Good grief, these things actually exist. What can’t you find on the internet?
While the rest of you are playing with your little Pokey Mans, or whatever they’re called, I’m over here designing magical girl outfits like a boss. Yes, this is what I call a truly immersive video game experience.
Okay, not really, but at least these games aren’t encouraging me to trespass, walk into traffic, get mugged in back alleys, or give away all my Google account information.
So, in honor of dumb but addictive video games, I here present all the free online magical girl dress-up games that I was able to find just now. These games are pretty much like those old paper dolls your grandma used to play with, except now on the computer, and with magical girls. Such games prove, among other things, that I have no fashion sense. And also that I have too much time on my hands.
To test these games’ versatility, I decided my goal with each would be to get the character to look as much as possible like Pretty Dynamo. Let’s see how close I can get.
Number 1. Anime Magical Girl Dress-Up Game by Rinmaru. The title isn’t the only part of this game that’s creative. It has some sort of dubstep or something going while you play. I find it distracting, and I can’t find a mute button. The game is relatively simple, as you can mix and match elements using a menu on the right, on which all options are displayed. You can pick some animal-hybrid characters and change up skin tones and so forth.
You can also change the background colors, though that option is for some reason in a tiny, hidden corner that I discovered by accident.
It lets you take a screencap when you’re done. Behold:
I couldn’t really make Dynamo’s armor here, not because the clothing designs are completely wrong, but because my only color options come down to white and a really ugly dark gray. Not a lot of options on the outfit designs, either, but there is a cool selection of wands, and a few nice background effects. Here, you can see that I’ve made Dynamo sparkle.
Hm … she looks more like a snow princess than an electricity-user.
Number 2. Magical Girl Creator by Romanim. This one has a learning curve. It also looks kind of … not good.
Basically, you use buttons on the keyboard to change the colors of the various parts of her outfit, and then you drag items on top of her, much as if she really were a paper doll.
This is the best I could do:
Number 3. Magical Girl Bonnie from Doll Divine. If you, like me, find yourself often looking up magical girl artwork only to be scandalized by pictures of body pillows because you forgot to turn on the content filter, you’ve probably run into screenshots of this game from time to time.
The point of the game is simple: dress Bonnie in her magical girl outfit. You can mix and match as you please. Irritating music plays throughout, but that, fortunately, you can mute. This is probably the best such game I’ve found, as it is the most thorough in what it allows you to adjust and has the most elaborate outfits you can make: hair color, eye color, eye shape, mouth shape, skin tone, eyebrow shape, and various accessories are up for grabs. You can add wings, change the background, the works. You could spend hours at this. Or at least I could.
Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair:
The game gives you a score at the end. I’m not sure how the score is figured, but Pretty Dynamo only gets a 60. She doesn’t look much like Dynamo, though the hair and eyes are right, because Bonnie’s accessories don’t include armor plate. More oddly, there are no wands.
Number 4. Madoka Magica Dress Up Game from Dress Up Who. This one is much more limited in options than the others above, since it is for a specific franchise. It is exactly what it says it is: you can dress up a Madoka-esque character in Madoka-esque gear.
This is as close as I can get with this one:
Number 5. And finally, Anime Halloween Magical Girl Creator from Missangest Games, which lets you create any magical girl you want as long as she’s Halloween-themed. The art on this one looks nice. It actually lets you drag the girl back and forth to see what you’re changing. You have no control over her footwear, as she has no lower body for whatever reason.
Only too late I realized I should have been trying to create Card Collector Kasumi with this one. That would have worked out well. Dynamo, not so much.
Although thematically limited, this might be the most versatile of them all, offering an overwhelming range of color schemes and accessory items that you can pile on the girl until she’s cluttered. But for some reason, I could not find an option to change eye color, so we’re stuck with gray. Weird.
