Imagine: Fashion Designer 3D (Nintendo 3DS) Review

The main part of Imagine Fashion Designer 3D is the career mode. The aim is to keep clients happy by designing outfits according to their needs. From supermodels and actresses, to famous fashion designers and pop stars, each is looking to your guidance to help them look fabulous for their special events. The client will let you know the occasion their outfit is for and then give a list of six requirements. These will range from the clothing style, which pieces they prefer, and whether they need a certain item customising. Tick these boxes for them and becoming a World Famous Fashion Designer will happen in no time!

The clients become more demanding as the levels go on, with the outfit necessities becoming more expensive and complex. Meeting all of the requirements earns popularity points, which in turn unlocks new patterns and decals for the customisation option. Potential clients are also unlocked as progress is made, but each client only lets you create another outfit for her if successful with the previous request.

No money is gained from career mode, only fame! However, there is a need to spend money to get famous and in order to gain money for the career mode you need to play through the mini-games in free play mode. Choose from one of four mini games to unlock that ticket to fame:

Style Studio -- Create an outfit to sell for profit. Money still needs to be spent here, so it is probably not the best for making a quick buck as the profit margin isn’t great. It is merely a good way to play around with the customisation options out of career mode.

What is she wearing? -- Remember all items on the outfit the model was wearing and select from an item that she had on.

Guess the style -- choose an item that matches the style of the model’s current attire.

What doesn’t match? -- Pick an item that doesn’t match the style of the clothing ensemble.

Playing through these mini-games, the tasks get increasingly difficult but lead to earning more money. Once reaching a point where the highest amount of money has been earned, the reward isn’t reset if you guess wrong or come back to the mini-games later. This helps as players can briskly return to the mini-games to thread up spends for the later levels of career mode.

Customisation is a huge draw of Imagine: Fashion Designer 3D, with there being limitless combinations to be made on each clothing item with a huge selection of patterns and decals. These can be customised further with colour changes, resizing options and even the chance to “tailor” the shape of some styles of dress allowing the user to be as creative as they want. There is an attempt to utilise the camera in the customisation, but the way it has been done is not exactly the best seen on the 3DS so far. Without sufficient light the photographs turn out poor and even with good light the application awkwardly stretches photos over the garment, warping the image beyond recognition. This could be used to an artistic advantage by colour tinting and moving the photograph around the garment until it looks presentable, but either way isn’t enough to save the camera as an option here from its ultimate fate -- being ignored.

Finally, there is a multiplayer mode available where two players can battle against each other to design the best outfit for client challenges. Customised designs can also be traded with another player. When StreetPass is invoked by passing another player with this game, sometimes rare pieces of clothing can be found and added to your collection as gifts.