I think Flipped In Love, Project Star, and Starry Love are all the same game – but different! The gameplay in Flipped In Love (and possibly Project Star, I haven’t gotten far enough to unlock it yet) allows you to breed rare cats that get genetic markings and stats from their parents. Obviously, that’s not the main feature in Flipped In Love. But it’s probably my favorite feature in the game.
Flipped In Love is first and foremost an anime dressup game. You unlock rare outfits and accessories and dressup your avatar to compete in fashion battles. You recruit team members, join guilds, garden, cook, and as mentioned raise cats. But the other big chunk of the game is that it’s also an anime otome dating sim game. There’s 4 guys you can date from the childhood friend to the tsundere to the childlike one to the artistic one. These 4 stereotypes are featured in multiple similar games, Flipped in Love, Project Star, and Starry Love, as well as Wannabe Challenge and Mr Love Queen’s Choice… and probably many more games.
The reason that I’m fairly certain this little trio of games is somehow related is that the story and premise in each of them are almost identical. Flipped In Love and Project Star literally have the exact same story. You fall into the water and die. In Flipped In Love you wake up in someone’s body. In Project Star you wake up in your own body but 5 years in the past. Starry Love has you run into traffic and get hit by a car and wake up in your own body in the past also. In each case it is your boyfriend who betrays you who leads to your death and your goal is to become a top star to get revenge on your ex. All 3 games you’re an idol. In Project Star and Starry Love you’re a live streamer. In Flipped in Love I think you’re an idol singer but still similar concept. The gameplay in Project Star and Starry Love has you performing live streams. All 3 games let you admire other players in the rankings for free diamonds. Flipped in Love and Starry Love have the lifetime membership card to get rid of ads with a one time purchase (and other benefits). Flipped In Love and Project Star have a cat raising feature I think (I have to get to chapter 9 in Project Star to unlock the cats). Gameplay is similar in all 3 games. Dressup, play gacha, date, build a guild, fashion battles, story progression, etc.
I’ve seen this before. Romantic Diary also had another version of the game, with a different name, both available in the US app stores. But Romantic Diary and its clone were exact clones. That’s NOT the case with Flipped In Love and its similar entries. Here’s how they differ from each other. Each of these games has completely different graphics. That’s the most notable difference. Project Star has very cute pastel kinda more anime looking graphics. Completely different character designs in all 3 games. Different character names. Different fashion items. Flipped In Love is still anime, but more modern like real red carpet type looks and less anime or fantasy looking items. I would say the same is true also of Starry Love. Yes it’s anime still but less of the big round cute eyes and more realistic looking hair and eyes and so on. And each game has a different soundtrack and different voice actors too.
Perhaps they were part of a series of games, and each installment in the series got picked up for localization by a different company and hence the different names and different graphics and so on.
Anyways regardless, all 3 games are a lot of fun and highly recommended to all girl gamers who love anime dressup games or otome dating sims. I’ve put the most time into Starry Love since I played it first. I had the other apps on my phone but didn’t get around to checking them out until a few days ago. I think out of the 3, Project Star is my favorite for the graphics, and Flipped In Love is my favorite for the gameplay – but if I get further into Project Star and see the cat feature is the same or better than Flipped in Love, I’d definitely recommend Project Star as the best of the 3. But I won’t stop playing any of them, especially not Starry Love because I’m in the top 20 players in the world in that game.
I do recommend the lifetime pass for both Starry Love and Flipped In Love. It’s so nice to play without ads! And it’s just a one time $9.99 price – worth it! Plus you get free items and diamonds every day. I did not buy the monthly passes – I have enough monthly subscriptions as it is already. LOL. But I’m tempted to buy it in Flipped In Love to get more diamonds so I can unlock more cat feeding slots in cat city.
So let’s dive into looking at Flipped In Love.
Overall:
Geeky: 4/5 – Flipped In Love’s gameplay outshines the other similar games. It offers so many gameplay features that they recently redesigned the interface because it was becoming cluttered with buttons. It’s still a casual mobile game at heart, but for a dressup game there’s a lot of stuff to do. One of the best features is raising and breeding cats. Extremely addictive and unique gameplay. They are working on improving the game all the time. Right now they are offering rewards to help them with typos or Engrish since English is not their first language.
Sweetie: 5/5 – So cute, so many outfits, so many things to do. The cats! The cats! Did I mention you can breed cats? LOL I like that almost more than the main gameplay lol.
Gameplay: 10/10 This game offers so much to do that it can be a little overwhelming. Here are just a few of the things you can experience in Flipped In Love. The most important feature is dressing up your avatar. You can unlock new outfits by completing story or event challenges, as well as through quests and leveling up. But, the most common way to earn new outfits is by playing the Gacha which rewards random items.
The next big aspect of this game is that it is an otome dating sim game for girls. You can date 4 different cute guys to get to learn more about them, unlock event scenes, and level them up to help improve your overall market value.
Market value is used to rank you online with other players. You can increase your market value by unlocking new outfits, dating the guys, completing quests and events, or progressing through the story.
There are also several side characters who will join your team. These, like the guys, can also be leveled up to increase your market value. Side characters can take classes at a university to boost their stats, or you can spend experience points to level them up.
The guys and various side characters have skills that unlock as they level up which boost other party members’ skills and abilities.
Take your team into battle in story mode against NPCs or PK red carpet events against other players. There’s also guild events such as team building and team battles to see whose guild is the best.
There’s a chat system in the game, and unlike the other 2 similar games, you can upload your own photo as your avatar – mine is of my cat right now. You can change chat bubbles and frames just like in Starry Love.
Eventually your characters will need to be promoted to unlock new levels and higher skills. The trophy items can be combined to merge them into higher level items to keep progressing. This is also the same in Starry Love.
Wishing for new outfits in the gacha system is way easier and quicker in Flipped In Love. Starry Love gives you one free gacha draw a day, but Flipped In Love has special wish tickets you can earn fairly easy. I get multiple 10-wish draws (for 4 star items) each day. On top of that, Flipped In Love lets you play two different Gacha for free each day.
Speaking of free – Flipped In Love also lets you play the cat blind box for free about once every 2 days. Right now there’s 3 or 4 different themes going on – I don’t know if they are limited time themes or a constant in the game. Each theme has 10 different cats to collect, including one rare 5 star cat in each blind box.
You can also go on tour, where you will find many nice items, including rare cats, each day for absolutely free. You also find diamonds, coins, stamina, and props for your characters.
But back to the cats. There’s a place in Flipped In Love called Cat City. Here’s where the magic happens. LOL. It’s my favorite! Any unnamed cats you’ve found will be waiting for you in the cat hostel. Give them a name and start feeding them to level them up to maturity. Even if you don’t or can’t feed them, they will eventually mature on their own. But feeding them speeds up the process a great deal. It’s still really slow though. I paid a lot of diamonds to unlock about 10 slots to feed multiple cats – and they’re all full right now and waiting to grow up. I have one unnamed cat waiting for me back in the cat hostel. I think the tutorial said you can have 200 waiting for you. If for some reason you don’t like a cat, you can sell them to the NPC to get cat coins which can be used to purchase fertilizer, seeds, cat food, or cat bells.
The seeds and fertilizer are used in cat city to grow ingredients to make your own cat food. Seeds still grow even without fertilizer, but again, fertilizing the fields speeds up the process. You can then harvest and take your ingredients to the chef who will create cat food.
The bells are used to find a mate for your adult cats. Now here’s the really cool part!! You are breeding them with another real life player who is also breeding their cats. Different levels of cat bells can be used to find more rare cats. Cat bells, and food, and seeds can all be merged to level them up. The higher the better.
After mating, you and the other person both select one of the two offspring to raise. First come first serve, so be fast to get the cat you really want! The cat will automatically go to your hostel where it will wait for you to give it a name and start leveling it up.
The kittens through breeding inherit the parents markings and also statistics.
And the process continues.
After a cat has been mated one time, that is it. It is retired and goes to the cat hostel where you can still view them. Remember your hostel is limited to 200 cats – whether they’re retired adults or unnamed kittens – so eventually you’re sadly going to have to sell some of your cats.
I think it’d be fun and neat if we could adopt other players’ cats but that’s not a feature (yet) in Flipped In Love.
So that’s it for Cat City.
Back to some of the other features of the game. There are parties which help you earn items and increase your market value. Some of the parties are even cross server. Parties are one of the big features of the game. You can even chat with other players during the parties.
There’s also events to praise or gossip about different players or fight for advertising space. It seems also a new feature is coming soon called Group Battle. All of these things help improve your rank, lower opponents ranks, and bring in coins, diamonds, or rare items.
I think that covers the basics of gameplay.
Story: 7/10 – There are some typos and weird little awkward moments in the story due to the translation. But, the creators are aware and working hard to improve these mistakes. They’re actually offering rewards right now for helping to find such mistakes so that they may be fixed. The story is good, but not unique at all. When I played Flipped In Love the next game on my Iphone right next to Flipped In Love was Project Star… I played Flipped In Love for maybe 20 minutes the first time I launched the app. Then I closed it and opened Project Star…. and woahhhhh Deja Vu…….
In both games you drown in the water. In Flipped In Love you wake up in a stranger’s body. In Project Star, you are still you, but you have traveled into the past 5 years ago. Both games you’re an idol. Both games your boyfriend betrayed you ultimately leading to your death. Both games you want to become an idol to get revenge on your boyfriend.
Alright simple enough. There’s a lot of drama and sneaky people who pretend to be your friends but really jealous of your fame, beauty, and success. There’s a whole lot of backstabbing in this game. But it does make for a deliciously devious game of cat and mouse.
Characters: 5/10 – The characters are stereotypical of these types of games and don’t really shine or stand out in any way from other Otome games. There’s also one plus sized NPC who the others treat rudely, which as a plus sized woman myself, that kinda offends me. The artwork is good, but not as good as some other games.
The guys you can date are handsome, but very much cookie cutter. The tsundere that everyone seems to love – which I can’t stand because I’ve been in physically and mentally abusive relationships – this is not cute or romantic. I know Tsundere or TsunTsun is typical in anime and Korean dramas, but I don’t like those characters. Ugh. He is the most popular by far, as evidenced in the “cheer for him” event going on right now.
Then there’s the childhood best friend – he’s actually my favorite – but still so stereotypical. Every Otome game’s got one, and it’s usually the main cannon route. Plus side, he’s a hot doctor too haha. I like him. He’s sweet. Romance should be sweet. Not Tsundere and rude / borderline verbally abusive.
I think so many people are drawn to Tsundere because on occasion they do show a tender soft side. They do love the main character. And they get embarrassed easily and can’t open their hearts easily which makes them act cold. OK I get that there is some fantasy about “the one who got away” or “unrequited love” or something of that nature that girls feel drawn to these “challenging men” not just in this damn game, but in real life.
I’ve dated probably each and everyone one of these stereotypes in real life, from the childlike happy go lucky type to the “dark mysterious brooding” type – and I have seen that dark mysterious brooding – can well, as the description says – be too dark sometimes. But I’ve also dated someone that maybe just wasn’t great at expressing their feelings and emotions (which could fit the Tsundere also) – and as women we want to nurture and create a safe place for our partners. But at that time, I was also closed off and hurting and not the most open person.
The me now, would have been really good for that person back then to get them to feel comfortable and vulnerable, but the me now, is only the me now, because of the different life experiences the me now has, that the me then was lacking. I do think back like if I had done this or done that or said this or that, things maybe would have went differently. But I am completely happy and marrying my “best friend” in 3 short months now. Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to the best friend type of guy in this game. Everyday, smiling and warm, and cute little inside jokes and sayings and things. Every day lots of cute texts and checking in on me. Reaching out to me, expressing their feelings, etc. I need that “reassurance” – but I never have to ask for it – it comes naturally every single day. I’m so thankful for that. It’d been a few years since I’d had that before meeting this person. I like the calm, gentle, constant compassion and love.
I’m done playing guessing games and chasing after people who are hot and cold – maybe that’s why I hate Tsundere and TsunTsun characters so much – hits too close to home maybe.
But to each their own. With 4 guys to choose from in the game, you can find the one you like best!
By the way, I didn’t rate it low because it had a Tsundere. I rated it low because every one of these Otome Games have the same stereotyped characters: Tsundere, childhood friend, sportsy active competitive type, and arrogant artist type. Like literally every Otome has these – including some of my favorites like Tokimeki Memorial Girl’s Side.
The story is mildly interesting, and creates drama and backstory for the characters which does help them to stand out a little bit, but just not enough. In the end, they all feel pretty flat still, especially when compared to other Otome Games. If you’re going to be “basic” you have to be “a better basic bitch” lol. You have to be the best at what you do. And uhm no, sorry. There’s not like award winning writing here for story or character development. That’s a hard fail. If I want to play a game specifically to enjoy these stereotypes for story and character alone, this won’t be top of my play list. But, I think the reason I keep playing is because of gameplay.
The characters are “good enough” but far from great. Especially when there’s legit like 3 games that have the exact same story and characters just different names and different artwork (and thankfully some different gameplay) That’s why it’s a solid 5 here for characters. Just kinda middle of the road.
Graphics: 10/10 – I can’t complain about graphics. Lots of dressup items – more than in Starry Love – and the cats are so cute and plump I want to hug them lol. There are some super cute dressup items too. Panda purses, cat purses, mickey like ears, etc.
Music: 5/10 – It can be repetitive – especially when mating the cats. I feel like its a 5 second “song” on loop, with a very obvious “stop” and then the music resumes after a split second. One and on for several minutes. And it’s a very… odd… song. With cats meowing. It could be cute but ventures into annoying quickly. The main theme when in the city is VERY pretty and relaxing – but also similarly short – but less abrasive. Less obvious when it’s beginning it’s reloop. It’s a soft beautiful piano theme. I really love the main theme. But most other music – I’ll pass on it. It’s all much too short. Anti-Fans theme is another example of a “song” that’s less than 10 seconds long.
Voice Acting: 7/10 – I think it’s good. I’m not used to hearing Chinese as much as I am used to listening to Japanese (anime) or Korean (Kdrama and Kpop), but I think it seems to fit the characters. I just wish there were more lines that were voiced really.
Replay Value: 10/10 – I’ll play with the cats every day – they’re so cute. I like that you can make totally unique random cats by breeding, which opens up way more possibilities than the basic cats or blind box cats themselves. Nice. My first baby was a male who had glasses and brown “bangs” or “fringe” and flowers on his head and like… christmas lights on his tail…. and tiny rainbows on his feet…. I named him Elton after Elton John – it seemed fitting LOL. I had already found one cat on tour who was blonde with cat-eye shaped sunglasses that I’d named Gaga – so they can sing “A Sine” I guess lol. XD.
But cats aside, there’s other great reasons to play this game, constant events, rare gacha for limited items, dressing up, progressing through the story, chatting with and playing with (or against) other players and so on. The gameplay in this dressup game definitely shines. I find myself playing it more than a lot of my other dressup games when I get a chance. Check it out, I think you will like it too. Just search for Flipped In Love in the IOS or Google game stores.