Dress Up Games for Girls

What an outfit game asks of you

Nothing except taste. The character is drawn, the clothes exist, and the only decision is which ones go together. That is why these are the easiest games here to pick up and the hardest to get bored of: there is no wrong move, only a look you like more than the last one.

Most of them hang the styling on a situation. A wedding, a first date, a party, a school day, a flight. The situation is doing real work. It tells you what the outfit has to survive, and it gives the round a point beyond dressing someone.

That is also the fault line running through this whole collection. Some dress up games are a single round: pick, look, leave. Others are closer to a workshop, where the wardrobe is deep enough that you are designing rather than choosing. Both are here, and they suit different moods.

The quick ones

A scenario game gives you a brief and a rail of clothes and expects you to be finished inside a minute. School morning, party invitation, first date, holiday. The clothes are contemporary, the art is bright, and the pleasure is in the speed.

They are also the ones most people find first. If you have played anything called a fashion challenge or a style rivalry, this is the family.

Play them when you want the feeling of getting dressed without the consequences. They will not hold you for long and they are not trying to.

The slow ones

Then there is the other half of the shelf, and it is where the good stuff hides.

Medieval Doll layers a chemise, a kirtle and an outer gown the way medieval dress was actually built, and getting the layers right takes real attention. Wedding Dress Design 2 hands you the parts of a gown rather than finished dresses, so bodice, sleeves, skirt and train are separate decisions that have to agree with each other. Folklore Fashion runs on the colour and embroidery rules of European folk dress, where a headscarf changes what everything under it means.

These are the games people stay in. They average well over a minute a visit against about twenty seconds for the quick ones, and the difference is entirely down to how much the wardrobe lets you decide.

Weddings, dates, parties, school

Weddings are the largest single group on the shelf, and the reason is simple: a wedding is the only occasion where the outfit is the event. Bridal games give you more fabric, more accessories and more room to overdo it than anything else here, and the good ones let you build the gown instead of picking it.

Dates and parties are the opposite problem. The constraint is that the look has to read as effortless, which is a harder brief and a better game.

School looks sit between the two and are the closest to something you would actually wear. They are also where the current internet fashion shows up first, because school is where teenagers dress for each other.

Where to go instead

If you want to build the character rather than dress her, this is the wrong shelf. Doll creator is where the faces are, and once you have made a face you can bring it back here for the clothes.

If you want a specific aesthetic rather than a specific occasion, fashion is organised that way, by mood instead of by event. If you want gowns with a story attached, that is princess. And if the character should have wings, a tail or antlers, fantasy.