Ah, licensed properties for kids being turned into video games. Anyone who has been around should know what a roll of the dice that can be. Surprises like the recent Smurf game can and do sometimes show up to help redeem the sub-genre, but unfortunately then titles like this one show up to restore the balance in the other direction. For true fans of the toys, the younger the better, the ability to have your own character, establish their look, and then follow their journey to stardom may be enough to satisfy. For anyone who is more adept at games (at all) the personalization angle won’t likely be enough to make up for the repetitive and sometimes almost insulting mini games that you’ll need to grind through in order to keep things advancing. With basic skills ranging from memory to randomly placing appropriate items in a scene to simply changing lanes to collect coins there’s a real lack of ambition and faith in the player shown in the nature and starting point of these mini games. Yes, as you do them more and the level of difficulty slowly rises they can pose a slightly higher challenge but the basic nature of the underlying game never improves from being horribly simplistic. Throw in dialogue full of hashtagging and pop culture phrases that were culled from a decade ago and the attempts to seem #OnTrend more often feel outright #cringe and #basic. It’s an odd title where I can’t really identify the target age group aside from gamers just starting out, but I’m curious how well that overlaps the people buying these dolls that look like a more current version of Bratz, just with smaller cherub-like bodies and anime-style big eyes. I suppose if your kids love them this will be a demand no matter what, but just remember that you’ve been #warned!