Stylist games are no longer in fashion. Even in the golden days of the Nintendo DS andfree flash games, most of the products catering to this niche were considered (perhaps unjustly) shovelware. While that remains true for the majority of online and mobile dress-up games, a handful of new fashion games and the old ones that aged well make it so players with this particular itch have quite the choice.
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Most fashion games are simple dress-up games that let players express themselves and their style but leave the fashion industry out of the picture. Not only that, but the social aspect of fashion is rarely present in those games. Great fashion games recognize that style is about more thandressing up a doll: by expressing our inside world to the outside, the style becomes fashion. Great fashion games need that outside world to speak to.
5Imagine: Fashion World 3D (2012)
Imagine Fashion World 3Dis the fan favorite in the 3DS line of Imagine games, and for good reasons. The latest installment of the series is not perfect, lacking the absurd story of the DS games and suffering from increased padding. Even then, the presentation is dated but still pleasant, and the customization options just varied enough to keep players going for quite a while.
Imagine Fashion World 3Dalso has acompelling multiplayer modewhere two players compete in a fashion show-off by designing the most appropriate outfit for a given challenge. Players can even exchange designs with their friends, granted they can find a friend with a 3DS and a fashion game from ten years ago.
4Imagine: Fashion Designer (2009)
Mixing point-and-click adventures and dress-up games isn’t the most original idea, as even a cursory examination of the mid-2000s flash games can attest. Yet that is exactly what makesImagine: Fashion Designer (2009)stand out from the competition and even from other games in the series. This is also the only Imagine fashion game released for PC and not for a portable console, making it by far the most detailed and complex.
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The longer run time and deeper features also giveImagine: Fashion Designerthe most fun and wild story out of the entire series. Players will spend as much time walking around asking questions as they will dressing up models and creating new clothes. A subplot, one of the few thatcould legitimately be called a side-quest, involves rescuing a missing dog from cosmetic testing.
3Style influencer Career From The Sims 4
Becoming a style influencer inThe Sims 4hardly turns the game into a completely new experience, but it does scratch the same itch of any other fashion game. Careers inThe Sims 4change things up far more than simple jobs, especially an active career like that of a Style influencer. TheStyle influencer career requires no expansion, and since the base game is free, this is effectively the cheapest game about the fashion industry.
Despite its name, the Style influencer career doesn’t require players to play the role of social media personalities. While some writing skills are essential for the first stages of this career, a rank 5 Style influencer sim can be promoted to “Dedicated Dresser,” the first level of the Stylist career. This gives that sim the ability to give their friends a makeover, on top of fundamentally changing what this career is about.
2Love Nikki Dress UP Queen
While theLove Nikkiseriesisn’t strictly about the fashion world, it is set in a world where fashion dominates every aspect of life. Styling contests are how nations resolve matters that would otherwise devolve into war. Princess Elle, a talented stylist, gets the title of “Reincarnated Goddess.” Of course, gameplay too revolves around matching the available clothing to best fit the situation, receiving points according to categories like “Elegance” or “Simple.”
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Love Nikki Dress UP Queenis more than a simple dress-up game with scoring and gacha elements. Taking place in Miraland, a world that is more melodrama than slice-of-life, the story is an extremely important element ofLove Nikki. Much of the game plays out in cutscenes reminiscent of a visual novel, as this stylist’s power fantasy of sorts leaves space for a collection of more vulnerable, touching stories.
1Style Savvy: Styling Star
Style Savvy is a series years in the making, with its roots planted in the Nintendo DS days. Despite finding immediate success on the DS, the series never broke into the mainstream. Still, considering how much of a following the series has, the fact thatStyle Savvy: Styling Staris the fan favorite doesn’t mean anything. Unlike most other games in the genre, theStyle Savvyseries has the option of working with male clients, though only in an alternate, less feature-rich mode.
Style Savvy: Styling Stargives players control of a boutique shopas every day a deluge of girls floods the shop. They can ask for a whole outfit or for just a couple of accessories, often adding some stylistic restrictions like “give it a cheerful, energetic vibe!” Even with these restrictions and with the added stress of stocking the shop each day, players old and new will find little difficulty in making their clients happy each time. For those looking for a challenge, even a mild one, this might be an issue.
