Crowdstar has released another iOS title for female gamers, Social Girl. The sterling successor to the highly popular application Top Girl, this new simulation plants players into an almost virtual high school-type of environment. From managing relationships to working their way into cliques, it is a simplistic game of popularity, fashion, and dating.
Crowdstar has released another iOS title for female gamers, Social Girl. The sterling successor to the highly popular application Top Girl, this new simulation plants players into an almost virtual high school-type of environment. From managing relationships to working their way into cliques, it is a simplistic game of popularity, fashion, and dating.
After creating an avatar and digital boyfriend, the concept behind Social Girl becomes clear. The whole point of the game is to turn that significant other into a veritable “Dream Man” by completely customizing his look, but such is not done easily. In order to accomplish this goal, players must garner enough sway in their virtual relationship by going out on dates.
Similar in respect to Top Girl, for each exotic date — from hang gliding to hikes — there is a certain “fashion” requirement that must be met. This is reached by the clothes one wears and is broken up into the categories of Sporty, Hipster, Preppy, Rocker, and Girly. Dates typically follow one category, but for each successive one, higher and higher fashion values are needed. In order to reach these echelons, new clothes, that raise fashion levels for specific categories when worn, must be purchased.
It’s easy enough to meander around a virtual shopping mall to pick up new outfits, but such is limited by not only the size of one’s wallet but their involvement in respective cliques as well. Limited by slowly recharging energy, players must hang out with various girls of each of the noted categories to raise their “level,” as it were, for each category. Doing so will unlock comparable sets of clothing for use on dates.
This process is simple enough, as doing so consists visiting the clique-type’s local hangout and tapping on the girls present. That said, only one girl can be interacted with at any given time until she becomes a friend (after this, the next girl, moving from left to right like a social ladder, can be interacted with). It’s not difficult to do though, as players merely tap from the selection of Gossip, Hang Out, and Party. Each one only costs one energy, but depending on the girl, will earn users varying amounts of friendship gain and currency.
As the game progresses, more and more time will have to be spent unlocking new friends and clothing. It becomes a very slow process rather quickly, so to expedite it, users can opt to purchase the virtual currency of “Diamonds” to acquire more unique clothing or refill their energy bar.
Regarding any real issues with the game, Social Girl is rather basic with nothing really standing out about it. For the most part, most of the game is retrofitted from Top Girl, including the same animations that all the clique girls tend to do at the same time (it’s really weird looking!). Everything that is new usually consists of static screens with the same word bubbles seen all too frequently.
The game does have a few other extras that add a bit more breadth to it, at least. It isn’t much, but there is a matching mini-game that can be played every few hours to improve the boyfriend’s “mood” and raise his relationship level. There are also several quests one can potentially complete that will reward Diamonds as well.
Social Girl is not a bad iOS game, but it is very basic. Truly, the biggest issue is that it doesn’t really do anything exciting. Instead, Crowdstar takes much of what has been seen in its previous games and rearranges it all a bit. It can still be enjoyable within the right hands, but it does feel like much more could have been done. Nonetheless, as a free-to-play game, it is certainly worth a download for any fans of Top Girl.
