Fashion Dreamer has more in common with Death Stranding than Animal Crossing

10 September 2023 , 16:00

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Fashion Dreamer is an asymmetrical multiplayer title from the minds behind WCW vs NWO Revenge (Image: Syn Sophia)

I wasn't sure what to expect going into my appointment to see Fashion Dreamer from Style Savvy and Def Jam Fight For NY developer Syn Sophia, but I certainly wasn't expecting to be comparing it to Death Stranding by the end of my demo.

To get it out the way, I am perhaps the furthest thing away from Fashion Dreamer's target audience. I'm a fan of hardcore, fast-paced action games – I'm also approaching 30 and have zero drip or concept of what makes good fashion. So I really wasn't sure what to expect when I went into the demo room at Gamescom.

Fashion Dreamer places you in the shoes of your own created character as you try to become a famous fashion influencer. Rather than trying to build a fashion empire, you're seeking to accrue the most likes by showing your fashion to the world. At its core Fashion Dreamer is an asymmetrical multiplayer title in which your actions in single-player will be thrown out to the wider fashion community.

Designs you create for the NPC characters will be thrown into the online realm for other players to look at. If you head up to an NPC you can give their outfit a 'like' which will in turn give you the outfit, and whenever anyone uses your design on an NPC, likes they accrue will also be sent to you, so the numbers are always going up.

Strand of clothing

As I alluded to above, the closest approximation I can give Fashion Dreamer to any other game is Hideo Kojima's Death Stranding – a game where other players' actions will make an impact on your own game world without ever having a proper interaction with another player. There's no way to communicate directly in Fashion Dreamer; instead you'll communicate through the power of Fashion.

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So yeah, Fashion Dreamer – a game aimed at a younger, style-savvy audience – certainly isn't for me. But despite that, it seems like a such a cool take on a genre I've never had an interest in. An asymmetrical multiplayer-focused influencer sim certainly isn't something I'm going to be rushing out to grab in this packed winter, but it seems like a cool take on the studios previous works.

Scott McCrae