It’s almost against my will that I write a review of this game. But it has provoked a fair amount of emotion in me, good and bad, so I think it should be a fruitful exercise in the end.
Games that are so singularly female-oriented usually make me cringe away, so when I first heard of It Girl, I didn’t pay much attention. But it kept coming up and “as a designer”, it became too hard to avoid if only for the sake of understanding why it’s been getting so much press. So I started playing it and… well, I was almost immediately hooked.
Let’s step back a bit: this game is about shopping. Clothes shopping, specifically, which is an activity that I really cannot stand in real life to any degree. So I was really taken aback by how entertaining it was, even for me. How is this possible?
Because the game gives you all the perks of intense clothes shopping without any of the downsides.
I mean, really, why do people enjoy shopping in general? The acquisition of new material goods is a base instinct that humans have never been able to fully escape and women tend to be even worse if the items will help satisfy their vanity. But the act of shopping requires getting out of the house, treasure hunting through multiple stores and clothing racks, to only find a couple items that really appeal. Then you have to wait in some kind of obnoxious line to check out. Even going through the ritual of hauling pieces to the fitting rooms grows tiresome after a while.
It Girl takes out all the physical travel and time and lets people build up their clothing collections without wearing their shoe soles out. Searching, trying, and buying are all just clicks away, and somehow the satisfaction that you’re getting-cool-clothes is not diminished. There is still an energy component, but it’s obviously no comparison to really trudging out and getting things done.
I don’t tend to care about what clothes I wear, as long as they’re clean, relatively neat, and comfortable. In my opinion, looking good is usually too much labor to be worth the effort, so if my clothes end up doing that for me, it’s just a nice bonus. But It Girl lets me (well, my avatar) look cute and fashionable without any exceptional effort.
In summary, the game naturally taps into these particular base instincts (materialism, vanity) without aggravating a person’s inertia (too lazy, don’t care). It’s kind of amazing that way. :x
The game also sports a sleek design, very modern and chic. Great art, from avatar customization to a ton of carefully crafting clothing and accessories. Everything’s just visually attractive and appealing to look at.
And I appreciate the splashes of humor that I see. There are male NPC avatars that walk around and can be picked up as boyfriends, but all of them state their employment… I saw a “Social Gaming Engineer” at one point, which made me laugh, and other amusing titles. Once I was shopping and found a green and white striped scarf that was named “Evil Wizard Scarf” … later I found a “Good Wizard Scarf”, which was red and gold. ;x
It’s not all peaches and cream, of course. The Flash generally works fine, but I think there must be some sort of memory leaking problem, since the game noticeably slows to a crawl over time… and not even a very long one.
I also think its too reliant on players recruiting their friends. This is a practice that I generally refuse to get involved in and it’s resulted in me being basically stuck since certain missions or unlock-ables require you to have larger “cliques” to participate. Boyfriends also have a happiness meter that decrements faster than you can increment for free, so you have to recruit friends or pay real money in order to keep them.
Generally I’m quite impressed by this game which feels like an evolution of the basic Mafia Wars game play. Like MW, you have separate energy and confidence meters, one for PvE and the other for PvP. But unlike Mafia Wars, the dueling/PvP aspect is much better integrated into the game, making it a necessary component rather than the ignorable extra that it is in MW. But in the end, the overarching goal is still to get to a high enough level to progress into the next “district” of hot shopping opportunities.
I should note that the exact breakdown of PvP duels doesn’t totally make sense to me… again, it seems to be overwhelmingly dependent on how many friends you have, rather than anything you do in game. But you’re allowed to “inspect” potential opponents and infer from their win/loss ratio if you might stand a chance, so that’s kind of neat.
Anyway. Very solid title overall, but I’ll probably stop playing soon, due to the over-reliance on friend recruitment.
