Trend Dreamer, the latest launch from the developer (Syn Sophia) of the cult basic Fashion Savvy video games, garnered excessive expectations from followers hoping to discover a religious successor to the sequence. Whereas Trend Dreamer isn’t technically a part of the Fashion Savvy household (often called ‘Fashion Boutique’ in Europe), it provides followers of these DS and 3DS video games a chance to take their trend experience to Nintendo Swap.
Sadly, Trend Dreamer’s gameplay leaves lots to be desired. Initially, we’re welcomed right into a digital world referred to as Eve, the place we play as an influencer placing collectively outfits for NPCs and even different gamers if using the web mode. Nearly all of the sport is spent creating outfits, referred to as ‘look-its,’ for characters which are spaced out throughout a small map, referred to as a ‘cocoon.’ Every character desires their outfit to satisfy particular standards, like that includes a sure shade, together with a clothes merchandise comparable to a jacket, or having a specific vibe comparable to being “cool” or “distinctive.”
When styling a look-it for a personality, we may choose items from our personal assortment or from a restricted number of different garments that usually didn’t really assist with the standards we had been making an attempt to satisfy. Every look-it is scored out of three stars the place one star is a freebie, one star is for assembly the character’s standards, and one is for following an energetic development.
There are a number of energetic traits at a time which are viewable within the “pop-up space” of the map. For instance, a development report at our time of enjoying included the colour purple, leather-based, lengthy skirts, jackets, boots, and animal prints. Together with any one in every of these considerably in an outfit might be sufficient to earn that ultimate star.
The factor is, scoring poorly whereas styling a personality didn’t appear to have any impression on the general path of the sport. Even after we scored only one star on a look-it, the NPC dialogue indicated that they beloved the outfit and we nonetheless acquired a reward, albeit a barely smaller one than if we had maxed out the rating.
The reward system itself is needlessly fragmented. Status factors, which you get by creating outfits and getting ‘likes’ from different gamers in your look-its or designs, in the end decide influencer rating, which appears to go as much as platinum stage. Then there may be model stage, which is expounded to what number of clothes gadgets are made within the merchandise creator. Inventive keys enable for the acquisition of latest designs that may be personalized utilizing the merchandise creator, however blue tickets additionally unlock totally different designs by way of a gacha-style machine featured on every map. E-points are used for purchasing furnishings and creating particular person situations of things within the merchandise creator and we ended up with far more than we may ever use simply from different folks on-line interacting with our designs. Yellow tickets are used to play bingo at a separate machine on the map, however profitable bingo simply ends in extra E-points. Lastly, gold cash are used at merchandising machines to purchase props for footage. It was exhausting simply typing this, not to mention retaining observe of all of it whereas enjoying.
Shockingly, none of those currencies are used to buy precise clothes gadgets. It’s ridiculously simple to get new gadgets just by ‘liking’ the garments that different characters are already carrying or interacting with development boards that show numerous gadgets in every cocoon’s pop-up space. Not having to work for or buy clothes gadgets took all of the drive out of searching down that good piece.
We had been hoping that unlocking the flexibility to model our personal boutique would carry extra complicated and interesting mechanics, however all it actually entails is placing furnishings and clothes in a small room. The clothes you show doesn’t even need to be of your personal design, which appeared to defeat the aim of it being our personal boutique. After our boutique was arrange, different on-line gamers may go to it and ‘like’ the articles we had on show, in the end drowning us in much more E-points.
Regardless of Trend Dreamer’s frustrations, it positively delivers on being a enjoyable dress-up recreation, even when the novelty wears off shortly. Taking part in round with totally different shade combos and methods to layer items saved us well-occupied for the primary portion of our playthrough. We had been very excited to search out that almost all shirts might be worn tucked or untucked, permitting for larger selection in how one can model outfits.
And though on-line play causes an overabundance of e-points, it was cool to see what kinds of gadgets different gamers had been making and carrying. We particularly loved receiving styled seems to be from different gamers who put collectively outfits for our muse.
Conclusion
Trend Dreamer’s major focus of making outfits is fulfilling, however there isn’t a complete lot else happening within the recreation. Some gamers may have the ability to spend hours simply amassing clothes gadgets and placing collectively totally different combos for his or her muse and different avatars to point out off. Nevertheless, those that loved the extra mechanics-heavy and story-influenced components of the Fashion Savvy sequence aren’t going to search out the identical charms in Trend Dreamer. Both method, it’s in all probability price ready for the value to drop earlier than making an attempt this one on for measurement.