solve resident problems, then watch for a bit, log off and come back later.

How far does this go? I don’t know. I’ve played about 10 hours and built homes for a dozen-plus residents. I can go further. You expand and customize the island through purchases — or even by painting or designing your own items. You can only build as much land as the game allows within a fenced-in boundary around the surrounding ocean, but that boundary keeps expanding as you add more residents. Each day, or every other day, brings new discoveries. Also, I’m a terrible island designer.

It’s hard to recommend Tomodachi Life. If you want a weird Mii habitat to take care of — or just some strange Nintendo in your life — dive in. But Animal Crossing: New Horizons and Pokémon Pokopia are better, more engaging games. The passive nature of Tomodachi also feels like it might be better suited for a phone or tablet. And at $60, it feels excessive.

But am I happy to see Nintendo being this unflinchingly weird less than a year after the Switch 2’s launch? Yes. And I love that this game allows for nonbinary characters and gender-flexible relationships, a rarity for Nintendo.

And yet, Nintendo has made a strange move by preventing you from sharing screenshots — moments that would almost certainly be meme-worthy — to its phone app so you can show them off. Maybe that’s to keep your Tomodachi fantasies more private and safe. Or maybe it’s to protect Nintendo from players creating awkward or awful moments it would rather not see publicized. Just be prepared to keep your Tomodachi experiences to yourself, unless you resort to photographing your Switch screen, which I’m sure plenty of people will do. This game feels like a meme factory.

At least it’s playable on both Switch and Switch 2, unlike recent Switch 2 exclusives such as Pokémon Pokopia. But I’m still not sure what to do with my residents on Togetherness Island. Do I love them? Sort of. Will I care for them? Probably not.

Technologies

Roblox Will Pay $12 Million to Settle Nevada Child Safety Lawsuit

The deal with the Nevada attorney general will require Roblox to have stricter safeguards to protect children online.

Popular gaming platform Roblox agreed to pay more than $12 million and implement new safety features as part of a settlement with the state of Nevada. This settlement comes amid several lawsuits accusing the company of an alleged lack of protection of children on the platform.

The agreement resolves potential litigation over allegations that Roblox failed to adequately safeguard children while they played the online game, Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said in a press release on Wednesday.

As part of the deal, Roblox will spend $10 million over three years to encourage children to engage in non-digital activities, as well as institute age verification for all users. This will include «facial age estimation technology and government-issued ID for age assurance, and will use behavioral monitoring to identify users who may have been aged incorrectly,» according to the press release.

«The injunctive relief that Roblox has agreed to will give parents the tools they need to protect their children on the platform; institute default protections to block predators from engaging with children; and ensure that messages involving minors are not encrypted,» Ford said in the press release.

Roblox also committed to spending $1 million over two years on a campaign to educate minors and adults about online safety and another $1.5 million to develop a law enforcement liaison position to work with state law enforcement agencies over concerns about the platform.

Roblox Chief Safety Officer Matt Kaufman said it’s part of the company’s «work to establish a new standard for digital safety.»

«This resolution creates a blueprint for how industry and regulators can work together to protect the next generation of digital citizens,» Kaufman said Thursday. «We have no finish line when it comes to safety.»

Roblox is under significant legal pressure amid more than 140 lawsuits, according to Reuters. The suits, filed in 2025, allege the company knowingly created a gaming platform that allowed child predators to target minors.

The company also faces lawsuits from state attorneys general in Texas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and Florida over similar accusations.

Age-based accounts coming soon

Two days before the settlement announcement, Roblox CEO and founder David Baszucki revealed new accounts for younger Roblox users.

Roblox Kids will be available for children between the ages of 5 and 8, and Roblox Select is for those ages 9 to 15. Roblox is reportedly used by nearly half of US children under 16. Children who are older than 16 will be in their own age group, simply called «Roblox.»

Kids and Select accounts would be available in those age groups as determined by Roblox’s age-check technology or by a verified parent.

Unmonitored chat in the game has been a point of criticism for the platform, as it allows predators to chat with children. Kids’ accounts will have chat turned off by default, with limited access to Minimal or Mild games as determined by the platform. Select accounts will have chat with safeguards and access to games with Moderate content, which is described by the platforms as having «moderate violence, light realistic blood, moderate crude humor, unplayable gambling content, and/or moderate fear.»

These new age-based accounts will roll out sometime in early June.

Technologies

Opera Adds Browser Connector Feature to Integrate AI Chatbots Into Browsers

New feature will allow users to include the AI tools of their choice.

Opera announced Thursday the launch of a new tool that allows users of its browsers to include more AI chatbots in their browsing experience.

Browser Connector is a free feature for Opera One and Opera GX browsers that allows users to integrate AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude into their live browsing sessions via Model Context Protocol. MCP is an open standard developed by Anthropic that allows for a secure two-way connection between AI models, external data sources and tools such as search engines.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, CNET’s parent company, in 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Last month, Opera introduced MCP compatibility to Opera Neon, its subscription-based agentic AI browser. Opera says the new feature willallow a user’s AI of choice to provide real-time context of open tabs and active content.

«With Browser Connector, Opera ensures users aren’t bound to a single company’s ecosystem, but are instead free to combine the best tools for their specific needs,» Mohamed Salah, senior director of product at Opera, said in a statement.

To enable the feature, which is now available in Early Bird mode, users need to go to Settings in the browser, search for «AI Services» and install the Browser Connector feature. They then have to connect ChatGPT or Claude to the feature.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for April 17, #571

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for April 17 No. 571.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a tricky one, especially the purple category. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: «Yer out!»

Green group hint: They score goals.

Blue group hint: Daddy dearest.

Purple group hint: Home, home on the…