Barbie Magical Fashion - Tairytale Princess Makeov

Barbie Magical Fashion opens with a fairy-tale princess standing on a stage backdrop, already in her base outfit, with a category bar along the bottom of the screen. The first thing you pick is usually a dress, because everything else hangs off that choice. Tap a gown thumbnail and it appears on her instantly, so you can flick through ten options in half a minute without anything slowing down. There is no story to click through. You are dressing within the first ten seconds.

The wardrobe splits into the usual rows: gowns, tops and skirts if you want to mix pieces, shoes, hair, crowns and tiaras, jewelry, wands and wings. Most items are long gowns in pastel and jewel tones, strappy sandals, updos and long flowing styles, and plenty of sparkles on the accessories. Wings and wands sit on a separate magic layer, so they float over the dress instead of replacing it. Jewelry stacks too, so you can wear a tiara, earrings and a necklace at the same time and see all three.

The twist is the magical layer. This princess dress up game lets you add fairy wings, a glowing wand and other fantasy pieces on top of a normal ballgown look, so a round can end as half princess, half fairy. When you are done, the game saves the finished look as a picture of your character posed on the stage, ready to look at again or start a new round.

Pick the gown first and let its color decide everything else, since matching shoes and jewelry to the dress reads better than grabbing pieces at random. Try one big sparkle instead of five, like a jeweled tiara with plain earrings, because the stage backdrop already has glitter in it. And check the hair category after shoes, since an updo tucks under a high collar nicely while long hair hides it.