Life Makeover Shrine
What is Life Makeover?
Life Makeover is a Chinese gacha dress-up game developed by Archosaur Games, of the Dragon Raja and upcoming Silent Whispers fame. If you're familiar with the Nikki franchise, namely Love Nikki and Shining Nikki, you'll know exactly what Life Makeover entails. Considering Life Makeover is kind of a rip-off, you might be wondering why I chose it over the Nikki franchise. LM has something that sets it apart significantly, which is character customization!!! Free and infinite, to that! Mentioning this because mmos tend to make you pay if you want to revamp your characters... If I'm being honest, LM lacks in some other departments, such as the story and community size, but the better dressup, customization and dyeing aspect is why I'm here. I don't need a story in a game where all of my characters are OCs anyway.
Since November 2023, I've been playing this game daily, so I figured I should have a place where I'll talk about it endlessly!
The Shining Nikki image was taken from this TheGamer article
What can I even do in Life Makeover?
Let's get some things straight first, Life Makeover is an incredibly stupid name. It implies something the game doesn't really offer, because to me *life* makeover means there's like a whole life/career sim, yet the game does not have that. There is a house building system similar to The Sims, but it's definitely not the focus of the game either! Plus the name is just so generic and boring if this wasn't a friend's recommendation I would have completely disregarded it. Originally in chinese, this game is called In the Name of Shining/Brilliance depending on the translation, which I think is way cuter, but it also doesn't really tell us much about the game. My favourite name for the game is in the Korean version, and it's called Stylight. Isn't that so much better? The focus of the game is of course, styling!
Fun fact: When you pronounce the name of the game in Chinese, it sounds like lychee cat, which ended up with the chinese fanbase calling the game Lychee Cat... following that Archosaur had designed a Lychee Cat mascot and she is now the official mascot, and we can also have her as a pet ingame. Cute!
To begin with, the core of the game lies within the dressup. You can dress up your characters, and the gacha and free events are centered around obtaining outfits primarily, ally cards secondarily. The story requires you to dress up in the appropriate tags to pass the levels and finish chapters, and the reward is being able to craft more outfits. All clothes are completely dyeable, some are just more expensive to dye than others because it depends on their source.
There are also poses, free and purchasable backgrounds and other things that enhance the customization experience, in order for you to be able to take better and more creative screenshots. The photo mode is as such, in my opinion, the second most important part of the game. This section of the game is always getting upgraded and improved.
The primary daily gameplay loop will consist of you doing daily activities to get your diamonds, which takes around 10 minutes max. Anything else is optional which means this game doesn't require you to invest tons of time into it daily, besides checking in 2-3 more times a day to do the quick 1-3hr missions which are just a tap. There will be days where you'll obtain enough hard mode items for the story requirement, and on those days dailies take 5-10 minutes longer. Once you catch up to the story though new story quests will arrive every 2 months or so, so you won't be "burdened" by this often.
This game has a lot of tertiary features that don't build towards earning you diamonds but could be time wasters you might enjoy. Those are the house system, the pet system, the minigames, the fashion studio where you can create your own clothes (this one is sadly a bit abandoned by the devs) and the newly introduced pubg style battle royale mode (don't ask). All of those are ignorable if you're not into them, thankfully. I haven't touched the pet system at all lmao.
Be aware though, this is a game that requires your money to be enjoyed fully. Even though it's possible to be a f2p player, saving up gems will be an incredibly long process that will likely result in you losing interest. Because of that, I have a hard time recommending it to people... However as a f2p player you'll still get bombarded by free event outfits and your wardrobe won't be exactly sad especially if you enjoy casual clothes more than fantasy clothes. If you're prone to FOMO though... gachas are evil but I'm sure you know that already.
Are you a fan of Life Makeover?
Consider joining my Life Makeover fanlisting!
