STYLIT is a serviceable Style Savvy substitute

Says least stylish writer on site

I make it no secret I’m desperately waiting for Nintendo to sign off on another entry in the Style Savvy series for Switch. I’ve been stanning it since it was back on the Nintendo DS when I foolishly thought, “Boy, these full-length jean skirts sure are ugly. I bet they won’t make it into future entries.” We last heard from the franchise two years ago when Styling Star dropped in North America on Christmas Day.

As I’ve waited, I’ve found ways to get my fashion fix in other games. I do a lot dress up in Animal Crossing: New Horizons and every time I play Deadly Premonition Origins, I make it a point to have York look his best even with such limited options. But now I can get back to the kind of dress-up I love with Stylit, a new free-to-play mobile game from Rubycuve.

Stylit is an abbreviated version of the Syn Sophia series. You design your avatar, pick a style, then go about completing fashion challenges and requests as you build your brand. It features its own in-game social media feed where users can post pictures of their characters all dressed up and posed against backgrounds found in the game or on your phone’s gallery. Challenges can be pretty specific in what they’re asking. I found one that says “Styling a Strict Librarian with Low Tolerance for Lateness.” Requests are a bit broader with women asking you to put together an outfit for a date or create a look around a piece of clothing they own.

Unlike Style Savvy, you’re not running a boutique here. Rather, you’re akin to an Instagram model, which plays into the progression model the developers go with here. To get more requests, you have to buy more clothes. You fill out your wardrobe spending dollars or gems you earn through completing daily tasks, challenges, and requests. Gems are the paid currency here, priced at similar rates to what you’ll find in other free-to-play apps. Yes, there is a $100 option, which I don’t know why both Google and Apple haven’t banned yet.

You can buy clothes in sets or individually and each item will either cost in-game cash or gems. Some items can be very expensive — 1,300 gems for one pair of pants seems excessive — but you can reduce the costs of items with one-time use coupons you earn. There is a timer for those style requests, which I imagine is there to keep people from blowing through them too quickly, and an energy meter for the challenges that takes way too long to refill.

The game is also weirdly silent — there is no background music outside of a few choice events — and there is a serious lack of dark skin tones and Afrocentric hairstyles. Despite all that, I’m getting that fashion fill I’ve been without for more than a year now. This isn’t a game I’m going to go nuts over or anything, but it’s earned a spot on my phone by letting me live out a small part of my Project Runway fantasies. 

Stylit is available now on Android and iOS.