Welcome to Indie Gaming Theater, where I buy a discounted, barely-reviewed indie game from Steam's stacks and take a close, honest look at it. For more details on what this feature aims to do, go here to check out my lengthy preamble. Otherwise, enjoy!

Cosplay Maker

You're never going to find me in a costume outside of Halloween or Christmas. You're just not. Don't try to convince me otherwise. I'm a wallflower who likes regular clothes and occasionally a Macho Man Christmas shirt in June because that shit's funny. The thought of spiking my hair up like Cloud and running around in latex makes my testicles want to abandon ship - through my throat.

I like Hawaiian shirts. I like slacks. I don't like shorts except when I'm swimming. I like leather loafers or sandals without straps - and definitely not flip-flops. I like my button-ups to look blandly professional, not cowboyish, not yuppyish, just... professional. I like a clean, short haircut and a trimmed beard, though I'm terrible at maintaining both of those things because it's usually the last thing on my mind. I don't mind referential t-shirts, but I generally tend to gravitate towards simple colored shirts without any particular flair. I have a selection of goofy hats and I particularly like my Admiral Nelson fishing cap, but I do not regularly wear them unless it's necessary to keep the sweat out of my eyes.

I am, in short, the most boring dresser in the entire world.

I went to one science fiction/fantasy convention - Miscon, up in Missoula, Montana. It was a fascinating fish-out-of-water experience that left me realizing I like low-key enthusiasm for things, not the big, grandiose hand-waving excited jabbering about the right way to hold a Klandaku Annihilator 2000. I liked the more thought-provoking bits of the convention, like a serious discussion about what kinds of space drives could actually theoretically work and how slow they would actually be, and I loved the author readings (which is kind of a "no shit?" if you know me). But the actual fandom part of things kind of made me feel like I was one step away from watching a Roman-esque orgiastic mass of flesh just rip each other's clothes off and do it right there in Conference Hall C. That's great for those people, but I'll take my loving one-on-one in a bedroom away from prying eyes, fandom-wise.

It's not that I want to make fun of cosplayers. By all means, the enthusiasm was genuinely harmless, apart from a few socially awkward individuals who thought it was okay to continue hitting on women who were clearly uncomfortable in that situation (and the reverse, too, as I saw on at least one occasion). I love that you cosplayers love something so much that you want to get dressed up as a show of support and love, or that you enjoy creating costumes and want to show off your skills. To that latter, I wish we lived in a world that loved stage theater more so you could all find work doing what you love, because even the simplest costume there was impressive. At least to me, anyways.

Then again, I am blind, so maybe take that compliment with a grain of salt.

I came into Locked Door Puzzle's Cosplay Maker expecting to come out of my experience with a sneer and a trigger-finger, ready to tear it apart and laugh at the joke that I'd play such a game. Funny thing is, though, I didn't. I don't want to. It's not that Cosplay Maker is a good or a bad game - it falls somewhere definitely in between - but it's an earnest one, and in its loving attitude towards not just cosplay in general but those who like to do it, I lost the attitude.

The game lays on the charm immediately, with a terrifically charming, aesthetically astounding opening cinematic with cheerful, peppy music by Cissie Redgwick and Little Violet (apparently - I'm referring to a Steam discussion thread for that information, so please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong on that account). Using bright, colorful silhouettes and zippy bits of moving imagery, it creates a perfect little setup for the game to come, and I was already impressed.

The game itself is a mix of a friendship/dating sim and a time management sim. in an overly wordy introduction, the player is introduced to a professional cosplayer and a photographer, both of whom encourage the player to create their own costume. From there, the player is tasked with divvying up their weeks into three blocks of activity. For example, you can spend your days working a job, nights resting, and weekends working on your costume. There are a variety of ways to flesh this out - blocks of time can be filled with research, social media, or talking with friends. There's no real penalty to doing any of these things save for an energy meter that drains fairly rapidly, leaving you unable to work or work on your costume if you're too exhausted.

For the first hour or so, I played the game expecting to have to pay bills at some point or another, and was pleasantly surprised to learn it's not that kind of time-management game. You don't need to worry about any costs except for your costuming and the small entrance fees to the conventions. In that regard, Cosplay Maker always made me feel like I was moving towards a goal rather than wasting my time trying to stave off a boring penalty mechanic that would have dragged the whole experience down.

The shopping aspect is the only real bummer of the game so far, simply because there are a fair number of color options for articles that you need to be precisely right or you've wasted your money. While the game shows you the specific article you need along with the color on one half of the screen, the other half doesn't have any identifying text under the colors to help those of us who are color-blind. You might think that's a small issue, but for a game so centered around the idea of costuming, it's a pretty big blunder.

I also grew really tired of the peppy songs repeating endlessly, but this was fairly easily solved by just turning down the game volume and putting on a book on tape. Not an ideal solution, but honestly, repeating music in this day and age is so easily solved with DIY solutions that I can't ding the game too badly. The feel-good pop music is also largely enjoyable, though aimed at a different, more feminine audience than me.

I played enough of the game to make two costumes, one inspired by Sailor Moon, the other a Final Fantasy VII Soldier-looking thing. I don't believe you can create your own, but in the short two hours I spent with the game, at least a dozen costume ideas were unlocked through natural progression. Still, some degree of customization with this stuff would have gone a ways towards giving the game longer legs.

As it stands, I think it's a fine game. Not terribly great by any means, but if you like the social aspects of Persona or want a visual novel styled thing with more to do than text conversations, give it a go. It's got heart!

Cosplay Maker is regularly $14.99 on Steam, and while you're still not going to catch my sweaty ass in a Sonic costume, I applaud its enthusiastic, gently approach to its target audience.

The Rest

I played another indie game this week in the fascinating Sundown, a game wherein you help spark a revolution by.... mopping and dusting. The story it tells is entertaining and spirited, but the gameplay grew old within the first hour and the whole thing lacks a sense of forward motion apart from its story. Even in something like Gone Home or Everybody's Gone tot he Rapture, the player was making what felt like forward motion, either by unlocking doors and moving through a house or pushing through a quaint countryside to learn more. Within Sunset, you're just doing laundry over and over and over again. Well, not laundry specifically, but your tasks have no effect on the narrow environment of the apartment you're cleaning. Only the story itself changes those things without help from the player. That's an important difference, though an ostentatious quibble at most on the outside. Though I knew I was supposed to be important to the plot, I rarely felt as if I was taking part in it.

In any case, it's too bad that Tale of Tales shut down because of the game's poor reception, but I can understand players not wanting to jump in and clean a house for two or three hours, no matter how good the story is around it. It's also a shame that while the greater revolutionary plot is satisfactorily concluded that the personal, smaller relationship between the housekeeper and the never-seen employer is resolved with a couple of quick notes and... well, not much else.

I've also been playing through Dead Rising 3 again, which I didn't get a chance to finish. That's still a great game, marred only by a map that's frustratingly hard to read at times. Again, that sounds like a minor quibble, but when you're trying to find psychopaths and side-quests but can't due to a bad color-matching scheme, it's pretty important.

And that about does it! Hope you all have a great week.