Recently I downloaded Love Nikki which is a dress-up mobile app where the player progresses through levels by competing against AI in attempts to dress a model fitting to a prompt. This app is pretty decent in the sense that it is not too much of a cash grab and has mechanics other than paying. There are not too many adds and both forms of in game currency can be obtained at reasonable rates with out paying for the game. Though in comparison to another fashion related game, Style Savvy, (released for both the DS and 3DS), Love Nikki falls short in entertaining the player and keeping the engrossed in the world. Style Savvy has similar mechanics to Love Nikki, the player still can compete against AI to fit a category but in Style Savvy the main mechanic of the game is finding outfits and items that fit a customer’s style needs.

Tamashii Hiroka has a YouTube video where she discusses the difference in girl games made from the mid 90s to mid 2000s and games made from the mid 2000s to present. Both of the games, I mentioned earlier would be considered in the second category, but they both go along with a topic she mentions (at 9:56 if you wish to jump to the part). Hiroka mentions that a fun part about fashion is the ability to mix and match clothes. Both Style Savvy and Love Nikki allow for this and provides the user with a diverse wardrobe that they can purchase. Style Savvy is able to keep up this illusion of finding the perfect matching outfit better though. In both games when attempting to fit a style the game will give categories that the player should chose from as a hint. As long as a player has some items from these categories they should be able to prosper. Though Love Nikki limits the number of times a player can compete through a heart system that the player exhausts every time they attempt a level. These hearts will grow back, but by either waiting or spending money. (I should note though, that game does give a reasonable amount of hearts such that the player can probably attempt levels for about an hour or so before having to wait.) This limiting of resources makes the player want to attempt to get the best score out of every match and takes away from the joys of finding matching pieces to a theme, switching a focus on putting as many items on as possible that will match the recommended categories (which, let me tell you, has made several high scoring fashion disasters). Since Style Savvy lacks this mechanic of paying and waiting to be able to server customers, with the only real penalty for straying to farm from what the customer desires is the customer might not return (which is not a main concern since the game has numerous NPCs so customers are not necessarily a hot commodity), the game becomes more forgiving on the player for not making sure every item is tagged with certain categories. This allows the player to be able to experiment and fall into the illusion of selecting perfect matching outfits better. Though both games are well designed and are not apparent cash grabs, Love Nikki‘s presence (even though it is small) of a payment mechanic takes the player away from some of the immersion of the game by making the player have to shift their strategy from matching fitting outfit pieces together to putting pieces of specific categories on regardless of how well they match.

Bellow is the referenced YouTube video for your viewing pleasure: