Fashion Dreamer (Switch) Review – Become A Fashionista

Not too long ago, XSeed Games debuted an indie stream that showcased Fashion Dreamer; from that point, I was instantly hooked. I wanted to play this game. I love games with customization and being able to change and create appearances. If you are someone who follows dress-up games, you will notice that there are not a lot of focused dress-up games out there, and as such, I had to get my hands on this. But what is a dress-up game, and is this something you’d enjoy? Well, read on, and we’ll discuss this in our Fashion Dreamer review.

Game Name: Fashion Dreamer
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch
Publisher(s): XSeed games
Developer(s): Marvelous Inc.
Release Date: November 3rd, 2023
Price: $49.99

You begin the game as a Muse of your choice regarding body type, appearance, and gender. You can also select and customize various faces, hair, and sizes for your muse. You will then be tasked with increasing your influencer level, which starts the more mission-oriented tasks this game wants you to accomplish. There isn’t much of a story to Fashion Dreamer as it is based solely on the dress-up gameplay and mechanics. Those mechanics make the game go far, but it can be disheartening if you aren’t a fan of dress-up games.

Designing Your Look 

You have a variety of ways to get clothing in Fashion Dreamer. The first way is the easiest way by far; it is looking at outfits worn by NPCs or character muses throughout the areas in the game and then liking them. When you like an outfit or a single article of clothing, that clothing is sent to your clothing inventory. You will see so many outfits and clothing in the beginning that you can just grab and go from liking everything. However, as you start advancing further and further with your collection, the fewer outfits you will find to like. That is where some other ways to unlock clothing come into play. You can find a trend board with an assortment of popular clothing or clothing that gives bonuses for lookit models.

You will find NPCs and muses from other players that you will be able to use the “Lookit” mode. Lookit is when you design an outfit based on a character’s preferences or aesthetic. Muse’s from online players will have preferences surrounding color and style. If you fulfill their preferences by designing an outfit for their character, you will get more rewards and more in-game currency. NPCs, however, will have a very specific desire. Sometimes, it is a sweatshirt, a dress, or an outfit color. If you fulfill that, you will get hearts from that NPC as well as additional rewards. The rewards for satisfying a lookit modeling are E Points, influencer followers, bingo tickets, and gacha tickets.

E Points are used to create a certain outfit piece with your brand. You can adjust the style and color of the clothing article. It also requires creation keys to be used with E Points, which you will get a number of them just by playing the game. Gaining followers as an influencer unlocks more missions and areas you can travel to. Bingo tickets are used in the bingo machine, and gacha tickets are used in the gacha machine. Using a ticket, you can draw a token on the bingo board. If it matches up with three in a row, you get an amount of E Points. The gacha machine houses a variety of clothes you can acquire by chance. If you use a gacha ticket, you can get one pull on the machine, getting you one article of clothing. You can either use the gacha ticket immediately or wait till you get ten tickets and do a single pull for ten different articles of clothing at once.

Sharing Your Fashion

Fashion Dreamer has several online features that make it more than just a dress-up game you play by yourself. The big one is the random muses taken from the internet shown in your Cocoon. Cocoons are the play areas you have access to. Each one is a unique location that makes great backdrops for pictures with your favorite outfits. You have the option to play with offline mode or online mode. Online mode will have you interacting with other players’ muses that pop up on the screen where the NPCs are located. You can also go to a showroom stream that is online. It will take you to a random showroom made by another player that they have decorated with their clothing or outfits on mannequins.

You can use actions such as like, thanks, or follow at this showroom. You can also take pictures with the drone camera in the showroom as well. If you follow the user their showroom will now be located in the following stream showroom. This makes it so you can go to that showroom whenever you choose to. If you find a person’s showroom you like or enjoy taking pictures in, you can come back with following it, but be warned it can change if the user adjusts it. Once you find a user’s muse in the world, you can enter Lookit mode with their character and take a picture with your drone camera with your character and their character.

Not All Sunshine and Rainbows

Fashion Dreamer is one of the most ambitious dress-up games solely focused on outfits and muses. Sadly, due to its focus on your designs and how you interact with the world, it does tend to lose out on some of the online focuses. You can send likes or thanks to users’ profiles based on their muse in the world, but you aren’t able to interact with them in any other regard. You also can not chat or send postcards or stamps to other users. It would be awesome once you start gathering followers or you start following other users so that you can interact with them more than just the showroom.

I wonder how Fashion Dreamer would do on other consoles, but I don’t think it is necessary. The only console you can buy Fashion Dreamer on is the Nintendo Switch. For the most part, it houses the game and features pretty well. Once you get access to bigger Cocoons, though, some areas tank the performance and make the game stutter a bunch. If you go to the subway especially, it makes the game jarring. Selecting online mode takes a bit of time before you can gain access to the game, but once you are in the game, there is very little lag, if any. It takes no time at all to switch areas or Cocoons on the fly. You can press the right analog stick-in to get access to your full map and the ability to change which Cocoon you are in.

When looking at your items, you may notice you have a maximum capacity of 5000. Honestly, that is a huge number, and I don’t know if I will reach it, but the issue is more along the side of sorting. You can filter through your clothing based on where it fits on your person, but if you are looking for a specific material or color, good luck. Once you get into the thousands of clothing articles, finding the designs you want to use can get difficult. You can put specific clothing on the top by favoriting them during your scroll through your large inventory, but it would be so much better if they had a sorting system in place that let you sort them by color, pattern, or material.

The Ultimate Fashionista

Fashion Dreamer is a huge undertaking and a worthwhile game if you are excited to try creating your designs and outfits. It isn’t a perfect experience with the lack of online features and the unoptimized inventory system, but it has all the features you want from the dress-up side of the game. Not having microtransactions and the ease of getting the outfits you want make it easy to immerse yourself in looking through outfits and clothing that you want to add to your collection. If you have an itch for making characters and having a large variety of outfits to try on, then this is the game for you!

Fashion Dreamer is available on Nintendo Switch.

Review Disclosure Statement: Fashion Dreamer was provided to us by XSeed Games for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.

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