Tag: Mobile Game Review

EDIT: Check Out My New Updated CocoPPaPlay Review for 2018 – A lot of improvements have happened since this first review below. Click here to read the updated review of CocoPPAPlay for 2018.

Review from 2016 below:

(The following review uses screenshots that I personally took while playing CocoPPaPlay. I wish I could give credit to all of the models which appear and the players who spent time creating their models – however, I did not make a note of the players’ names while taking my screenshots. I’m sorry. I started a new character, so I didn’t have many cute items to use for my own photos. Thanks for understanding! If you happen to recognize your character and either want credit, or for some reason don’t want me using their photo for my review, just leave me a comment below.)

I post a lot of photos of this game, and other games, on my Instagram account – check it out if you want to see more! But please note, I also post other non-gaming and more personal photos as well so only subscribe if you’re okay with that kinda stuff in your feed as well ^-^. Link: https://www.instagram.com/Xenokitten/

Title: CocoPPaPlay (the Android version is called Star Girl Fashion but it is the same game).

Genre: Dressup Game

Platform: Mobile (IOS / Android)

Grab it on IOS: https://itunes.apple.com…

Or Here for Android: (For some reason, it’s called “Star Girl Fashion” here, but same game, even same icon that the Itunes version uses) You can pick it up here: https://play.google.com/…

Geeky: 1/5 

Sweetie: 4/5 

Overall: 70 / 100 70% C- Good Game for Girls

Concept: 7/10 The concept of CocoPPaPlay is simple – play “gacha” machines or enter monthly events to win new outfits. Outfits consist of different layers, such as eyes(facial expresion), hair, clothes, shoes, hand accessories (purses, stuffed toys, swords, etc), hats, glasses, pets, backgrounds, and other items – This allows you to really fine-tune and make unique avatars. Similar to games like Pokemini (which I reviewed here) or Line Play (review coming soon). However, in my opinion, CocoPPaPlay has less robust features than these two games and operates on more of a pay-to-win model than either of the above games.

Gameplay: 7/10 I covered the basics above: There are a number of “lottery” style games (gacha machines) where you’re awarded an item for your outfit by paying or using a gacha ticket. Gacha tickets only work in a few gacha. Once a week you can use in-game currency (the free kind that you earn by playing) to play one Gacha. This resets on Sundays, so each Sunday, you could, in theory, get a free “paid” item. The problem however, is that it’s insanely expensive. You earn this free currency by “cheering” for people’s “fashion shows”. The problem is, the gacha cost 20,000 of this free currency and you only get 5 to 10 of the currency for each cheer you do. You’d have to cheer 2,000 – 4,000 times to get enough points to get a free item each week – this is insanely time consuming.

To give you an idea, I played it very heavily this past weekend, logging in about once an hour and using up all of my “energy” cheering – which took about 15-20 minutes each hour. I did this each hour from about 9am – 11pm each day Saturday and Sunday – and only earned around 8,000 “smile points” (the in-game, free currency). You’d have to keep this pace up for 4-5 days, without missing a day or hour/wasting your free energy refills, etc. – I also had some free “energy drinks” and since I started a new character (didn’t feel like digging out my ipad to transfer my data), I leveled up many, many, many times from level 1 to 24 within the 2 days, and each time you level up, your energy also refills – so I cheered lots and lots – but obviously, not even close to the amount needed to get to 20,000 smile points!!

I work (as I’m sure a lot of my readers do) so I can’t log in Monday-Friday. So realistically I can only play on weekends – which means I’ll probably take 2-3 weeks to reach the 20,000 smile points necessary. Other games, like Moe can Change and Animal Boyfriend (which I reviewed here) let you play EVERY gacha for free completely free one time – so you always have nice items! I don’t like that CocoPPaPlay forces you to feel like you HAVE to spend money – I spent money willingly one time in Moe can change to get a hairstyle I wanted – but I have thousands of cute clothes for free. Every game should let you get free stuff – Line Play’s gacha’s only cost one to three thousand gems  not 20,000!! Making it much easier to earn tickets on the Gacha. I just feel that CocoPPaPlay is greedy in this regard.

Also, let it be known, that they don’t even make their own graphics, they use some type of “free to use” avatar system called “Selphie” which is used by A TON of other games (sadly none in English). There used to be a game called Tinier Me which was in English however, it went out of business some years ago. The “Japanese Tinier Me” still exists as “AtGames” and their “free items” are MUCH nicer than those in CocoPPaPlay which only puts like the worst garbage items in their “shops” For example, in the Japanese Tinier Me (or AtGames) you can get very nice high quality eyes for free/or in game currency. While in CocoPPaPlay you only get “closed eyes” like “n_n” and “^-^” and “x_x” etc for free. I only have 2 models on my new account right now because I’m still trying to win a face for my third model in the Gachas. And that’s another thing, although at level 10 you can dressup 3 characters at once, you can only use an item in your inventory once and can’t reuse it on another model unless you “unequip” it first. Just more evidence of wanting you to pay to play – they could have a default face that you could use/start with but nope.

Okay so I’m done ranting about the pay-to-win gamestyle – let’s move on to some other things now. There are numerous events – most recently they had an Easter event – but basically every event is the same – there will be multiple “quest givers” who request items from you – these items you can earn for free by cheering – you get “lucky tickets” in exchange (and sometimes other items like exclusive limited outfits, energy drinks, etc) – The lucky tickets can be used to try to play the lucky event gacha to win outfits/energy drinks, and/or used to raise your charm level for the event – I recommend trying to max your charm (similar to the events in Dream Girlfriend (which I reviewed here) having high charm lets you get event points and rewards much quicker! Therefore its best to max it out asap). To illustrate, I ranked in the top 5,000 (which is pretty low but in the scheme of things, with 40 million players according to their itunes profile, not bad) within just 2 days of playing, on a brand new account, at the very end of an event. So it’s fairly easy to rank – I think maybe a lot of that “40 million” is inactive or like me, hadn’t logged in in a long time, etc. Either way, it seems most don’t go for the event items, and/or don’t make good use of the charm boost, etc.

There’s also a club feature. You can at any level, any time, and for free, create (or join) a club. You can get bonuses in the events above by having club members where certain items or do certain tasks so clubs are really useful, you can also use them to chat and make friends which gives the game a nice social touch.

There’s a farming minigame, but it’s pretty lame, you sheer sheep. I dunno, I don’t find it that fun, you earn “wool points” and outfits when you discover a new sheep. You discover new sheep by spending wool points to improve your farm and buy new equipment to care for your sheep.

You also can take on quests from NPCs within the game, which when you complete, will add new items to their shops, and unlock new cities to explore, and grant you some free outfits. When a city “levels up” they have a sale with half priced items – but I never buy them – because I’m hoarding all my Smile Points to use in the “weekly free gacha”.

As a “bonus”, there’s another app by the makers of CocoPPaPlay, where you can customize your cellphone, with new icons, background images, wallpapers, lock screens, etc. This other app works best on android – because sadly, apple has a lot of bloatware that you cannot delete or modify – for example, the camera, you can’t change the icon for it on apple, the only work around is to download a 3rd party camera app, and hide your other icon in a folder somewhere. Email is another example, for example, you have to download Gmail, and hide the default mail app. You also can’t change the phone or text icons at all on the apple iphone. But it still makes your phone about 90% cuter – though it also makes your phone a little slower, as it adds an extra step whenever you click on one of the new icons it is only a shortcut to the actual program so you get prompted if you want to open the “page” with the following application. (At least on Iphone.) This other app also acts as a social media site, and if you link up your CocoPPa account to your CocoPPa Play account your avatar is carried over to both apps and appears on your social media wall – you earn some free items in both apps for linking, and can more easily login/retrieve your account by having both apps active.

That about covers it for gameplay. There’s really not much to do – but the limited event items and limited gacha items can be enough to keep you playing (for awhile until you get so frustrated by how long it takes to get a free spin on the Gacha.)

Customization – 10/10 – going on 2 years (they’re having a 2nd anniversary event right now) – the number of items available is incredible, and many items have already retired, rising the demand (unfortunately there’s no trading system (which exists by the way in the Japanese Tinier me lol)) – you get “bragging rights” if you have a super rare/old/obscure item equipped and well, I see this game being around 2-3 years from now, so even if you start playing today, in 2-3 years you too will have those rare items everyone else wants and be admired. I like games like this where they retire items fairly quickly. Pokemini is another example of really time sensitive items. That to me really increases my drive to play these games.

Story: 2/10 – There’s really not much, if any, story – I think there was some type of story presented at the beginning, but it’s so bare bones I forgot it quickly. It’s mostly fetch quests and cheering and there’s also quite a few typos or improper grammar and awkward sentences thrown about in the game.

Characters: 6/10 – Characters get high marks for cuteness – but really have no purpose or substance, other than serving as mascots.

Graphics: 10/10 This game is super cute, the mascot girl who guides you through the story and quests is adorable, and the sheep mascot is also cute and he helps run your club. Your avatar and the items are very nicely drawn and large. a Good variety of items (though most are paid items) and different poses, and the ability to layer many items to create your avatar make this game very very appealing for anyone who loves cute things.

Music: 5/10 – Music is standard mobile type music. It’s cute and catchy, but ultimately only consists of 3 or 4 different tracks which means the more you play it, the more it starts to annoy the heck out of you lol.

Cuteness – 10/10 – to balance out all the negative things I have to say about this game, added this lil bonus in here –  the main reason to play this game is because it’s so cute.

Replay Value: 8/10 – It gets repetitive, is super time consuming, and annoyingly “expensive” – but in the end, the lure of those time sensitive items keeps you wanting to press on to replay and get new items. It’s a very item-centric game.

Overall: 70 / 100 70% C- Good Game for Girls

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