Dress Up! Time Princess: A Video Game Book Report
Sometimes, I play role playing video games for teens on my phone. I’ve played enough now that I can tell the exact moment when my brain begins to respond to them in an addictive way. When I open my phone, I feel that mental tug that says, Open the game. Use your lives to get coins. Get serotonin. Yessssss. It makes me feel like a self-aware lab rat.
It took a few days for my serotonin response to kick in for Dress Up! Time Princess. But oh, it’s there now. Even now, I feel a tug to see if I’ve amassed enough materials to create the Forest Path high-heeled buckled shoes I need to access the next level of the game. But if I’m going to give my book report on Dress Up! Time Princess, I’m going to need to channel my inner taskmaster to stay focused.
As advertised, Dress Up! Time Princess requires a fair amount of dressing up. The conceit of the game is that a magical fairy has trapped you in your dead mother’s closet where your only escape is through a book that lets you access immersive stories. But you know, in a fun way. Early in the game, my character tries to escape. Unfortunately, there’s no cell service and the door to the closet has sealed itself. This is the beginning of a series of things which are, if you think about it, pretty messed up.
And the story I escape into? Is the story of Marie Antoinette. When I tap and open the book, I am transported into a world where I have both the modern knowledge of myself and the feelings and memories of Marie Antoinette. Which means I’m acutely aware that my head is on the chopping block if this whole revolution thing goes ahead. I set off to do something about that, and also find myself a boyfriend.
Despite Marie Antoinette having a husband, the game seems fine with me also deciding between two boyfriends. (My husband is in the story, and I cannot choose him as my boyfriend.) One is Fersen, a made-up Swedish guy. The other is the Marquis de Lafayette, who you may remember from the Hamilton musical or from, you know, overthrowing the French aristocracy. In the game, he loves a pair of thigh high boots and has the personality of Luke Danes. I have a weakness for a lovable grump, so Lafayette is the obvious pick, especially considering Fersen’s only personality traits are Being From Sweden and Having Brown Hair.
The stories are frankly boring. As Marie Antoinette, I spend most of the time discussing whether we should tax the rich, then trying to convince the rich to pay those taxes, then being disappointed when my friend’s husband doesn’t pay his taxes. I occasionally attend a ball, where I briefly flirt with a man before… talking with him about how I think we should proceed with the whole tax thing. Honestly, makes me appreciate how boring the minutiae of AOC’s daily life must be.
Something weird about the game is that it seems equally interested in teaching me history and ignoring it altogether. I join Lafayette and King Louis at the Assembly of Notables, which the game provides me a whole explanation about. On the other hand, after I go to Notre Dame and give bread to orphaned children, the public starts calling me the “Angel of Austria” in a way that implies that the revolution could have been preempted if Marie Antoinette just did a few more public appearances.
I read Antonia Fraser’s Marie Antoinette biography about a decade ago, which leaves me with the unsettling knowledge of how many of the historical figures I meet actually end up. Marie’s best friend in the game is Gabrielle, who in real life ends up exiled after Revolution. I fortunately don’t meet my friend whose head ends up paraded around the Bastille on a pike. Marie Antoinette was a very strange choice for this light-hearted children’s game.
The dressing up part of Dress Up! Time Princess is admittedly pretty satisfying. The clothing is beautifully detailed and designed, and tracking down all the pieces I need to complete clothing sets is the most fun I had while playing the game.
The downside to Dress Up! Time Princess is it that it has way too many things. The home screen was so cluttered that it took me a week of playing to access a basic knowledge of how to navigate it. Every day, I have a strange series of tasks which include:
- Creating and giving presents to other characters in the story
- Playing a Candyland-type board game
- Popping a squirrel that’s been blown up like a balloon
- Collecting cats and breeding them to create new cats
- Sending my cats to run around the globe and bring me back presents
- Trying to match my outfits to a doll’s outfits
- Trading clothes to a strange creature which is a combination of a bat and a pair of scissors
It’s also not the most sophisticated game in terms of inclusivity. On the upside, there’s a good variety of skin tones and hair textures for your avatar. However, most modern games I’ve played let you pick your pronouns, or at least romance both men and women. Dress Up! Time Princess has no interest in this, though it does feature a side character who cross dresses, and though his motivations are never explained, he does use he/him pronouns and never takes off the dress.
If I keep playing — and I still haven’t decided whether I will — eventually I will leave the world of Marie Antoinette, in favor of other stories. Apparently, I have the option to play as Helen of Sparta, a swan in Swan Lake, Romeo in a gender-bent Romeo and Juliet, an intrepid reporter in New York City in the 1900s, and “a fierce girl in a world of Arabic folktales.”
So should you play Dress Up! Time Princess? I have trouble imagining any of my adult friends would enjoy it. THAT’S RIGHT, I HAVE ADULT FRIENDS. And they find my hobbies charming but troubling.
If you like pressing buttons and accumulating items, Dress Up! Time Princess might be fun for you. Ditto if you like pretty dresses. But I’ll admit, the odds are low you’re gonna like it. Like 13% chance if you make me put a number on it. But will I personally keep playing? Sadly, odds around 76%. Keep me in your prayers, because I have to go see who I have to kill to get those Forest Path heels.
