Dress to Play: Cute Witches! (Nintendo 3DS) Review

There is no doubt that Dress to Play: Cute Witches! is designed to appeal directly to a young female generation. That's not to say nobody else is going to have some fun with it, though! The game allows players to customise a cute girl (which thankfully means we aren't dressing up ugly wart-nosed witches of grossness) with a variety of hair styles and clothing. Once that's done, the little witch takes to the skies in a scrolling shooter-type mode, except for the fact that there is no shooting to be done of any kind, and instead players must use the Circle Pad or D-Pad (or the A, B, X and Y buttons, if preferred) to dodge oncoming traffic of peculiar, not-so-intimidating characters.

The idea in this portion of the game is to keep the chibi-styled witch girl flying on her broomstick for as long as possible, all the while collecting stars. With the action taking place on the top screen, the bottom screen displays a fuel gauge that continuously decreases the further the player progresses, as well as a large clock, of which the hands spin around at a quickened pace. There are two ways in which to keep the fuel topped up: one is to collect the aforementioned stars that scroll across the level; the other is to see the clock strike midnight. Once the hands hit twelve A.M., known in-game as the "Magic Hour," a heart appears to be grabbed, and restores a great chunk of the fuel tank. The number of Magic Hours that have passed and total points scored are also tracked -- the latter of which constantly increases the further the player makes it through the sky and by collecting stars.

There are 50 challenges to complete, which unlock extra design choices for the witch, such as skirts, tops, cat ears, ribbons, various colours for eyes and hair, and more. The requirements of the challenges mainly include racking up set amounts of points, hearts, Magic Hours, stars and total play time. With Dress to Play: Cute Witches! geared towards that younger demographic, it might seem a bit difficult to achieve some of these goals, but certainly, this game is very simple in its nature and may in fact be a good entry level for those that have just started to play video games.

Sadly, the fact that the flying section of the game consists of merely replaying the same stage over and over, albeit with an unpredictable order of enemy types that have unique traits in order to block the player, does mean this title becomes tiresome quickly. Clearly the focus is on getting high scores, which is great since up to three players can register profiles and compete to get the most points, but after the unlocking of the various outfits and accessories there really isn't anything to come back for. This is ultimately a real shame as Dress to Play: Cute Witches! is a charming little game with gorgeous and colourful graphics, but one has to wonder if there could have been some more unique levels or other forms of gameplay to add a bit more longevity to the overall package.