How To Use Miitomo, The Adorable New Avatar App

Being up-to-date with all things cool on the internet is the only thing that makes me feel young anymore. With responsibilities, bills, and all sorts of twentysomething life nonsense right around the corner, learning how to use Miitomo was a nice break from reality. Stepping away from having to pick new insurance for my car or making smart dating choices was super easy with this app. It let me escape my apartment and become a smaller character in my phone. A character that didn't need to cook for herself or do anything besides walk around the room aimlessly. (#Bless her heart.)

For those of you who haven't heard of it yet, Miitomo is an app that lets you create a tiny virtual version of yourself, with the ability to talk to your friends. You answer questions that allows the app to learn more about you, and that information is also available for any of your friends to see. Favorite food? Last time you cried? It's all there. By earning points and tickets you are also able to buy clothes and accessories to help your avatar look more like you. You can even manipulate the character's voice, quirkiness, and gesticulations. It's basically a more sophisticated Sims game. Let's get real, you only played Sims to build your character and house. And watch them have virtual sex with other Sims. Wait, just me? Ugh. I know I used every cheat code known to man in order to rack up cash. Now you don't have to do any of that. Just add friends and enjoy the ride.

I had a lot of fun testing out the features. I am still new so I wasn't sure where the games were, but unless I'm missing something, everything seemed pretty self explanatory. So grab your phone, download the free app and have a blast making a Mii character. Here I will show you a step-by-step guide on how to use the Miitomo app.

1. Get The App

It's free, unless you count the price of all the time you're about to waste using it. It will be your new obsession, trust me. Also — ignore the 24 notifications for updates at the bottom. I'm pretty lazy about updating everything.

2. Creating Your Character

You get to design everything about this character's face and body. There are so many options.

Not only do you get styles, but you get colors and spacing. If your eyes are set farther apart or you have a tiny little nose, you will have the option to move things around. I chose freckles and thin lips for mine. It was like staring into a Mii mirror.

3. Personality

You get to create a voice for your Mii. There are different pronunciations, inflections and factors that can be tinkered with to create the character that best describes you and acts like you. My manipulations ended up making me outgoing and very expressive.

In all honesty I felt like I was a bit too expressive on this online version of reality. Every other word was spoken with my hands, and there was a lot of confetti being thrown around seconds into the game. This Mii was apparently very excited to exist.

4. Answer Questions

You can earn points by answering questions that pop up during the game.

Those coins can be used to buy clothing and play games to earn more clothing. Basically you are just a king of the wardrobe and nothing will stop you. Here are some choice answers I thought you would appreciate. The question is: what is my favorite food?

I took some serious liberties with these ones. And why not? Life it too short not to try and be funny. The next question was about the last thing I did before opening the game.

I got kind of mean with that one, huh? Oh well. VIRTUAL REALITY HAS NO RULES!

5. The Clothes

I didn't like the original outfit given to me, so I used the money the app rewarded me with to buy some cool duds.

The shirt was dope. The pants were too expensive for me to buy, so I just stuck with the grey pants my character came with. I spiced everything up with a banana peel. After all, they did say I was quirky!

6. Play Some Games

You pay money and then drop your character in a series of contraption to see where it will end up. It's a virtual arcade game that got me know prizes. Either way, it was fun watching a miniature version of myself, falling down a hole.

You can create your very own Mii any time! Enjoy, and have a great time getting sucked into the virtual rabbit hole.

Images: Dasha Fayvinova; Miitomo