Based on the tween lifestyle brand, this action / adventure game contains loads of adventures tailored specifically to the player's personality type. The game allows girls to customize their characters so they can play sports, design fashions, produce music or become an entrepreneur.
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Hey, I'm the first person to review and rate this game! This is an interesting licensed game in that it isn't based on a movie or a TV Show or whatever, it's based on a short-lived brand created by Viacom and Nickelodeon, aimed at tween girls and it included dolls and a virtual community. A TV series was planned, but never materialized, and there's little information on the brand, but it did leave a legacy in form of video games for PC and GBA. In this review I'm talking about the GBA version.
Would it surprise you when I say that the game is... just kinda whatever? Probably not, but it's also not the worst thing ever. The game starts with "It's time to find who you really are!!!" and I thought there was going to be like a tutorial where you make choices to shape your character, like a profession or moral choices or whatever, but it turns out this is the message for the whole game. Maybe I was expecting too much. That's not to say there aren't choices, there are some optional side quests that usually involve a mini-game, and that can affect your stats, which I'll talk about later, but doing them doesn't lead to a better ending or anything. Anyway, the game is sort of a platformer in that you can jump, but it's only really useful for grabbing some stuff in air, and those things also don't affect much aside from score. The platforming really only comes in an autoscrolling Race mini-game. You can also run, which you'll be doing a lot as there's quite a bit of going back and forth.
The main appeal of this game is customization. You can customize your character's appearence by selecting different color palettes for clothing and hair, but you can also customize certain buildings like changing color of furniture, but most importantly, you have an abandoned Theatre soon-to-be Cafe that you'll be remodeling throughout the game, you'll receive more furniture options and place said furniture in the Cafe, which is neat, though limited, but I can definitely see the appeal of it from target audience's perspective, if I were a little girl I'd enjoy that quite a bit.
As I said, renovating the old theatre is the main goal of this game, and the entire story revolves around that, like getting a some banging tunes from a DJ or giving out flyers or putting up posters, or saving Cafe from being sold by Aunt Angie, who is completely worthless in this game. It's mostly just going back and forth and occasionally doing a mini-game. The game has a constant reminder of your objective on-screen, which is nice, because I'm a little girl with a short attention span, though sometimes they can be vague. But there's not much to say about the campaign. There are four different mini-games: Race, which is an autoscroller where you can jump and perform a single sick trick with an R button and collect things that again only contribute to score. A photo mini-game where you shoot (photos of) birds and butterflies and maybe a dog with your camera to make perfect or at least good photos, it's a decent mini-game. Memory which is just repeat a button combo a few times. And Rhythm, which is what it sounds like - press an upcoming button at an appropriate time a bunch of times. The game is not very difficult, though I can see the last dance mini-game to impress Aunt Angie being difficult for young kids because the button prompts move pretty fast.
I mentioned before that there are stats that change through the game, and you can check them by pressing Select, with "Everscope". Those are "Hope", "Skye", "Starr" and "Joy" all they really are for is to tell what kinda person you are at the end of the game, which probably doesn't reflect you in real life. Again, kiddie stuff. Aside from that, there are a few more extras, like throughout the game you'll receive extras in form of cases, wallpapers and Ring Tones for your in-game phone, which is what shows when you pause the game. The selection is pretty limited though. You'll be using the phone to call other characters when the need arises or check messages, which are thankfully hotkeyed onto shoulder buttons, much faster than pausing and scrolling through the options. But that's about it.
The graphics are pretty decent, and the music is pretty good, especially for how obscure the game is. Shin'en's composer rules yet again.
Overall, this game is just eh, not bad but not great either. It has some neat ideas, and I can see it being decently enjoyable for it's target demographic, but I'm not the target demographic. With that said there are still games far worse than this. This game is more interesting as a curiocity in video game history, it's one of the most obscure games I've seen being based on an equally obscure brand.
Would it surprise you when I say that the game is... just kinda whatever? Probably not, but it's also not the worst thing ever. The game starts with "It's time to find who you really are!!!" and I thought there was going to be like a tutorial where you make choices to shape your character, like a profession or moral choices or whatever, but it turns out this is the message for the whole game. Maybe I was expecting too much. That's not to say there aren't choices, there are some optional side quests that usually involve a mini-game, and that can affect your stats, which I'll talk about later, but doing them doesn't lead to a better ending or anything. Anyway, the game is sort of a platformer in that you can jump, but it's only really useful for grabbing some stuff in air, and those things also don't affect much aside from score. The platforming really only comes in an autoscrolling Race mini-game. You can also run, which you'll be doing a lot as there's quite a bit of going back and forth.
The main appeal of this game is customization. You can customize your character's appearence by selecting different color palettes for clothing and hair, but you can also customize certain buildings like changing color of furniture, but most importantly, you have an abandoned Theatre soon-to-be Cafe that you'll be remodeling throughout the game, you'll receive more furniture options and place said furniture in the Cafe, which is neat, though limited, but I can definitely see the appeal of it from target audience's perspective, if I were a little girl I'd enjoy that quite a bit.
As I said, renovating the old theatre is the main goal of this game, and the entire story revolves around that, like getting a some banging tunes from a DJ or giving out flyers or putting up posters, or saving Cafe from being sold by Aunt Angie, who is completely worthless in this game. It's mostly just going back and forth and occasionally doing a mini-game. The game has a constant reminder of your objective on-screen, which is nice, because I'm a little girl with a short attention span, though sometimes they can be vague. But there's not much to say about the campaign. There are four different mini-games: Race, which is an autoscroller where you can jump and perform a single sick trick with an R button and collect things that again only contribute to score. A photo mini-game where you shoot (photos of) birds and butterflies and maybe a dog with your camera to make perfect or at least good photos, it's a decent mini-game. Memory which is just repeat a button combo a few times. And Rhythm, which is what it sounds like - press an upcoming button at an appropriate time a bunch of times. The game is not very difficult, though I can see the last dance mini-game to impress Aunt Angie being difficult for young kids because the button prompts move pretty fast.
I mentioned before that there are stats that change through the game, and you can check them by pressing Select, with "Everscope". Those are "Hope", "Skye", "Starr" and "Joy" all they really are for is to tell what kinda person you are at the end of the game, which probably doesn't reflect you in real life. Again, kiddie stuff. Aside from that, there are a few more extras, like throughout the game you'll receive extras in form of cases, wallpapers and Ring Tones for your in-game phone, which is what shows when you pause the game. The selection is pretty limited though. You'll be using the phone to call other characters when the need arises or check messages, which are thankfully hotkeyed onto shoulder buttons, much faster than pausing and scrolling through the options. But that's about it.
The graphics are pretty decent, and the music is pretty good, especially for how obscure the game is. Shin'en's composer rules yet again.
Overall, this game is just eh, not bad but not great either. It has some neat ideas, and I can see it being decently enjoyable for it's target demographic, but I'm not the target demographic. With that said there are still games far worse than this. This game is more interesting as a curiocity in video game history, it's one of the most obscure games I've seen being based on an equally obscure brand.