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Title: Pokemini Dressup & Decorate
Genre: Dressup Game
Publisher: Cocone
Get it on IOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pokemini-dress-decorate!/id704331940?mt=8
Get it on Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.cocone.minime&hl=en
Geeky Factor:
Sweetie Factor:
Overall: 76/110 69% D+ “Average Game For Girls”
Concept: 10/10 The concept in Pokemini is to collect limited edition items to decorate, not only your avatar, but also your room, and your planet. The highlight of the game is the new “Fashion Fever” events which allow you to earn free items or donuts (the in-game currency) by designing different looks based on a given theme which are then voted on and scored by the community. There’s also a brand new flea market to trade/sell items with other players, and a cooking element as well as quests to further engage the user.
Gameplay: 8/10 You can earn donuts (the in-game currency) by participating in in-game events, visiting your friends’ planets, completing quests from npcs, and leveling up your character. As you level up, your stamina is also increased allowing you to accomplish more before needing to rest. You can also increase your stamina by cooking different recipes. You then spend donuts on new items for your avatar, room, or planet. There’s a ton of in-game events, and new items released almost daily for you to collect. Because the items only stay a short while, it encourages you to log in and play more frequently. Gameplay itself is fairly basic, and it can get very repetitive. The only thing that keeps it fresh is the Fashion fever events and desire to collect new cute items in the limited edition “gumball shop”.
Graphics: 10/10 There are a ton of super cute “anime styled” items to collect and the customization features allow you to have complete control by layering the different looks or arranging items as you please.
Music: 2/10 There are only 3 or 4 different music tracks and they are short, and sometimes grating on the nerves.
Story: 1/10 There’s a story, but it’s very immature and not at all detailed or deep. It’s also only presented as a prologue and not really used throughout the game. The story says that the Minis (which is what your avatar is) came from outer space to earth because they heard of the delicious donuts available here. They now live inside human pockets, feasting on donut crumbs and wanting to be friends with humans. (why are there crumbs in my pocket? Do I carry donuts in my pocket? lol) For awhile, everytime I logged in, or started the app, I had to watch the somewhat long, and rather boring, introduction over and over. I think they may have fixed that, as I haven’t noticed it recently, but there was no way to skip it, and I was getting sick of seeing that opening animation (which unlike the actual game graphics, was pretty ugly).
Characters: 5/10 Well there’s not any “story based” characters, but the community is full of other players who have their own unique avatars and there is a roleplaying community that’s very strong in the game too; so you can use your imagination to create any kinds of characters you’d like.
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Customization: 10/10 You can dress your avatar in up to 6 accessories at once, and shoes, a dress, suit, or top and bottoms don’t count against that total so you’re looking at about 10 choices to layer your outfits. You also control your skin color, eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows, and makeup. The most interesting feature is the ability to combine front and back hair styles to create your own custom hairstyle/color. In addition to customizing your avatar, you can also customize your planet, and your room, with dozens of decorations.
Community: 10/10 There are a lot of great community features in Pokemini. There’s a forum that all users can browse or post in and it’s fairly active. People start their own roleplay groups as mentioned above; or just chat about daily life. You also have your own private forum back in your room that users can chat with you one on one on. There’s also private messaging and chat room functionality. In addition to that, there’s a ranking system where it shows who your top or recent visitors were and who’s helped you the most the previous week, and you have 20 “free” donuts to give to your helpers, and they may give you a donut too which sort of encourages you to visit all of your friends’ planets (I’m usually too lazy for that though, I mean even if 20 friends give me a donut that week, that’s not much incentive, when the gumball costs 200 per play). Sometimes I feel “guilty” and try to go visit all my friends and keep it up for a week or two, but then I slip back into not caring and not feeling motivated. You can harvest your friends’ trees, and help them grow faster (so you can harvest them faster); the fruit harvested here can be used in recipes to increase your stamina. And as mentioned a few times above, there’s a ton of community events from fashion shows to flea markets. Most of the community is nice, but they’re mostly young “highschool” aged kids. I feel kind of out of place as a 30 something year old playing this game at times. Because of the “anime art style” I find a lot of users with similar interests to me, including Asian Balljointed Dolls, anime, or Kdrama enthusiasts.
Performance: 4/10 It’s not impossible to play this game; and it doesn’t crash every time, but there’s some connectivity issues that really need addressed. Most notably, it crashes sometimes while “voting” in Fashion Fever events which causes you to not get credit for the time you spent voting since you have to complete a “round” of voting to receive the donuts. It does this at least once every other day for me, while playing on an older generation Ipad 2.
Replay Value: 10/10 The replay value is high here due to the numerous in-game events, limited edition items, and community aspects within the game.
Overall: 76/110 69% D+ “Average Game For Girls”
I like this game more than my score reflects, as you can see, in some areas it scores quite highly, but there are just a few things that hold it back from “greatness” I’d still recommend it to anyone who enjoys these types of dressup games 🙂
