When I reviewed Fashion Dreamer last year, I felt like a little piece of me died. It wasn’t just that the game was incompatible with my own interests and ideas; I play so many titles over the course of the year I’m bound to rub up against my sensibilities in an unpleasant way. It was the fact that the game was both soulless and conniving, essentially giving players nothing while asking them to get into the mindset that selling themselves online is how one survives. Truly an uncomfortable game that got worse the longer I thought about it. I had privately resolved to never revisit these types of games, fearing that my own callous nature would prevent an honest opinion. Naturally, I immediately reversed my stance when MODEL Debut3 #nicola dropped into my lap, because this felt like an easy burn of a game.

From the drop, you think that you understand how bad it’s going to be because of the sheer insipid nature of it all. You are freshly graduated from Name Immediately Forgotten fashion college and decide to put on your favorite look while you venture outside, just to prove you exist. Immediately, someone sees you, decides you have “the look” and folds you into what should be a clear cut worker exploitation situation in any real world application. You are now hired to be a model that also happens to be an outfit coordinator, hair stylist, makeup artist and photo editing savant, and you’re somehow doing all of that to your own photos. In a timeline inspired by the best Kairosoft games, you’ve got four years to prove yourself to the world as being a fantastic artistic force. Dress up, gloss up and pose to your heart’s content: it’s fashion time!

If, like me, you’re confused by MODEL Debut3 #nicola on a fundamental level, here’s two things to keep in mind. One, this is the third entry in a series of titles by Furyu, and the third onto the Nintendo Switch, despite the fact that I’ve never heard of it whatsoever. Second, each game also has the #nicola added to the title, because Nicola is the name of this aspirational teen magazine where so many of the photoshoots end up getting published. I suppose it’s also relevant because, to the surprise of no one, MODEL Debut3 has several online features that are good if you’re hellbent on trading ideas and poses with strangers/friends online, and…it’s also all completely optional. I did several hours of this game with no internet connection whatsoever, and I actually don’t feel I missed out on anything.

Like I mentioned up top, the idea is that you’re in control of every facet of the fashion shoot, from soup to nuts, and with a shocking degree of control. You can change your model’s makeup, hair, nails and even eye color and eye design on the fly. You have a full wardrobe of a massive number of clothing and accessories from the very beginning, starting with undershirts and evolving all the way to cute little hats, oversized jackets, skinny jeans and several bathing suits. The idea is that the client gives you a baseline idea for what they want for the shoot, you choose things based on the information and then you speed through a photoshoot, the only thing you don’t actually control because it doesn’t matter. More on that in a moment.

All of the clothing of MODEL Debut3 have hashtags attributed to them, using popular ideas like “casual,” “girly,” “simple,” or “blue,” because you might need clarification on the color tone of the items you want. This system is in place to make the game dirt simple thanks to the search function. Does a client want a coordinate based on denim and the prompt “feminine?” Good news, just hit those tags up and narrow the hundreds of clothing choices down to a handful in a split second. These are moments that, incredibly, allow for touchscreen controls, so you can really rifle across the inventory in no time at all.

Once the photos are taken, now you get to go in and “adjust” the image, meaning you get to make it from scratch. The game will automatically generate loose parameters for what you might have a finished product look like, but you can adjust it anyway you want. I mean any. I don’t know enough GIMP skills to take someone standing and suddenly repose them to be sitting with their legs crossed, but I feel like that’s a valuable enough skill without also being a fashion model on top of that. You can change backgrounds, all colorful outlines, pepper in stickers like it’s a photobooth in Akihabara, even adjust the angle of the model’s eyes and neck with ultrafine precision. The first time I did it, it freaked the hell out of me because the head moves in real time, turning my lively model into a floppy cadaver.

Cards on the table, MODEL Debut3 is not a difficult game if you’re just playing to win. Straight up, as long as you can follow the prompts from the first half of a photo shoot, you’re in the clear: just don’t purposely choose the antithesis of what the client wants and move forward with purpose. The auto-generated spread is always perfect, the editing is just there to make you feel like you did something. Once it runs, you get laden with praise, get more followers, and you get a paycheck that you never, ever need to touch. You don’t need to worry about rent, food or paying off your gambling debts: you can just pick up more makeup and outfits which you don’t actually need. The full delivery of clothing you get on day one more than covers the demands for nearly everything you get asked to put together.

Plus, how you put together your first photoshoot is just the blueprint for everything afterwards. Double model shoot? Cool, you get to pose and dress them too! TV shoot? Don’t worry, you just put on an outfit based on the prompts and then pick whichever totally inoffensive, saccharine response you like best for every question you’re asked. Even the fashion show, which should be a BIG DEAL, is just “photoshoot but more of it.” As long as you get the general gist of what needs to be done in the first five minutes of the game, you’re set for life. The game’s life, not your own. Did I really need to clarify that? 

But, that’s actually a really nice aspect of MODEL Debut3. Instead of feeling like I needed to constantly evolve my own abilities in order to simply survive, I realized that the options to expand and improve were purely from my own vantage. So, if I felt that I could do better the next time I’m pairing sandals with a skirt or what hairstyle matches a school uniform, I was free to explore that and make it worth my own while. Do I feel that there’s maybe a better shade of blush out there to go with an updo? Probably, but the game’s not going to penalize me for not knowing it! I can go buy it at the store, at any time, with zero penalties to my free time or action choices.

Yes, MODEL Debut3 also makes sure that you’re trying to balance your work and personal life, even if 90% of what you do in the “me” time is set up for better work. After all, if you go to the gym, you’ll have more stamina, which is ideal for sporty clients. Spending time in the park talking to randos builds your charisma, important for booking more TV gigs. And, for reasons that completely escape me, certain people, who you’ve met and talked with on a professional level, will not give you the time of day outside the office if a base stat isn’t high enough. Do you know how humiliating it is to want to hang out with a pop star and then be denied because I haven’t been to the library? I guess romance is an option in game, but I’m not sullying myself just to get attention.

But, if you cut around the meandering sim portions, MODEL Debut3 is a surprisingly relaxing game that I think has a very good audience in both children and adults. The door is there to make the game more complex with Internet and further items, but it’s not being signposted everywhere. Parents and young adults won’t need to feel like they need to add more to get more, there’s just a ton from the drop. It’s a fun, slow title that lets you craft a world of art, photos and imaginary success without any drawbacks. The whole point is to keep moving upward, and I don’t feel like there’s a dark surprise waiting if I fail. I think I’ll just get a “you tried your best” ending and maybe the chance to keep going or start over. It’s shockingly supportive.

The graphics are pretty limited, and you can see the aging Switch showing some cracks in terms of pixels and bad bordering for models and clothing alike. The music is repetitive and tacky, what you’d expect from a game where you’re mostly hanging out in a super positive office that you’d see on a Hallmark movie. I doubt I’ll pick up this game ever again when this review is finished. But I put it down. I didn’t hurl it from my sight or blast it into space. I’ll simply realize I’m done and move on. As weird as that sounds, that’s probably the biggest praise I can give MODEL Debut3 #nicola. It’s not for me, and I don’t have friends to whom I would recommend it. But I wouldn’t discourage playing it, and I’ll actively praise it as being “pretty okay.”

Graphics: 7.0 Though the fidelity is a bit lower than I’d expect this late in the game, this Model Debut 3 has a better set of avatars and clothing than previous incarnations, and is more than cute and engaging enough for the target audience. It’s actually quite detailed and fine, so points for the commitment.	Gameplay: 5.5 After the first photo shoot, you understand the core concept of everything you need to do until the end of the game. Even when the venue changes, the song remains the same: match clothing to keywords and then micromanage the elements to your heart’s content, knowing it will factor very little into any change in scoring.
Sound: 6.0 No voicework, no vocal tracks, just upbeat, poppy, synthetic soundtrack to put you in that Uptown mindset. It’s not bad, but it’s also very immemorable and not at all relevant to my own daily soundtrack. Still, it fits the motif and won’t make you want to rip off your ears.	Fun Factor: 6.5 While I will almost certainly never return to this game, I also didn’t objectively hate every moment, and really had some fun with some of the sillier clothing combinations. Relationships weren’t important enough to be invested in, but maybe that’s just the life of a model. I wouldn’t dissuade anyone from buying it, and I think that says a lot.
Final Verdict: 6.5

MODEL Debut3 #nicola is available now on Nintendo Switch.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch

A copy of MODEL Debut3 #nicola was provided by the publisher.