Cute Mermaid Dress Up

You open on a mermaid floating against soft blue water, with a menu bar below her and nothing else to figure out. Your first pick is usually her tail, since it is the biggest block of color on screen and everything else gets chosen around it. Tap a tail and it appears instantly, scales and fins and all, replacing whatever was there before. As a character creator it works in layers, so hair and tops sit over the tail without covering it.

The categories run from top to bottom: skin, hair, tails, tops, and accessories like crowns, shell jewelry, and earrings. Tails come in solid colors, two-tone fades, and scale patterns, each with a different fin shape at the end. Hairstyles range from a simple side braid to long loose waves that drift behind her, and a few have small shells braided in. Tops are mostly seashell and bandeau shapes in colors that mostly, but not always, match the tails. The crown and jewelry tabs are where the small details live, and those items stack, so a tiara plus pearl earrings is a legal combination.

The detail that separates this one is the hair and tail pairing problem. Because hair floats and sways behind her, the silhouette changes a lot depending on what you put on top, and some crowns only sit right on certain hairstyles. A round ends with a saved portrait of your finished mermaid against the water background, ready to start over with a new look.

Choose the tail first and pull one accent color out of it, then match the top and the crown to that color instead of the whole tail, since one matched piece reads better than three almost-matches. Try the braid with a small tiara if a big hairstyle keeps clipping through the crown. And check the fin shape before you commit, because a wide fin changes the whole pose.