LoveNikki and Barbie App

No, not the kind of app where the game is already all about Barbie. This is Barbie in a phone/tablet app game where Mattel does a tie-in with a pre-existing game owned by another company. In this case, the game is called LoveNikki, and it's a dress-up/storyline/outfit competition game, that I've mentioned to a couple of you before. If you've seen ads for Love Nikki, be aware that the game is nothing like the ads show.

Most of the clothing/background/accessory/other pieces can be gained without spending real-world cash. The game is also free-to-play, meaning you don't have to buy the game first at the app store. However, to generate sales and keep up player interest, LoveNikki also has regular events. Often, there are a few pieces that everyone can get for free. Other pieces can be acquired by using in-game currency diamonds. You can get diamonds for free every day, but it does take quite a while to save up enough to get a lot in an event. And then there is some stuff you can't get except by spending real-world cash. Honestly, I have spent money on this game. I've been playing it for a year and a half, and besides my doll/sewing hobbies, I don't do anything to spend discretionary money, like go to the movies or concerts.

So, LoveNikki has a Facebook page. Every day during the Barbie event, a new code was offered on the Facebook page, and you could enter that code in the game to win items. Most of what was given away were things like stamina, gold coins, and star coins, but if you entered all the codes, you were guaranteed to win Barbie's original swimsuit, black mules, and a pair of white sunglasses for your in-game fashion character to wear. Well, the sunglasses are held in the hand, and not worn. Here's a picture of the dress-up "doll" wearing the outfit. She also has make-up and hair from the two other outfits on offer.

The two outfits were named Space Fantasy and Romantic Moment. Space Fantasy was based on the 80s astronaut Barbie outfit, with a space-going dog and some space-themed background stuff. Romantic Moment was pretty much the same as the Silkstone 10th Anniversary doll, along with an necklace, fur stole, a cute kitty cat, and a Barbie throne background. There was a story that one Barbie was an astronaut, the other a fashion model; that they met and hit it off after finding out that they were both named Barbie; and that Barbie astronaut's successful mission into space gave fashion model Barbie back the courage to pursue her fashion dreams. Here is what the complete outfits looked like, taken off of Love Nikki's Facebook page. The complete sets in-game are too wide to fit into a screen-shot. However, below the fold, I'll show you some details of the individual pieces, if you're interested.

The suits above were the posed set you won, if you obtained every individual piece of the outfits. Only some outfits have these extra poses. Generally, each suit consists of individual outfits, that can be worn together, or the pieces can be mixed and matched. However, there is a place where all your suits are stored, and you can pull up each suit complete from there. There is an area called the "Dressing Room," where you can make whatever outfit for your character that you wish, and also take photos or screenshots. Here are RM and SF, without the special pose. SF doesn't have all the pieces here, and the extra background stuff was rather smushed together so that it could be seen, but you can see most of it. In the photography area, your character and all the items except for the main backdrop can be moved around.

Here's RM Barbie, without her throne and fur stole, so that you can see her dress better. As I said above, it doesn't look the actual Silkstone doll came with a necklace, but our 2D model has one that matches the earrings. It probably would have been hard to make a necklace like that in real life that wouldn't have looked chunky on a Barbie doll.

Here's a funky outfit that I put together using some of the Barbie pieces, and some other stuff I have in my wardrobe.

The Barbie face, called Make-up in the game, can be used with any clothes. Here's Barbie looking super pink, and then holding the flag from the Space Fantasy set.

There is an option in the game where you can take a picture of your model, with the real-life image of whatever is in your camera frame behind it. For example, the first picture below the fold was taken in front of my bedroom wall. There was a contest at the time of this event to win in-game prizes, if you submitted a picture of your doll with LoveNikki Barbie. Here's the ad for that contest. You can see how much the real Silkstone doll looks like RM.

And several of the Barbie pieces are high scoring in the fashion competitions. Of course, the outfits for those look very bizarre. Each item, including Make-Up and background pieces, is given a ranking based on different attributes like Gorgeous, Mature, Sexy, etc. You get the highest scores by throwing pieces together from each category that have the highest score. Fortunately, some enterprising LoveNikki player has created a website, where you can input everything in your wardrobe, and the website will tell you which outfit gives you the highest score from what you have. As you can see below, I used several pieces from the SF outfit here. The Barbie rings, the heart planet, and the bit of the satellite that you can see, are all separate items. I'm Holly, named after Holly O'Hair.

While there are several skin-tones for the bodies, there are not a lot of faces that come in colors other than white. That's mostly because this game started in China first, several years before the game came to the US, Europe, and I'm guessing Canada, and became available in other countries like Japan in between. The skin colors also have their own attribute scores. There are two white bodies that have scores; they go with a "puppet comes to life" story. There are also a couple of "spooky" bodies, a Frankenstein type, and a translucent blue with the skeleton showing through. Some people would like to see the game maker simply change all the make-ups, so that each make-up can come in every available shade. However, there are well over 225 make-ups, and I don't think non-computer designers realize how hard that would be. As you can see, SF Barbie has a darker skin make-up, that matches a skin tone that we already had in-game. The game designers are now offering different skin-tone faces more often to events that are (currently) exclusive to the non-Asian audience, or debut here.

As you can tell, I really loved this Barbie event. There were people who didn't like the astronaut because it was so unabashedly 80s, but even though I didn't own that doll, I was alive during that period, so I think the outfit is fun. There's always complaints at Facebook and Reddit, when too many outfits in a row are pink, and I do understand that, but as is always pointed out, that's one less outfit you'll be tempted to spend diamonds/money on. Currently, our complete wardrobe size stands at 9,430 pieces, so there's clothes of every color available, and lots of different styles; not surprisingly, many of those are Chinese and Japanese.

When I played the Roller Coaster Tycoon app about a year ago, there was also a Barbie tie-in, where you could spend money your amusement park earned, to buy Barbie-themed food stands, attractions, decorations, and a souvenir store. I kept meaning to do a post, but didn't have the enthusiasm for it. If this post does well, maybe I'll throw that up sometime.

Hope you enjoyed this look at the world of Barbie on the tablet screen.