Shopping Mall Girl

Genre: Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

Shopping Mall Girl, elsewhere released under the title Shopping Mall Girl: Chic Game, is a Simulation-style game released on mobile devices in 2016 and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2024. In this game, players select different stores to outfit a girl with the various clothes found within, then try to make back the money they spent by entering into beauty contests.

The presentation here is decent, but not great. To the game’s credit, there are plenty of interesting and well-designed outfits for your character to wear, and her 3D character model and animation is decent enough. However, the game’s environments aren’t anything special, and many of the outfits clip through the character in ugly ways. Plus, these visuals are backed by extremely repetitive music, and joined by your character’s constant verbalizations (“Ahh!” “mm-hmm!” “Ohh!”), which gets annoying really fast.

The game provides players with a lot of outfit options to choose from, spread across a half-dozen or so shops. There are fewer shops than it seems though, as stuff like a hair stylist just seems to be a “what if” sorta’ exercise, not making any actual change to your character’s appearance.

The game does seem to have some sort of criteria for determining what outfits are good and what aren’t, but it doesn’t really share this with the player. You’ll just have to guess at what will win the contest in question, though some contests (like a sports-themed one) at least give you a theme to work with.

Entering the contest, you’ll play what is more or less a Music-Rhythm game as your character walks down the runway. However, it’s not really in time with any music, so it’s far from satisfying. Plus, you can just press all four face buttons when prompts come up and won’t be penalized for buttons it didn’t prompt you to use, removing much of the challenge here. There’s a similar sort of Music-Rhythm game in “Black Friday” events, to determine the winner of a tug-of-war with another shopper trying to get the discount outfit you want.

While the idea of accruing outfits and winning beauty contests may interest some players, there is just not enough direction or structure here to keep players interested. You’re just buying, entering contests, buying, entering contests, and so on, over and over again, with little to differentiate one contest from the next other than which of the small handful you decide to enter. Plus, the game doesn’t give you access to your full purchased in-game wardrobe – you have to go back to each individual store to select outfit parts bought at that store to re-use, which is extremely inconvenient.

Overall, I do think there was some potential to make Shopping Mall Girl a decent fashion-driven game like the Style Savvy series, but there’s just too little thought and structure here. If you’re a fashion enthusiast, you may still find something to like here, but I suspect you’ll be far more frustrated and disappointed than delighted with this game.

tl;dr – Shopping Mall Girl is a Simulation-style game where players buy outfits at different stores and then enter contests to win more money. Fashion enthusiasts may find something to enjoy here, but most players will find the lack of a decent structure to make the game feel repetitive and pointless. Unless you’re absolutely desperate for fashion-themed games on Nintendo Switch, skip this.

Grade: D+

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