DIY Makeup

Genre: Simulation / Misc.

Players: 1

.

Review:

DIY Makeup, released on mobile devices in 2021 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024, is an odd game that’s sorta’ a Simulation but mostly just a play space for players to create their own makeup for an unending line of customers.

The customers are represented by some nice-looking cartoony character models, and the makeup looks okay as well, responding to the color and decoration choices you make. This is all backed by a relaxed and somewhat repetitive synthesized soundtrack that works well enough for the game, but isn’t especially memorable.

When it comes to the gameplay, you’re really just following instructions, mimicking gestures on-screen using either the traditional gamepad controls or the touchscreen, perhaps making an artistic choice, and then moving on to the next one. You will progressively unlock new artistic options, but it never really feels like you’re doing anything that impacts the gameplay – no matter how much of a lazy hack-job you do, your efforts will still be considered a success, and you’ll move on to the next customer and do it all over again.

I suppose you could look at this as a more relaxed and artistically-focused game, except you’re never given free reign to make all of the artistic choices for yourself. You’re always at the whims of what the customer wants, which means that if you really want to focus on one particular type of makeup, you may find yourself frustrated.

In the end, DIY Makeup isn’t likely to make anyone happy, aside from perhaps young kids. The gameplay is pointless, and the artistic elements are too limited. Unless your kid is a huge enthusiast for this sort of thing, skip this game.

tl;dr – DIY Makeup is an odd game that’s sorta’ a Simulation but mostly just a play space for players to create their own makeup for customers. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like anything you do matters, and customers’ demands mean that you can’t just treat this as a pure creative space either, meaning it fails both as a game and as an art application. Unless you have a young kid who’s super-enthusiastic about creating makeup from scratch, skip this one.

Grade: D

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}