Dress Up Time Princess

 Groan. I can't believe I actually a) downloaded a game called Dress Up Time Princess or b) that I'm actually liking it. 

Seriously. What part of this is me? Okay. Let me start at the beginning. I kept getting ads for it. I don't like dress up games generally at all. I was sick of the ad. Often, when you download a game, you stop getting ads for it. So, I thought I'd try that. Like many games today, the ads have very little to do with the actual game play.

So I downloaded it and tried it (incidentally, I did stop getting the ads, so that worked). And it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. I mean, it was and it wasn't. Yes, a great deal of it is dressing up an avatar, BUT it's actually a bit more otome-like than many other mobile games out there that purport to be. In an -ish sort of way.

You're visiting home and you go into your mother's old bedroom. There you find a mysterious lectern with a storybook (and a weird fairy-creature, kind of). You soon get transported into storybook worlds where you are living the life of the main character...but that first story is...historical. You're Marie Antoinette. I was, honestly, like, WTF.  Who would want to be Marie Antoinette?? The character, at least, is aware of this and works hard to try and change her fate, changing history in the process. There are distinct decision points and your choices do make a radical difference in the storyline. You have to raise your relationship with a number of characters (the King, Lafayette, Fersen, etc. etc.). However, you can also go back and "unlock" different story paths by picking different choices. In fact, this is encouraged: you can't unlock certain outfit patterns (which unlock different paths) without doing so. So, in that way it is both otome-like and non-otome-like as you do ultimately need to raise your relationship with all the characters and not just one (and not all of the characters are love interests either).

I do feel it's an odd story for an otome-ish app to pick; the MC is married to the King, after all. But, I'm finding the history lessons embedded within it to be interesting (and to match with what I know of France during that time period). So I found that intriguing. I've also unlocked a few other stories -- Swan Lake (based on the classic fairy tale), some side stories related to Queen Marie, and Romy and Julius (? obviously a take on Romeo and Juliet, though I dunno why they changed the names). So the stories run the gamut: history, classics, fairy tales. I haven't progressed very far in the others though.

There's a fair bit of grinding to get the materials that you need to make the outfits that you need to unlock things with, but not a terrible amount. You also collect pet cats that you send off on adventures. Overall, it's a cutesy game, but the stories at the heart are fairly engaging and interesting and, unlike where I am with Mr. Love, straightforward enough to be enjoyable without miring you down in confusion. I'm not even minding the dress up stuff too much, though I have to say it is not my fav game mechanic. 

This one definitely surprised me. I wasn't expecting to do anything more than check it out and delete it.

Edit: Thought I'd do a quick update as I've been playing this one for over 50 days now. I've actually unlocked pretty much all of the available storybooks and sort of completed the Queen Marie one. Well, completed as in I've finished all of the episodes but haven't unlocked all of the endings. I'm not actually super invested in going back to finish it all the random bits (many of which are bound to be "bad ends"), but maybe. Out of all the endings I did get, I'd have to say my favourite was one where she and the King wind up having to leave the royal life behind and wind up settling in a small village somewhere and she bakes & he fidgets with inventions. It was sweet. 

As for the others...the Romy and Julius is interesting in that the framework is the normal story but gender reversed a bit BUT with the addition of some supernatural elements, which is odd. Though I can't say I'm finding it the most intriguing out of all the stories.

That would actually be The Magic Lamp, which I unlocked last. It's a bit of a mish-mash -- there's a character named Sinbad (and the forty thieves, but here he's a fat jolly merchant) and another (the queen) named Scheherazade (1001 tales), a genie from the lamp, Chapur (think Jafar from Aladdin), and Kahir (the prince). It's like they took every middle eastern-y character and mashed it into one story. But it's actually working. You play Gina, who had been kidnapped from a slum in order to be sold into slavery, but she escapes. So it's got a plucky MC, a nice prince, a prickly genie...and the most fun outfits. Definitely Kahir is the attractive LI.

Next most interesting would be the Gotham Memoirs, set during the Prohibition era. You're a plucky reporter there with big dreams. One of the LIs is a Mafia dude, so that's a bit odd given how she seems like a very straight and narrow kind of girl. But it also has two female side characters that are interesting -- an aviator and a prosecutor. So I do like that. Also, NYC in the 1920s is a good setting.

The Sparta one seems okay too, but I haven't really gone far enough into it that I really know. It's kinda like a Helen of Troy thing but with the gods interfering and a minotaur running rampant. So another mash up. Oh, and Cassandra, an oracle. The MC there is only 16 too, which may be why I'm not sure how much I like it yet. I'm old, man.