Fashion Dreamer (Switch)

With the rise of social media, a new avenue was created for people looking to get into the fashion industry. People could now show off their creative ensembles in an instant to the entire world, a tantalizing prospect for those eager to share their taste in clothing or chase fame. Being an influencer isn’t as easy as just putting yourself out there though, but Fashion Dreamer seems to recognize this more modern approach to chasing fashion fame. Rather than running a shop or putting on fashion shows, Fashion Dreamer involves a virtual word where you seek likes and followers as your metric for achieving your styling dreams.

 

Fashion Dreamer is presented as a purely virtual world where avatars known as Muses represent you. You can make up to four Muses for your profile, the game featuring a fairly in-depth character customization system when it comes to facial features, makeup, and coloration. When it comes to body types though, you can alter things like height, but your main choice will be between a masculine or feminine figure. While Fashion Dreamer will allow you to feature any choice of hairstyle, facial hair, or makeup regardless of your chosen body type, these do end up impacting a Muse’s selection of clothes. While items like headwear and footwear are unisex and accessories such as earrings and glasses can be worn by any character, other elements of your wardrobe are locked to either the masculine or feminine option even when a piece of clothing seems like it should work for either body type. Thankfully, while feminine characters do get the bulk of focus when it comes to the range of fashion options, the masculine Muses feature a good range of wardrobe variety too. Even if you feel like sticking to one type of Muse, the wide breadth of the stylish options available does end up being important, because success in Fashion Dreamer isn’t just about making your own character look good.

Entering the virtual world of Fashion Dreamer will place you in one of four Cocoons, these urban but fanciful areas serving as a walking space for your avatar to meet other Muses in and acquire new clothing. You are thrown into Fashion Dreamer with almost nothing to wear, but once you spot another Muse you can look over their wardrobe and Like any articles of clothing you’d like for your own use. There is no drawback to liking an item unless you play Fashion Dreamer for so long you max out the hefty clothing limit of 5000, and this is certainly important because while you will want to dress your own Muse nicely, dressing other Muses is a key part to making progress. When you encounter a Muse they’ll allow you to perform a Lookit, this essentially being your chance to dress them up however you like. They will offer you a guiding suggestion, usually something like a color preference or a request that you include a specific wardrobe item, but you’re usually free to follow your heart and give them the best look you can. Meeting their requests, following a fashion trend, and having good color sense will increase your relationship with these Muses and they’ll give you rewards as they get to know you better such as unique poses for the game’s photo features or even new makeup that is otherwise unavailable.

 

You can also acquire new outfit items by way of bingo and gacha machines in the Cocoons, your reward for helping Muses always including some tickets or the currency used for more direct purchases elsewhere. You’ll also always post any Lookits made to your Eve feed after, this fictional social media service being where you earn those likes and follows that end up being your main measure of progress. Seeing the credits only requires hitting a certain follower count, and even a poorly done Lookit or badly staged photo with the Drone Camera will still at least move the needle ever so slightly. Naturally though, a strong fashion sense and color coordination will lead to a greater surge of follows and likes, although besides a single pinned post you won’t see any old content experiencing growth after that initial posting. It is a bit of an imprecise mirror of social media but also an accommodating one, the player not having to struggle for attention but getting rewarded when they do put together something interesting or bold.

If you play the game offline, you’ll inevitably become quite familiar with the handful of game-created Muses who stand around waiting for you to grant them new wardrobes, and the repeat customers can lead to the task losing a bit of its luster. There are other things to do thankfully, one area of interest being to create your own items once you’ve gathered enough patterns, resources, and color palettes through the Lookit system’s mixing and matching the clothing items you’ve liked. Item customization can be a bit of a mixed bag though depending on the clothing you are trying to make. You do not have any influence over the item’s shape or elements, so a dress is always going to be a certain length, patterns can’t be applied, and even things like tears on jeans are locked into their set design. However, you will gradually gain a pretty strong control over item coloration, the customization process involving you determining the color of specific regions of a clothing item. In doing so, you can issue a new wardrobe item that is deemed part of your brand, and utilizing it in Lookits or other areas is more rewarding than simply presenting the items you’ve liked. You will be limited somewhat by resources so you can’t build your brand too quickly, but one area where the item customization and brand system really shine is in the game’s online play.

 

Fashion Dreamer involves a passive sort of online interaction with other players. Rather than people needing to be present and playing at the same time as you, their Muses will appear in your Cocoon, the player able to essentially dress them up as an ambassador for the brand. Player Muses can have their wardrobes changed with a Lookit session and they can actually issue more detailed requests than a game-produced Muse. Of course, the more satisfying part of customizing an actual player’s avatar comes in the idea you’re coordinating a look for a real person, and the Eve social media system allows you to get updates on various elements related to your work online. You will see player created outfits others made for you and can swap into them, you can see if they like your brand’s clothing, and there’s even a unique stamp system where you can send extra kudos or a thank you for items that particularly impress you. Showrooms take things a step further though, the player able to customize a small space where you can put your clothing on display for others to potentially like and acquire, your brand items never losing your mark even as they potentially swap hands again and again.

 

Standard play in Fashion Dreamer does start to grow rote after a while, the game’s own Muses too accommodating and the pursuit of likes and followers not having much adversity involved. It is a very gradual climb and a repetitive one, but the online element adds a refreshing shift in focus as now you are sort of chasing that fame in a slightly more palpable way. Good taste in design is rewarded not only through more of the game’s currency that comes with each like, but through seeing the notifications from people who approve of your work and wanted it for themselves. While the freedom to like items and acquire them sounds like it might make that support hollow, the game almost urges you to be more selective after a while with a weak item sorting system. The inventory screen can get very cluttered and take a while to navigate since you can’t so easily hop between wardrobe pieces. Having your closet cluttered with a range of light color variations makes Lookits more tedious and thus you do start to take likes more seriously after the starting growth period, but the stamp system also allows players to show support without having to necessarily acquire new clothing. It can be a touch addictive to keep popping into Fashion Dreamer after some time has passed to see if your clothing has earned new attention or people have created new looks for your Muse, so while the game itself sets some fairly weak goals to guide you, the social elements keep this dress up game from completely losing its luster.

THE VERDICT: Fashion Dreamer’s wide range of stylish and colorful clothing certainly are fertile ground for constructing a litany of lovely outfits, but this dress up game almost left it feeling a bit unfulfilling should you choose to play it offline. Repetitive tasks and low bars to success mean the thought you put into your work can sometimes feel squandered, but once the online opens up, it’s compelling to see the creations other players cooked up, especially since you can then acquire them for your own use. Seeing how real people enjoy your designs, your showroom, and your coordinated outfits breathes new life into a game that almost failed to provide much of a reason to keep playing, Fashion Dreamer ending up an amusing fashion design game that’s nice to return to from time to time to see how your simple creations have done across the world.

 

And so, I give Fashion Dreamer for Nintendo Switch…

An OKAY rating. Fashion Dreamer has a strong sense of style suitable for its subject matter, the selection of clothing making for many lovely wardrobes that feel satisfying to put together simply for how nice they make the Muses look when wearing them. The dress up menu could be made more navigable and it’s a shame that certain pieces of clothing are segregated even when some feel fairly androgynous, but from a pure visual standpoint Fashion Dreamer can be captivating. If you don’t go online though, the game provided content can feel a bit empty due to it having fairly simple standards while resources like tickets for the clothing machines require constant Lookit creation for the same few familiar faces. Once you’re free to look at real player Muses and creations though, it feels like the experience truly opens up both in the creativity in designs you can find and acquire and in how you can find meaning in your work. Chasing abstract artificial followers that are so freely provided can’t hold a candle to seeing the notifications of someone perusing your showroom and taking the time to like and stamp multiple items. Creating a Lookit wardrobe for another player feels more important than trying to hit some metrics for the game’s normal rating system, because if you do it well enough, that player may just have their Muse walk around in it afterwards. The item customization for your brand does feel rather lean, but there’s enough room that you can still craft something unique to impress the other players online.

 

While it can start to lose its charm if played for long sessions, Fashion Dreamer is also a nice fit for a game you come back to from time to time to see how the world likes your creations. There could very much be a more robust version of this concept though, greater customization, stronger goals to motivate you beyond player approval, and other small touches like less clothing restrictions feeling like the push the game needs to really hook you. I still do feel a little itch to want to see how my work is doing online or what people have made for my Muse, but Fashion Dreamer right now feels like the baseline of something that could be truly addictive and constantly satisfying if it was built upon even more and turned its attention away from too freely rewarding even your weakest efforts to cater to its systems.