Dress-up Games

Originally sent via Tinyletter on November 11th, 2023

Dear reader,

As someone who’s played too much Tears of the Kingdom this year and not much else, and who also spends too much time on Instagram judging couture fashion collections they will never afford, the confluence of these preoccupations has been on the brain. I’m talking about dress-up games. And I’m talking about games that at first glance don’t appear to be dress-up games but actually are in their digital heart of hearts, whether or not their intended fanbases might want to think of them as such.

1. Doll Divine/Azalea Dolls are dress-up games

There are games whose exclusive mechanic and purpose is dress-up; these are the purest of dress-up games. I’m talking specifically about doll dress-up games here, like those offered by Doll Divine and Azalea’s Dolls, which allow you to customize the look of the “doll” that you dress up and then the clothing and accessories that they wear. Many of the figures, like paper dolls, are in one static pose which the clothing you choose from is drawn to fit. Many are also ripped off from or inspired by Disney princesses, anime characters, and other Barbie-fied pop culture figures. Nevertheless, many also present the player with an astounding number of customization options. You don’t just dress up the doll; you design the model, the clothes, and then style them. These are the kind of games I’d spend hours on as a kid and learned how to screenshot on the computer just to save my creations. The old Barbie and MyScene websites also had officially licensed versions of these kinds of games, though of course, those are just ads for buying a doll to dress up in real life.

2. The Sims is a dress-up game

Depending on how you choose play, The Sims is more a dress-up game than a life simulator. Design and dress-up of the players’ in-game avatars is the first step into their lives, and if there’s any indication offered by the very healthy modding scene for The Sims, it’s one of the most important. Who among us hasn’t lamented the terrible hairstyle options in The Sims only to find someone online has crafted the loveliest braided updo for us to try – and then had the digital weight of their new high-def coif crash their computer? Beauty is worth the pain.

The Sims 4 has a stunning number of expansion packs available to pad out the base game. If you want to buy all 19 at their retail prices, it’ll cost you $995. These expansion packs add new modes, homes, career paths and abilities to the game, but most importantly and most commonly, they introduce new aesthetic options for your Sims’ wardrobes and homes. The point of The Sims is to invent a person and have them walk around in different little outfits depending on your mood.

3. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a dress-up game

On its surface, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom does not appear to be a dress-up game. Its main mechanics focus on combat, exploration, and device-building. However, there are also 135 different armor pieces to collect throughout the game for the player character Link to wear. Many of them imbue Link with ability buffs, and of course you can improve the armor for higher defense. A huge chunk of side quests involve the acquisition of these outfit pieces, and there’s even a new class of NPCs in Hyrule this time around known as fashionistas, followers of a designer named Cece who’s taken up residence in one of the main towns. Cece’s mushroom-inspired fashions have taken over Hateno Village; fashionistas are in every nook and cranny of the country searching for outfit pieces worn by a legendary thief who had a taste for couture; you can even rescue fashionistas from evil ninjas and receive, in return, pieces of an evil ninja outfit. One unskippable plot-moving quest involves acquiring a certain outfit and putting it on. One of the main quests of the game is activating and completing puzzles in over one hundred shrines scattered across the world – the prize for getting all of them is an outfit. There are even armor pieces with little or no defense built in at all; they exist merely to change Link’s appearance (my favorite of which is his 0-defense hairband, which restores his hairstyle from the first game). I’ve spent about 270 hours in that game so far (don’t @ me) and I would love to know how many of those hours were spent in pursuit of an armor piece or even spent switching between outfits, because you HAVE to switch between outfits to survive. You might die of cold or heat or electroshocks or fall damage if you don’t. Every other aspect of the game is affected by the outfits. Even the device-building part! One outfit grants your devices a longer battery life. Tears of the Kingdom is a dress-up game. 

4. Xenoblade Chronicles HD is a dress-up game

I bring this one up because it was my first encounter with a mechanic that I think all games should have – two different equipment slots for the armor that actually protects your character and the armor that it appears your character is wearing. Because, let’s face it – the coolest-looking armor in a video game is almost never the most useful. This requires the player to make a choice about what they really value in life. Is it practicality? Or is it aesthetics? I usually waver between the two, land on aesthetics, and then regret it later.

In the re-release of Xenoblade Chronicles, you never have to choose.  In the “actual defense” armor section, you can put on all the ugly late-game but very useful armor you’ve fought to acquire. In the “armor your character actually looks like they’re wearing” section, you can put on a stupid little bathing suit. Every character in your party can put on a stupid little bathing suit. You can get through your usual JRPG journey to kill a god totally unscathed and then attend a beach party right after. If the point of this Xenoblade re-do wasn’t to give its fashion a chance to shine, I don’t know what was.

5. Dark Souls/Bloodborne/Elden Ring/Armored Core are dress-up games

FromSoft’s games are known for their punishing combat and dense worldbuilding. Enemies in the game are immediately difficult, and you go into these games expecting to die often until you understand the rhythm of their fights. (We could also argue that Soulsborne games are in that way rhythm games in the vein of Dance Dance Revolution, but that’s a different post.)
 
They are also games about outfits. Because what you need in order to not die so much are new outfits and new accessories (weapons.) to go with them. Not only that, but outfits are one of the ways the game reveals any of its lore at all. When Elden Ring came out, I watched my old roommate play a lot of it. I watched as he picked up new item after new item and then complained that he had no idea what was going on. I told him, please pause and let me read about that helmet you just picked up. The helmet description revealed who had worn the helmet, what their order had been about, and why the area was full of the enemies that it was. It also hinted at the existence of a more dangerous enemy up ahead, which my roommate encountered very quickly.
 
“I never bother to read the item descriptions,” he said. My guy was missing out on most of the game.
 
In order to survive a FromSoft game, you have to dress up. In order to understand a FromSoft game, you have to understand what you’ve dressed up in.
 
Armored Core is slightly different, since the player character is an unseen mech pilot. What you customize, or rather dress up, is the mech that they control. However, this is also a form of dress-up, as you’re once again forced to choose between the practicality of a weapon for a fight vs. the style of mech you think looks the coolest. The newest game also offers an emblem customization option – you can draw your own flag to wear. Isn’t that cute? Now go get ripped to shreds by a rogue gundam.

6. All video games are dress-up games

Any game, whether or not it contains a mechanic that involves changing the outward presentation of the player character, is a dress-up game. Because, the players, embody another, or a different version we’ve built of ourselves, in every game. We are always putting on a costume, whether that costume is a humanoid viewed in third-person, a first-person-perspective fighter, or even a cursor drawn to look like a gauntleted hand. We are always putting on a persona, using the games as an opportunity to try something we might not have the chance to try in real life. Even games where there is no visual representation of the player character at all ask you to take on a role that you don’t normally hold – that of an omnipotent choice-maker. All video games, in the end, are dress-up games.*

*The MOST dress-up game video game out of these is Elden Ring, though, imo.

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