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Which ermine gown should she wear today?
In CP2077, you either go full Matrix or you wear the result of a car bomb in a flea market.

Any time a video game or computer program that lets you change clothes a character is wearing, which usually requires just changing the graphics, so it's like changing the clothes on a paper doll.

This is often a way to customize the character, even if it's just a cosmetic feature. When it's not a game, it could be for avatars in online communities. Either way, expect Changing Clothes Is a Free Action.

The paper doll programs themselves come in several formats, such as Flash games that can be played on a Web browser, or full programs that must be installed onto the user's computer before it may be used. Sometimes the player merely selects the items from various lists (the most common format for videogames featuring this), while other programs allow the player to click, drag and drop the costume elements directly from the wardrobe onto the character.

Some of these are community-driven and require currency to be earned via posting and various other means, which can be used to buy more items and clothes. The point? Possibly, whoever dies with the most clothes/items wins.

And these are not strictly limited to the human form: Paper-doll programs featuring cats, dogs, and other animals and creatures (anthropomorphised or not) are also available, depending on the fandom involved.

Frequently included in Character Customization. If the clothing visibly worn by the character is inseparable from the equipment that affects the character's performance, it can lead to Rainbow Pimp Gear. Some games deal with the issue of having to pick between preferred stats and preferred appearance by allow a second slot for Equipment-Hiding Fashion that overrides the appearance of the equipment in the first slot. If the clothing worn by the character can potentially veer into lewdness, Video Game Perversity Potential is inevitable.

In a game where the costume costs money or must be attained via side quest, and serves no (or little) purpose, the costume becomes Awesome, but Impractical.

Often the outfits will be Pimped Out Dresses, Impossibly Cool Clothes or both. Menswear Ghetto may be in effect.

A Sister Trope to Gorgeous Garment Generation.

Compare Unlimited Wardrobe, Costume Porn, An Interior Designer Is You, And Your Reward Is Clothes.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Action-Adventure 
  • ANNO: Mutationem: Ann can wear a variety of outfits whenever she's at a nearby closet that she got from purchased bonus content or at the city's clothing shop.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild allows Link to be customized with a different cap, tunic, and pants which can even be dyed different colors. Some outfits are needed to properly equip Link for certain areas of the game. Both its prequel and sequel also allow for this, though the former exclusively uses it for cosmetic purposes.

    Adventure Games 
  • In Chicory: A Colorful Tale, you can find existing clothes to customize Pizza and make your own clothes with custom designs.
  • Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite! and its successor Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak has a dress-up game accessible from the mirror in your room/a special room in the Clubhouse. In a variation, you have to buy clothes from Boutique Ham stores before they'll show up in the mini-game. Ham-Ham Heartbreak expands on this by having a crafting system where you can take gems from polished stones into the Accessories Shop to be made into jewelry.

    Beat 'em Up 
  • The Capcom Beat 'em Up game Beat Down: Fists of Vengeance actually uses the Virtual Paper Doll system as an integral game mechanic, practically requiring you to change outfits and accessories (sometimes changes just as basic as colors will do), and even get plastic surgery and/or tattoos in order to lower your "detection" percentages; the higher the number on either the Gang Detection or Police Detection, the better the chance you'll be accosted by them while trying to navigate the city stealthily and be forced to fight or run away. For a bit of fun with this, you have 5 main characters, and going to the plastic surgeon allows you to change your character's face to any of your teammates' (of the same sex, though). Somehow the procedure is reversible.
  • In Midnight Fight Express, Babyface can be customized with different clothing options as well as hair color, skin tones and tattoos. You can even unlock different skins for him.

    Collectible Card Games 
  • In Ensemble Stars!, you can dress up the character who appears on your homescreen (and a second to stand next to the first when you tap to open it) based on costumes you've collected. These mainly come from cards - all 4* and 5* cards come with costumes based on the Bloomed version of the card art, with 5* costumes generally being more detailed and Costume Porn-y, plus event 3*s for stories based on actual live performances usually come with them, too. (So e.g. if Ryuuseitai puts on a live, all members will come with a costume even though at least one must be a 3*.) If the Unbloomed art features an outfit the character doesn't already have a costume for, that'll usually come, too. And sometimes costumes can be gained through special limited seasonal events, usually being available in the Yumecoin shop later. For costumes based on cards, players must pay jewels to open up the correct node in the card's Idol Road, but jewels are very easy to come by and so all but very new players should be able to do that immediately.

    Fighting Games 
  • The Soul Series has had a Create-a-Soul mode that lets you create a custom fighter ever since SoulCalibur III. Soulcalibur IV changes the character's stats (in some game modes) based on the clothing, making it something between this and Rainbow Pimp Gear. Soulcalibur V has equipment be purely cosmetic, so two fighters with the same body type and fighting style will play exactly the same even if one is nearly naked and the other is wearing a huge suit of armor. Soul Calibur VI lets you change your character's species, on top of adding a mode called Libra of Soul that stars your custom character.
  • Most modern Wrestling Games feature Create-A-Wrestler modes. Depending on the game, these can get extremely elaborate, allowing you to dictate every aspect of a character's appearance, behavior, and move set. As of Smackdown vs Raw 2010 there is a "Superstar Threads" feature where you can change the colours of existing wrestlers' costumes.
  • Tekken 5 adds a Customise option where you can use the gold earned from winning fights in Arcade Mode to change the characters' clothes. It's rather basic and mostly just changing the colours and hairstyles or else adding an accessory. Dark Resurrection greatly expands this to allow more options.
  • Them's Fightin' Herds: Accessories can be found or bought that the character's Pixel Lobby sprites can wear on their head, neck, or body.
  • Mortal Kombat: Armageddon allows you to create a custom fighter.
  • My Hero One's Justice has costume customization, with options such as swapping masks between heroes or having Mineta holding onto them.
  • The Mii Fighters in the Super Smash Bros. can be customized with headgears and outfits. In addition to original outfits, players can make them wear full-on costumes based on Nintendo and other gaming characters, through unlockable and DLC. Mii Swordfighters and Mii Gunners have costumes that gives their weapons a cosmetic change.

    First-Person Shooters 
  • A selling point for Blockstorm is that the player can do this, with relative ease given the game's blocky art style - a player can customize the look of their character, their weapons, and even the Humongous Mecha added in a patch.
  • The multiplayer portion of BioShock 2 allows players to customize their character (one out of six), and even change their apartments.
  • Borderlands has this to some extent, in which you can change the colors of the characters' clothing and hair. Borderlands 2 has various skins and heads as either loot or DLC.
  • The Deus Ex Universe has limited forms of this.
    • The original game allows the player to choose from one of five different skin colors, which will be shown in cutscenes. Early betas for the game also showed that JC Denton would have worn an alternate pair of glasses (orange shades instead of his final "Terminator-style" black sunglasses), though it's unknown if the player would have had the option to switch between eyewear.
    • Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has DLC or pre-order bonus outfits that, when chosen, allow the player to switch between Adam's "Modern" look (from the game), his "Classic" look (from Deus Ex: Human Revolution) or an "Enforcer" look with gold accents. This extends to both Adam's trenchcoat and his armor, meaning the player can mix-and-match sets at will.
  • In Doom Eternal, the player can unlock several different outfits for the Doom Slayer based on different factors. Some (like the color variations for the original Doom Marine outfit) require you to own the original versions of the first three [PC-released] games in the series (Doom, Doom II: Hell on Earth, Doom³). Others, like the original Praetor Suit from Doom (2016), the Betrayer or the classic Doom Marine suit itself, must be unlocked through Sentinel Batteries that can be collected in various levels, while some (like the "Burning Slayer" outfit from the Deluxe Edition and "Doomicorn" Twitch Prime suit) are Downloadable Content.
  • Halo lets you customize your multiplayer character's armor. Halo 2 lets you pick colors and whether you want to play as a human Spartan or alien Elite. Halo 3 adds unlockable shoulder and chest armor and helmets for both. Halo: Reach has far more purchasable armor pieces as a player investment system, plus cosmetic armor effects that do things like light your head on fire. Subsequent games have further increased the variety of armor, skins (even for weapons now!), visors, etc. you can choose from.
  • Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 offers a ton of customization options for the player character. For that matter, a lot of the enemies look like they were created with the same system the player uses for creating Bishop.
  • Team Fortress 2, starting from the introduction of hats, has only increased the number of outrageous-looking accessories one can equip note . And then the Mann-Conomy update added the ability to color said accessories every hue of the rainbow.
    • Now, players to customize their characters with a diverse selection of cosmetics, weapons, and emotes. Behold the evolution of Medics, ranging from a completely stock Medic on the left, to a dressed-up Medic with craftable items in the middle, all the way to a heavily cosmetic-beladen Medic on the right whose kit is probably worth a few hundred dollars. Notably, none of the items that are available for sale affect actual in-game stats; the stock Medic on the left is just as capable a support class as the bedecked Medic on the right.
  • Part of character creation in WiiWare FPS Water Warfare. Of course, given that it's a downloadable game for the Wii, your choices are limited...

    Third-Person Shooters 
  • 007: From Russia with Love does this. Players can choose from the Grey Suit (what Bond usually wears in cutscenes), the White Dinner Jacket (from the beginning of Goldfinger), a decidedly retro Stealth Suit, a Snow Suit (a hoodie, no less), a Tuxedo, and Russian military garb (a disguise).
  • A major draw to many players of All Points Bulletin, as the game's ability to customize one's character, clothing and vehicle are extensive. The customization is completely cosmetic, however; an enormous muscular guy in full tactical gear and an anti-ballistic vest is just as vulnerable to damage as a Stripperiffic waif in a bikini top and thong.
  • Plants vs Zombies: Garden Warfare: Plants and Zombies can be heavily customized this way, with cool and quirky headgear, eyewear and more unusual options, like the Plants' Organics allowing them to replace their 'hands' with a variety of other plantlife.
  • Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, every character has an alternate outfit, which usually comes with different stats.

    H-Games 
  • 3D Custom Girl has 3D cel-shaded anime girls, which you can dress up, and then undress. Has a huge selection of mods, many of which are extra costume options, while others have more to do with the cosplay sex. However, the inclusion of Gravure Mode (photo-op mode) complete with full pose editor (starting from XP pack updates) as well as TechArts3D's openness for it to be modded (in contrast of Illusion Soft's Artificial Girl series' increasingly complicated encryption) allows for 3DCG to be played completely ignoring the H-elements and focusing more on the photography side. If nothing else, it adds more depth to the otherwise storyless game. This has let 3D Custom Girl to be known as a stripped down, slightly less versatile Poser equivalent for still images that still does its job, and gets regularly posted to Pixiv and sometimes Deviantart. For example, a Touhou Project-modded 3D Custom Girl would look like this. It has even gotten to the point that you can play other games (adults-only or otherwise) made using 3D Custom Girl as the "engine" of sorts, creating quite the recursionnote .
  • Custom Maid 3D from Kiss is a Follow the Leader to 3D Custom Girl. Just as easily modded, the models are anime-styled to a T, the alternate colors use the same hues for easy matching, and the entire mini-game is nothing but forcing your maid to either exhibit for you, or go all the way (usually both). Unlike 3D Custom Girl above, there is a system of stats and progressions, which makes it more than just a posing engine. Its sequels, Custom Maid 3D 2 and Custom Order Maid 3D 2 even comes with a built-in photo mode for you to take photos of your maid doing work or just looking pretty.
    • Related to Custom Maid 3D is its mobile app cousin Custom Cast 3D, which is a Safe For Work version of the Custom Order Maid 3D 2 character creator made for VTubing. It has the addition of male character creation, something its ancestor lacks.
  • Many of Illusion Soft's works involve this, allowing players to create a wide cast of characters.
    • The Artificial Girl series lets you customize the characters to a great degree, for personalized hentai. AG3's range of customization was so broad that many players were addicted to the character generation to the point that they rarely or never actually played the game.
    • Honey Select has one of the most extensive takes on this trope to date, enough that the fandom has embraced the character customization (custom content is at out-the-wazoo level) more than the actual game.
    • The same can be said for Koikatsu, a sort of spiritual successor to Artificial Academy. It has a more anime-esque art style than Honey Select and ended up being used for its studio mode more than the actual game. It's got to the point where people have begun using Koikatsu to create fan manga, animations, or port their models to Blender or MMD more than anything. There also exists a Safe For Work sister app based on its character creator known as V-Katsu, which offers the same customization abilities minus any exposure of private parts.

    Massively Multiplayer Online Games 
  • MMORPGs have rabid fanbases over this stuff. City of Heroes/Villains, for instance.
  • World of Warcraft is a rare aversion, in that the options are far more limited than most other MMOGs, yet it's still pretty popular. Since the Cataclysm expansion, WoW has played this straight by adding Transmogrification; this allows you to change any piece of gear to appear as any other piece of gear, within limits. (Must be the same type, e.g plate armor can't be changed to look like cloth; the exceptions are ranged weapons that can be freely switched between guns, bows, and crossbows. The armor must also have stats, it can't be a cosmetic-only piece like some of the holiday costumes) For example, one can change one's current endgame tier 12 armor to appear to be a vastly outdated set of tier 2 armor from the pre-expansion game, but still looks like a druid, warrior, etc.
  • Many items in Final Fantasy XI only exist to be worn, even though some of them might have a minimal stat boost. Most holiday items are used exclusively for this trope.
  • Following suit is Final Fantasy XIV, which has its take of Transmogrification called "Glamour" unlocked at level 15 (previously 50). Glamour allows players to mask the appearance of their gear with another with a more favored appearance, allowing players to fight at their best and look their best. There are some limitations to it, however. One, the source gear item must be wearable by the class when used to glamour the target gear (e.g. a healer is not allowed to glamour their robes into tank armor); two, the item's level is lower than the target gear (i.e. not allowed to make a level 60 armor look like a level 70 armor); and three, the item must also be wearable by the character's race and gender (e.g. a Hyur is not allowed to glamour an Elezen's starting clothes, or a male character attempting to glamour female-only clothes). There's even pieces of gear that is level 1 and wearable by any class that exist soley for this purpose.
  • MapleStory also has an emphasis on customizing appearance. A large majority of the "Cash Shop" items are purely cosmetic.
  • Maple Story 2 increases the number of outfit items that can be earned outside of the Cash Shop, and lets you change the color of most of them (to the point that dyes are the main reward for most trophies). It also lets you import images from your computer and use them as textures for items. You can even sell these custom items and earn premium currency from them.
  • The Lord of the Rings Online: You have two slots for cosmetic outfits, and can even bind them to a key. Free-to-play players have only one cosmetic slot. However, they still have a separate equipment outfit, which is the gear they're getting bonuses from, in addition to the cosmetic outfit that controls how they appear. Also, nearly every item can be "dyed" to change its color (though only some portions change; depending on the item, dyeing it can result in a dramatic difference in appearance or something that's all but unnoticeable).
  • The makers of the new edition of Dungeons & Dragons promised, but have yet to deliver, an app to create 3D models of your character.
  • Champions Online allows for a ludicrous amount of customization during creation and retailoring during the course of normal gameplay, but also has certain amounts of customization as gear-based unlockables. (For example, equipping a pickaxe on a sword-using character turns their sword into a pickaxe, and also permanently adds "pickaxe" to the list of selectable weapons for that, and as of recently all other characters.)
  • In-beta Earth Eternal has, like WoW, gear-based appearance, but one specific type of NPC exists solely to give items the appearance of other items.
  • In Granblue Fantasy, there are character-specific outfits purchasable with real-life currency that change the appearance of that character's in-game sprites and artwork.
  • La Tale, on the other hand, has an entire separate "Fashion equipment" category and slots that override normal equipment's looks, just so that players can customize their appearance without sacrificing defence.
  • Perfect World has similar "fashion equipment" available from the cash shop; much of which is limited-time-availability.
  • Mabinogi has a huge variety of clothing and armour; all but a very tiny fraction of which falls into one of three categories, and everything in those categories has identical stats (except for durability). Along with the range of styles, there is also a huge variety of random colours. Add to that a large number of accessories that are purely cosmetic, with no function whatsoever.
  • Puzzle Pirates has a very complex economy, which would completely collapse without this trope. Part of the game is buying player-made, decaying clothes for your pirate.
  • In Guild Wars, all sets of armour for any given class are functionally identical. The same can be said, with almost no exception, of all weapons of any given type. The only exception is the small number of weapons with nonstandard mods and items with low requirements, of which only low req shields really give any substantial benefit. People still pay absurd amounts for rare weapons and prestige armour that offer absolutely no advantage. And, at the end of 2009, special inventory slots for costumes and the festival hats were added so that you don't have to compromise your stats when you want to wear them.
  • Anarchy Online started with the ability to wear a wide variety of clothing/armor, but a common complaint was that, as only a few of the vast amount of in-game items are actually any good, character appearances were boring and bland. The developer's solution was to add "social inventory" so that any piece of armor or clothing could be equipped for visual effect without impacting character stats.
  • Ragnarok Online doesn't have an option to change your character's outfits, only their color. What the game does have in abundance, though, is hats and wings (the latter especially in private servers).
  • Phantasy Star Universe justifies this one in-game: Your 'armor' is Line Shield, a force field usually visible as small Tron Lines on your outfit. Since that's protecting you...you can wear whatever you want with no stat advantages or disadvantages. In-game clothing includes futuristic trendy jeans, fur coats, samurai-esque armor to evening gowns to eensy-weensy leopard print banana hammocks. Players will happily wear their battle-poor attire all the way to the Big Bad.
  • Phantasy Star Online 2... Hoo boy. There's a reason why one of the popular Fan Nicknames for the game is "Fashion Star Online 2". In addition to the crazy versatile Character Customization feature, the game features literally hundreds upon hundreds of outfits that you can dress your character in, which range from every single kind of fanservice costume imaginable to Cosplay in a plethora of varieties, such as 2B or Godzilla. The fashion element in PSO2 is so omnipresent that one common fandom joke is that fashion is literally the endgame of PSO2.
  • EVE Online moved towards this with the Incarna expansion, allowing players to see a full-size avatar of themselves in their "Captain's Quarters" and deck them out with a limited selection of clothes and accessories. There's a small collection of special items which can be purchased for real money, the exchange of gametime for Aurum or from the player-run market from another player who's acquired such an item. The backlash resulting from player reactions to this became known as Monoclegate after one particular purchasable item.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic features a system of special "orange" gear that has no stats but can be upgraded with mods to provide them, along with dyes this allows for a relatively large degree of customization. Furthermore, outfits can be created out of any clothing, as long as the player gets the clothing in their inventory and 'stamps' it. These outfits are purely cosmetic and outfit slots other than the first must be paid for.
  • Monster Hunter has a pretty wild array of mix-and-match clothing options for your character (more than 50 different sets - 100 if you count minor style variations), along with very extensive colouring options at higher levels. (Ninja outfits! Pirate gear! More knight-ish armour than you can shake a stick at! Pretty dresses made out of chain armour! Obligatory fanservice outfits for both sexes! And did we mention the Grim Reaper robes?)
  • Second Life is made of this trope. There are literally hundreds of thousands of clothing stores with which you can equip your avatar.
  • Minecraft allows you to dye your leather armor to any color you want, which can result in mismatched armor pieces or just something extremely tacky.
  • Like Minecraft, SD Gundam Capsule Fighter allows players to paint their units any way they want to, add shine to them, and/or slap decals on them.
  • The Secret World, much like many above, has 'trinkets' as the armored class of item, completely separate from clothing and largely invisible. Therefore, you can absolutely see a guy wearing naught but a fur loincloth tanking an Expy of Cthulhu, or a group of agents marching into Hell in tuxedo and tails.
  • One of the most unique characteristics of Dungeon Fighter Online is the extreme to which it takes this to. You get no less than nine avatar slots, plus a weapon skin, all of which modify your character's sprite.
  • The sheer extent to which players can customize their Tenno in Warframe, with options including extensive color palettes for coloring their equipment, scarf-like Syandanas, alternative helmets or skins for various Warframes, armor sets, and even tassels for their melee weapons called Sugatras, has led to a community devoted purely to the concept of "Fashionframe" or making their Warframes look either like something that strolled right off of the runways at Paris or like they just kitbashed their equipment from the nearest garbage can. The fact that many of these cosmetic items require the use of Microtransactions to acquire has also led to a meme that Fashionframe is the true endgame of Warframe.
  • Gundam Breaker has this as a gigantic part of its main appeal, the ability to make one's own custom model kit without having to mess with paint, glue, or knives. After assembling your Gunpla using parts for the head, torso, arms, legs, and backpack, you get to customize the paint job and add further stylizations like metallic chrome, weathering, and dust. Each successive game in the series added even more options: the second allowed players to paint weapons and change the color of eyes/camera sensors, while the third introduced Builders Parts, a huge list of extra parts ranging from purely cosmetic (like spikes and air ducts) to functional (including extra weapons like missile pods and swords) that can be placed pretty much anywhere you want on the model's body. Searching for Gundam Breaker 3 on Twitter will show just how insanely creative people can get, using the Builders Parts system to recreate Humongous Mecha from other franchises and even human characters like Spider-Man or Colonel Sanders.
  • In Club Penguin, players who had membership had access to various outfits and wigs they could use to customize their penguin.
  • In Little Flower Fairy, players can buy and get various outfits and wigs they can use to customize their fairy.

    Music 
  • In her original "Transcendence" music video, Lindsey Stirling is being used as one through wearing plain white and having various outfits projected onto her. She will even change her pose to fit them better. During the song, she realizes what is going on and gets out.

    Platform Games 
  • In Crystal's Pony Tale, the player can customize Crystal's mane, tail, and body colors.
  • In Disney Princess: Enchanted Journey, you can choose your character's skin tone, dress styles and colors, shoe styles and colors, and accessories.
  • The player character in Drawn to Life actually starts out as a mannequin. You are then required to draw what the actual thing looks like, from the shape of your hero to its colour (it's even possible to make the character an Invisible Streaker). With every hit, you lose some of the clothes and reveal the mannequin beneath it.
  • Goblin Sword: You can dress up the swordsman in a variety of different clothes, including new capes and hats.
  • In JumpJet Rex, there are many options for customizing Rex's appearance: the player can change his color, the appearance of his head, the color of his boots, and the color of the jet stream produced by his boots. According to the game's official website, over 4 million different combinations for his appearance are possible.
  • Mail Mole: Molty. You can dress him up in a variety of items bought from Rick's store. Each one can serve as a replacement for his glasses, hat, or mailbag.
  • In Super Mario Odyssey, the players can customize Mario's hat and "suits", many of which are references to games he had previously appeared innote 

    Puzzle Games 
  • Angry Birds 2: You can buy many hats for your birds to wear. In addition of them increased your birds' score multiplier, collecting the whole set of them gives you a slingshot upgrades.
  • Later games in the Diner Dash series gives you clothes between levels and a closet where you dress Flo.
  • The Mulan Animated Storybook PC game has an activity in which the player can mix and match different outfits for Mulan and Mushu. The player can then print the outfits out, and use them to dress some actual paper dolls that came packaged with the game.

    Rhythm Games 
  • The iDOLM@STER has the particular distinction of basically existing FOR this trope. Dressup and outfit swaps are an integral part of the experience, with lots of new outfits available as purchasable add-ons. Until Modern Warfare 2 put out the Map Pack, iDOLM@STER was the game that held the record for most DLC profits.
  • The Rock Band series and Guitar Hero: World Tour allow you to create a character and customize their appearance, as well as their instrument. Some gamers refer to this section of the game as "Pretty Pretty Princess", named for a dress-up board game by Milton Bradley. As in "We gotta stop, my fingers are falling off. Eh, guess I'll play Pretty Pretty Princess for a while."
  • Lilpri: Yubi Puru Hime Chen is an arcade game (which inspired an anime; see the article in question) where this is a main gameplay characteristic. Similar to Love and Berry (a similar game released by the same company), you use special trading cards to dress the character of your choice, after which you participate in a Rhythm Game in which the girls dance wearing the costumes you dressed them in.
  • Project DIVA is this. The player usually has to meet certain requirements to unlock new costumes, but they are still purely cosmetic (with the exception of Project Diva X, that grants all costumes and accessories different bonuses). Most songs - if not all, depending on the version you're playing - have costumes specifically designed to go with them. In Project Diva Arcade Future Tone and the Project Mirai spin-off series, you can even change the head of the models. In Future Tone, you can only swap heads with costumes designed for the same character you chose, in Project Mirai the only limitation is the gender of said character.
  • The arcade game named after the movie series Pretty Cure All Stars does this as well - there are purchasable physical cards that can be scanned in to change your chosen Cure's look to give them different outfits. Plus, they grant them bonuses.
  • Aikatsu! has this as its basis of the game. The game starts only after outfitting the chosen character (or in case of an ID is scanned beforehand, the player character) by scanning in special cards. Different cards cause slight difference in gameplay, namely the special appeals and score obtained.
  • The Pretty Series is yet another card-based outfit arcade rhythm game series. Notably, it shares the same developers with the Style Savvy series.
  • beatmania IIDX 19 Lincle, as well as successive games in the series, give you a "Q-Pro" character as an avatar. You can change how your Q-Pro looks, but you have to earn new parts either by spending Dellars/Friscos on them or by completing stamp sheets in Step Up mode as well as Step Up mode itself.
  • In BanG Dream! Girls Band Party!, by collecting cards you also unlock costumes that can be used to dress up the Live2D models that show up on your home screen and after lives, as well as the little chibi figures that show up while playing lives. In the beginning, only 3* and up rarity cards came with costumes, always based on the Trained art, but a later update retroactively gave costumes to 2* cards and all proceeding 2* cards come with them, too. The game occasionally opens up other costumes, particularly those that have appeared in stories already, too, such as the girls' training outfits.
  • Soundtrack Attack: The "edit" section has the Gem of choice on the left and what can be changed and put on them to the right — the outfits are full-body, only one accessory is equippable at a time, and the hair... is hair. What's put on them carries over to the cutscenes, title screen, and the gameplay.

    Role-Playing Games 
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails: From Trails of Cold Steel onwards, each party member can be equipped with an entirely different outfit ranging from unique outfits for every character to swimsuits.
  • Dragon Quest:
    • Dragon Quest III had the original Revealing Swimsuit (and the Magic Bikini), which could only be equipped by female party members. When worn, it would change the sprite of the party member wearing it to reflect it being worn.
    • Dragon Quest VIII lets you doll up Jessica, and only Jessica. The 3DS Updated Re Release did it for every party member depending on whether or not the character in question is wearing the full set, although Jessica still has the most costumes.
    • Dragon Quest IX lets you do this for the whole party.
  • The Elder Scrolls series has a surprising amount of this. For someone who takes the "Unarmored" skill (thus freeing up their clothing options considerably since they aren't covered/replaced by armor), Daggerfall has the widest variety of possible outfit combinations, with Morrowind in second, though Oblivion and Skyrim are no slouches either. Naturally, this is a major focus of the series' industrious Game Modding community, with countless mods available for each game adding outfits, hairstyles, and more.
  • White Knight Chronicles features a character creator so robust it was used to create every NPC in the game.
  • Dark Cloud 2 rewards the player with mix-and-match outfits (consisting of shoes, clothes, and hats/headdresses) that can be bought at stores or traded for Medals. Finishing the game once allows the player to choose from these as the characters' starting wardrobe in a new playthrough.
  • Fable II lets you pick from a relatively limited wardrobe, but offers a very wide variety of coloring options.
  • In Freedom Wars, The Sinner and their Accessory are very customizable, thanks to a massive variety of outfits (such as a Badass Longcoat, Cat-Themed Hoodies, and even a swimsuit as a reward for clearing your 1 million year life sentence), alternate variants of said outfits, stickers, accessories (as in eye-glasses, necklaces, wings, feathers, etc., not your Robot Buddy), and tons and tons of colors to boot too. In fact, both the Sinner and their Accessory can have two-tone hair if the player likes colorful hair.
  • Pokémon:
    • Pokémon Battle Revolution allows the player to customize the avatar's outfit, though the selection is so limited that the customization is often tantamount to a Palette Swap. Western releases allow the player to change the avatar's skin tone, as well; the Japanese release had Monochrome Casting.
    • The online Pokémon Global Link gives you a lot of outfit and background and accessory choices.
    • Pokémon X and Y is now finally introducing character customization to the main series, and it's been praised as being reasonably robust, at that. There are complaints on how the male protagonist has less clothing options than the female though.
    • Pokémon Sun and Moon expands on what was in X and Y by adding more options such as more skin tones and the ability to dye clothing you've bought.
  • Phantasy Star Universe and its offshoots allow for just about every inch of your character to be customized. Furthermore, clothing doesn't affect your stats, so there are no benefits or penalties for wearing what you want, preventing enforced Rainbow Pimp Gear.
  • Resonance of Fate has an extremely large number of customization options that you can uncover, win, or buy for clothing, hair colors, eye colors, and accessories, all of which are visible even in cutscenes.
  • Mitsumete Knight R: Daibouken Hen has this as one of its game mechanics.
  • Persona:
    • Persona 3: FES is odd about this. On one hand, you can get Yukari and Mitsuru to wear High-Cut Armor, have the guys wear The Shirt Of Chivalry and buy the party's winter, summer, and swimwear for outrageous prices. However, don't expect to see your comrades wear ponchos, bulletproof vests, aprons or tigerhide belts; they just resort to their default winter school uniform.
    • Persona 4 and Persona 5 lets you equip your party members with various casual clothes and school uniforms for Dungeon Crawling segments. The latter has DLC that allows you to dress them up in costumes from other Shin Megami Tensei games.
  • Job/Class system in Final Fantasy series also involves characters dressing in different ways (at least in battles).
    • Final Fantasy X-2 steps into the center of this trope, thanks to how girly the game's theme is. The jobs are literally called Dresspheres and can be changed in the middle of battle.
    • The 4 Heroes Of Light lets your characters wear different hats instead to gain abilities in addition of the game letting you change character's clothes when you change body equipments.
    • The first Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles game lets you paint and cut the fur of the Moogle that accompanies you in single-player mode. This actually serves a gameplay purpose as well, e.g. cutting his fur short will make him tire out less often in hot areas but more quickly in cold ones, and painting his fur makes him more likely to cast a particular spell. Painting his fur also determines which kind of map you will get on your GBA screen.
    • Final Fantasy XIII-2 allows you to add little pieces of clothing to your captured monsters. There was a minor reason to do this, so you can keep track of which one of the monsters on the screen is yours, but it's mostly just for decoration.
    • Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII has 92 different garbs for Lightning to switch in and out of, all of which have customizable colors. This is central to the gameplay, though, as each garb gives different stat perks and changes your battle strategy.
  • Inazuma Eleven initially has two uniforms, a coat/school uniform during random encounter and overworld navigation and Raimon Uniform when you play a soccer match. You can buy or get new uniforms to use in free matches.
  • Dark Souls: This has the community nickname of "fashion souls". The protective value of armor is reduced the more you level up and/or get better at the game (it's entirely possible, if difficult and tedious, to beat the game naked and unarmed), and soon enough won't really matter beyond keeping your equip load under the limit for fast rolling. Most players will end up collecting armor sets for cosplay value rather than their stats.
    • Rosabeth of Melfia in Dark Souls II is an NPC version of this. When you first find her (and cure her of petrification) she laments the destroyed state of her clothes and asks you for new ones. She'll wear anything you give her. Anything.
    • Fashionborne is even more commonplace than Fashion Souls, due to the combat system focusing on being a Fragile Speedster. Armor in Bloodborne doesn't really confer enough protection to bother, but most sets do have a really nice gothic aesthetic, perfect for showing off.
    • Elden Ring continues the tradition with its Elden Bling; while some armor pieces confer stat bonuses and armor poise values are important, the stunning variety of armor sets allow for a whole lot of personal choice in attire. The game even has some pieces designed specifically for cosplay, such as a mask of Half-Wolf Blaidd to go with his set so you can pretend to be a wolfman.
  • Endless Ocean and its sequel let you customize your diver with different wetsuits, swimsuits, tanks, gear, hairstyles and colors for all that equipment.
  • Dragon's Dogma features plenty of interesting-looking armor and robes, though most of it is at least moderately practical (the occasional Breast Plate notwithstanding). Like Dark Souls above, it can be played as a "medieval dress-up simulator", particularly from the second playthrough on: the Absurdly High Level Cap means that your stats could easily get high enough that you'd be perfectly fine walking about naked, and so you can wear whatever you want.
  • Despite the ultra-simplified style of Akira Toriyama's works, Dragon Ball Online does allow this to an extent. You have options of changing the character's face and hair at the beginning, there are a variety of clothing equipment items that affect your stats, and if you're either very lucky or very rich (either in in-game zeni or cash), then you can purchase Dogi; non-stat-affecting items that are worn over normal equipment that enables you to dress up like many of the characters in the series.
  • Spiritual Successor Dragon Ball Xenoverse features this as well, along with a surprisingly robust character customization system.
  • Dungeon Maker II: The Hidden War, unlike its predecessor Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground, actually alters the player character's appearance when they change their armor.
  • In Tales of Xillia not only can you buy the expensive costumes from the DLC on the PS3 version, you can find accessories scattered throughout the game and earn them through sidequests. They can be adjusted in a number of ways too. You can enlarge the accessory, change positions of it, and rotate it.
  • The Mass Effect series has done this fairly consistently:
    • Mass Effect 2 introduced a more integrated customization system that allowed the player to change several elements of their armor, including the color of the ambient lights, color pattern and mix-and-match armor pieces. Likewise, the game also introduced the aspect of finding armor pieces while on missions, potentially making it a scavenger hunt to fill out one's roster of armor. Both this and the following game also changed squadmate customization from equipping any suit of armor at any time to certain outfits that were either unlocked by completing their loyalty mission or buying "alternate appearance pack" DLC's. Players could potentially go through missions sporting ridiculously-coloured armor.
    • Mass Effect 3 goes even farther with this aspect, giving players the chance to obtain armor sets based on Dragon Age (Blood Dragon Armor) and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (Reckoner-Knight Armor), as well as more squadmate outfits (some of which are done to directly harken back to some aspect of the squadmate's history, like Liara's "Matriarch" armor from the Collector's Edition) and armors that were solely put in just to look cool.
  • South Park: The Stick of Truth, where your character is literally a paper cutout. You start off with a few basic design choices, unlocking more along the way. That said, different costumes have different perks and armor values, so there is an element of strategy to it as well. South Park: The Fractured but Whole continues with new clothes and superhero costumes to customize your character with. Unlike in the previous game, the player's stats are independent from the costume they're wearing, making it a more pure example of this trope.
  • The Last Story uses armor as your characters' default "clothing." You can not only customize which pieces of the armor show, but you can also colorize all the individual parts to your liking. A special "colorizer" can also be unlocked that out-and-out makes your character's clothes invisible, so you can have them be a Walking Shirtless Scene or even naked (well, with undergarments).
  • Fantasy Life has many outfits for the player (some of which can be dyed) and the possibility to change its hairstyle and hair color.
  • In the Nancy Drew game The Phantom of Venice, you can change every component of Nancy's outfit from wig to shoes. It's very easy to grind for money by dancing at Club Micio, to the point where you can buy out the entire stock at Costumes by Vera, then go home to stand in front of the wardrobe and just play.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
  • Two Worlds and its sequel offer a fairly wide variety of armor and clothing styles, and the sequel allows you to purchase dyes to change their colors.
  • MeiQ: Labyrinth of Death: As the game continues on, central heroine Estra will obtain forms based on her party members (and there are two optional DLC forms). These forms not only change her appearance, but also alter her stats, elemental affinities, attack type in battle, and her passive skills.
  • In Horizon Zero Dawn, the only way you can give your mountain-dwelling protagonist clothing that covers her arms is by buying the DLC. Is it cheap? No. Will it stop her from whining about the cold every ten minutes? No. Is it worth it? Yes.

    Simulation Games 
  • Animal Crossing:
    • In the main games, you can buy (with in-game currency) shirts, hats, masks, and accessories at Able Sisters, and apply them to your character. Or even try designing your own shirts. New Leaf adds pants and skirts to the Able Sisters' inventory and also lets you buy socks and shoes from Kicks' shoe store.
    • In the spin-off game Happy Home Designer, you can customize your character's appearance by choosing various hairstyles, hair color, eye shapes, and even skin tone at the beginning of the game.
  • Fishing Resort for the Wii has a huge number of shirts, pants, shoes, hats, and accessories for the Mii-like fishermen.
  • Fortune Street has various Nintendo and Dragon Quest characters but forces Miis for online. However, the Miis have several clothes and effects from the mundane to Nintendo and Dragon Quest costumes.
  • Harvest Moon:
    • Harvest Moon: Animal Parade allows you to choose from a selection of outfits for your character, with both basic outfits and an array of accessories. You can also buy clothes for your children later in the game, and some outfits and accessories are child-exclusive.
    • Harvest Moon: A New Beginning also has a huge array of outfits, which you must "create" with the appropriate materials (or rather, get the tailor to create). Although there's no accessories, you can also change your hair, eye color, and skin color.
  • Harvest Town allows players to change their character's hairstyle, clothes, and skin colour.
  • Idol Manager: Once the agency has a dressing room and a stylist, the outfit and hairstyle the idols got upon portrait generation can be swapped out for the other options available for their poses. This allows the player to give all their idols the same Palette Swap and sometimes create a better match between clothing and hair accessories.
  • Littlewood: Completing certain requirements will unlock the Beauty Salon, which sales a mix of Character Customization options that were not picked upon creation and entirely new options. It's also the only place in which the Player Character's hair and outfit can be changed.
  • In Lonesome Village, the player can customize Wes' appearance with several different outfits that can be bought from shops or found around the village as treasure.
  • Ludia's ports of classic game shows, such as The Price Is Right and Press Your Luck, allow players to customize the clothing of their contestant avatars.
  • Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times offers you a variety of shirts, pants, skirts, shoes, coats, dresses, hats and accessories to choose from. And yes, since we know you're going to try: You can put the male characters in skirts.
  • MechWarrior allows players to customize their mech's appearance starting with the third game. In Mechwarrior 3, 4, and Living Legends players are limited to predesigned camouflage patterns, while Online allows players to select a paint pattern (stripes, digital camo, flames, etc) and customize its colors, ranging from realistic camouflage colors to neon pink and yellow.
  • My Child Lebensborn has a realistic take on the trope. The child only owns four outfits for the entire game, two of which are too damaged to be worn at the beginning of the game and need to be mended during gameplay to be usable. Those same outfits can get dirty, will get damaged enough to need mending again during the course of the game and changing them when it's unnessecary wastes a time unit that could have been used for other childcare chores, which are frequently more urgent for the child's well-being. There is also a comb that can be purchased at the store, will unlock two alternate hairstyles for the child and costs about as much as the cooking ingredient bundles for semi-expensive meals. Actually using the comb will use up a time unit, as well.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Gardens: You can choose your pony's body, mane, and tail colors. You can also do the same with Ivy and give her clothes.
  • In No Umbrellas Allowed, you can buy new clothes at Nice T and change your hairstyle at Ajik Hair, both of which are needed in order to move into a better house.
  • Pou: One of the main advertised features of the game is the ability to dress up your alien pet, giving it clothes and hats and changing it's body color.
  • Rune Factory Frontier allows your character's equipment to show on your character. Said equipment, after the game forces you to play as a boy, seems to have been designed for a female character.
  • The Sims:
    • The Sims 2 allows for a variety of customization with its thriving modding community. Some players spend more time making Sims than actually playing.
    • In The Sims 3 you can actually change the default color of any outfit or accessory to any color combination possible. Not to mention you can give the clothes any texture or pattern available—even if it's not for clothes! Wooden pants, anyone? Additionally, the Ambitions expansion pack allows your character to work as a stylist, which takes you to a version of the Create-a-Sim that allows you to change things like hair, makeup, clothing, etc., but not physical appearance or personality traits, for other Sims.
    • The Sims 4 dropped the ability to fully customize colors and textures in favor of choosing between preselected color schemes and designs, but otherwise heavily expanded the customization of the bodies underneath those outfits. A later free patch even introduced the option to create transgender sims and made it possible for sims to wear masculine or feminine clothes no matter their gender.
    • When you create your sim in MySims, you get a limited variety of outfits, even more limited by the fact that each outfit is a single unit rather than individual articles. Whenever you become a commercial Sim's best friend, you gain an outfit like that sim's.
    • In the MySims sequels, the outfits are limited by sex, and new outfits are obtained via story events, opening chests, and, in Agents, completing dispatch missions.
    • The Sims Medieval has a lot of customization options as well, probably as many as The Sims 3 as far as physical appearance and hair. Even unnatural colors for hair and facial hair are allowed, despite the "medieval" setting—though unlike modern-set Sims games, these don't appear on NPCs. On the other hand, clothes are limited by profession, and some professions don't have a lot of options, though there is a cheat to disable that.
    • The console Spin-Off The Urbz enforces this, as the main character must change into different district-based categories of outfits whenever they visit a new district to be accepted by the local residents.
  • In Spiritfarer, Stella can change her clothes using Alice's wardrobe, which are Palette Swaps of her default outfit.
  • Style Savvy is a Nintendo DS game series more or less based around this trope. You run a boutique, and get to dress your own avatar as often as you want. There's also a hair salon and makeup shop in the game.
  • Virtual Villagers: one of the tasks in VV2-VV5 is to build a 'clothing hut'; afterwards you can choose different outfits for your villagers on payment of Research Points. Although there's no clothing hut in VV1, a Cheat Code (probably left in by the game's designers by accident) is widely known which allows you to change a villager's clothes in that game as well.

    Sports Games 
  • Most of the Tony Hawk games.
  • NBA Hangtime, the sequel to NBA Jam, has a Create Player mode that allows you to make a character as tall or as heavy as you want, what they look like (ranging from a scary clown to Bigfoot wearing a Viking helmet), what team's jersey they wear, and whether or not they have a big head.
  • Pangya, a Free-to-Play Korean online golf game, combines this with Bribing Your Way to Victory. The game offers a slew of playable character models (most of them female), with accessories and additional characters available using two kinds of currencies: one collected in-game and the other purchased via Real Life money.
  • Many collective sports games (such as Pro Evolution Soccer) give you the option of creating your player. While clothing is basically restricted to the team uniform of your choice, every other physical aspect is editable to a point real-life athletes can well be recreated.
  • In Arc Style: Baseball!! 3D, you can change the looks of your team's uniform with four parameters. And no, you can't remove any of it.

    Stealth-Based Games 
  • Hitman: In the World of Assassination Trilogy, you are able to start most missions in whatever suit you have unlocked, some mundane like 47's signature suit, some ostentatious like the Summer Suave suit (a patterned shirt, sunglasses and hat), and some that are plain ridiculous, like the "Santa 47 suit" (A Santa outfit complete with fake beard) or the "Futo suit" (A ninja outfit based on Futo from Mini Ninjas).
  • Metal Gear:
    • Although the Body Armor in Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty has a gameplay purpose (reducing damage to Raiden), it's also the only item that is reflected on Raiden's character model during cutscenes.
    • Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater allows the player to change Snake's camo and face paint, which affects how well you are able to blend into your surroundings. For example, Snake will be an easy target for guards to see if he wears a red camo while hiding in the forest, but he'll have a better chance of not getting caught if he's in green. Some camo patterns even have special features, like the Cold War camo, which has a hammer-and-sickle design on the front and the Stars and Stripes on the back and wearing it results in enemies hesitating to shoot Snake as long as he's facing them, but becoming hostile when he turns away. Many of the more useful camo designs are earned by beating bosses in a specific way, and can be carried over to subsequent playthroughs...including a tuxedo, which you can wear in the game's opening sequence so that your mentor can reprimand you for your bad choice of camouflage.
    • Metal Gear Solid V does this in both of its installments. In the Ground Zeroes prologue, the player can earn extra skins based on several feats, including the Raiden "White Armor" and "Commando Armor" variants, as well as the "Classic Snake" and "Classic Gray Fox" skins for Big Boss. These skins also import into The Phantom Pain, which has many more variants of clothing for Snake (including several that are only included with the Collector's Edition).
  • Several games in the various Tom Clancy franchises:
    • Ghost Recon: Future Soldier allows the player to customize their team with different weapon camos and goggles. The Deluxe Edition of the game even advertises this as a selling point, referencing the fact that the edition contains 108 extra headgear options and 2 exclusive weapon skins (despite the fact that it has no impact in the game).
    • Splinter Cell: Blacklist gives you many customization options for Sam Fisher, including mix-and-match armor, lethal/non-lethal loadouts and various cosmetic changes, right down to the color of your goggles/suit lights and the camouflage pattern. However, you have to buy them with funds received from missions, despite the camouflage not having any viable purpose in gameplay.

    Time Management Games 
  • Cooking Diary: You can change your character's hair, eye color, facial features and their clothing to your liking. Many in game events give the playes opportunities to get new clothing and hairstyle options.

    Turn-Based Strategy 
  • Advance Wars: Dual Strike lets you buy the option to change your character's colors, and if you get them to level 10 (it's 1000 exp per level), instead of getting new powers like levels 1-9, you get a new casual set of clothes to change into.
  • Disgaea 5: Alliance of Vengeance lets you unlock the ability to fully customize character sprite palettes right down to the RGB settings.
  • Though customization of the teams in the Worms series were limited to flags, tombstones and voices (and hats in the 4th generation onwards), Worms 4: Mayhem introduced the option to give your wormy team its unique outfit, though concerning the anatomy of these creatures, it was limited to hats, eyewear, facial hair and gloves. More clothes could be unlocked by buying them from the in-game shop with the cash you earned in the Story Mode.
  • XCOM: Enemy Unknown and XCOM 2 allow you to customize your soldiers' hairstyles, facial hair for the men, race, skin color, hair color, language, armor style, armor color, with additional customizations unlocked with new armor upgrades. 2 takes it even farther, allowing you to apply colors and patterns to armor and weapons piece-by-piece instead of a single pattern for everything.

    Visual Novels 
  • In Long Live the Queen, Princess Elodie can wear various outfits, which are unlocked by gaining at least 25 points in all three subjects in a particular category of her education. Accounting gives her a tuxedo, for example, while Royal Demeanor unlocks her royal coronet, and Lumen skills unlock her Magical Girl costume. These clothes aren't simply a Cosmetic Award, either; they confer a potentially vital +10 bonus to all subjects in their respective category.
  • Love Nikki - Dress Up Queen makes the trope the center of its plot; it has the titular protagonist be sent to a world where every conflict is solved by means of looking more stylish than the rival. There are thousands of different items, with more being added all the time. That said, high scoring outfits generally don't look too good.
    • Its sequel, Shining Nikki continues the story with Nikki being sent back in time in a further attempt of saving Miraland; while conflicts in past Miraland are solved in... More conventional ways, by that time styling is still a source of mysterious and still unknown powers which Nikki is tasked with mastering in order to save the world from imminent destruction.
  • Princess Debut allows you to change your dress before you practice and compete dancing.
  • Just about every game in the Shall We Date? series features this. The heroine's appearance is presented as the default for the player and it can be changed with a variety of clothes, accessories, background effects and other miscellaneous objects. Anything you own can boost your charm level, which gives you an advantage in the mini-games. Their recent installments also have charm levels for the love interests, which also helps in the mini-games.
    • Obey Me! – One Master to Rule Them All! is an exception where you can only dress up your selected love interest instead of the player character. You can only choose from a selected amount of outfits that are available.
  • Arithmetic visual novels have a similar function. However, they recycle the same model for the heroine's avatar along with the same default options for the face and hair. The avatar items you choose for your character can increase your charm level as well as your "reputation points" for the love interest. While you can increase your reputation points by making the right choices and using special items, the items you have in the love interest's special place (room, suite, garden, etc.) could give you an extra push.

    Wide Open Sandbox 
  • The video game Bully features a fairly extensive wardrobe of clothing for the main character, which is purchased in-game from specialty stores. Since certain articles of clothing are associated with different cliques and subcultures, wearing the wrong clothes could get you laughed at or attacked on sight.
  • A prominent feature of the Dead Rising games is the ability to fight zombies while dressing the player character in various silly outfits including undersized children's clothes, women's dresses and mascot costumes. They even show up in cutscenes, with the potential to create inadvertent comedy during serious scenes.
  • Generation Zero initially seems to limit you to a bunch of preselected outfit stereotypes based off of 80's fashion (e.g. popular, nerf, punk, greaser, etc.), but your options expand when you reach the first safe house.
  • The Video Game adaptation of The Godfather allowed the player to alter his character's appearance at the beginning of the game and immediately after every load. It was impressively detailed, giving the player control over such things as the character's dimples and hairline.
  • Since as far back as Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, you have the option of customizing the player character's outfit. But while said game only had a few options of whole ensembles, San Andreas, IV and V kick it up more than ten notches by giving you a really wide gamut of individual articles and the ability to mix-and-match them at your leisure, and that's not counting the exclusive costumes. GTA Online goes especially further with the ability to have female player characters as well as thousands of items of clothing and tattoos to choose from.
  • In Go Vacation, you can find clothes for your avatar to wear in secret treasure chest hidden in the resorts. You can't wear all the clothes if you're playing as a Mii though. There's also a laid-back minigame called "Build a Snowman" where you simply get to design a snowman and decorate them with found items.
  • IMVU, a virtual chat where you can customize EVERYTHING, and making your own items can be done simply by changing the texture of an existing item and adding it to your catalog, which you earn in-game money for.
  • LittleBigPlanet's Sackboy is a virtual canvas doll.
  • Minecraft:
    • Players on the Java Edition or the Windows 10, iOS, and Android versions of Bedrock Edition can customize their skin any way they wish within the bounds of a blocky humanoid. Some unofficial skin editors have assets to assist in creating skins.
    • Bedrock Edition version 1.13.1 adds a character creator to allow users in the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PlayStation 4 versions to create custom skins using premade assets.
  • No More Heroes lets you change Travis's jacket, t-shirt, shades, jeans, and belt. There's even a special pink outfit based on Pure White Lover Bizarre Jelly available right before the final battle. Of course, you just have to wear the full ensemble while fighting the boss. It's the law.
  • Red Dead Redemption 2 has Arthur Morgan, the most customizable Rockstar protagonist since CJ. His hair, beard, clothes, and even weight can be changed by the player. Also, John Marston of RDR1 has all of Arthur's customization options in the Playable Epilogue, with even more added in.
  • Saints Row, like White Knight Chronicles, features such a robust character creator that every character in the game was made with it - hence a ton of tutorials on the Internet on how to make the player character look just like Johnny Gat or other major NPCs.
  • Second Life, in which users can make their own paper doll clothes and sell them for real-life money. Obviously this leads to there being more items than anyone could ever look at in a lifetime...
  • Spore has an interesting variation: The features of your creatures, vehicles, and buildings range from 100% functional (cell stage) to 100% cosmetic (space stage). For example, in the animal stage, plumage and other decorations give you bonuses to befriending other animals but become purely cosmetic when you reach the tribal stage, where your creatures start wearing clothes. The Galactic Adventures Expansion Pack includes new clothing items for the space stage which increase your natural creature abilities for adventures.
  • In Unturned, you start the game completely naked but there are no drawbacks or penalties for being remaining so—save for a cripplingly small inventory. Thus armor, backpacks, and camouflaged suits are the only articles of clothing with a function beyond cosmetic customization. There are many different outfits to choose from, like Canadian Mountie, business suits, or lab coats.

    Web Browser-based 
  • Quite a few official Barbie games do this.note 
  • Several Disney Princess games do this, including a free version on the official Disney Princess page.
  • The eLouai Candybar Doll Maker.
  • The HeroMachine is a similar concept. It contains a large number of parts to create fantasy, sci-fi and superhero characters.
    • The alpha version of HeroMachine 3 can be found here.
    • Also there's Fabrica de Herois which is updated by one of the Co-Creators of Heromachine's predecessor, Hero-O-Matic
  • Hero Forge takes the Hero Machine concept to 3D. You can choose from an immense variety of races, customize their faces and body types, mix and match parts, add horns and wings, choose their colors and gear, and pose them however you see fit. You can even have it 3D-printed as a miniature for a fee.
  • Kinsaki (offline)
  • Solia Online
  • Ernya (offline since 2015)
  • Roliana, a.k.a. "Roli".
  • Celania. (offline)
  • Chicken Smoothie: Players can dress up their pets using items, which they can get from events, the store, or the lost and found. Multiple items only fit on certain species.
  • Crysandrea, a.k.a. "Cry". The original site went offline in 2013 but lives on in spirit at Sapherna and Crysandrea.org.
  • Meez was in 3D, though it went offline towards the end of 2017.
  • In Kingdom of Loathing, you have eight equipment slots (hat, shirt, pants, weapon, offhand and three accessories), but due to the limited graphics, your avatar changes only if you equip every item in a group (usually two or three) that belongs to a preset list of "outfits".
  • Walfas's Create.swf (short for Create A Touhou Project Character).
  • A few Web sites specialize in hosting homemade doll games. You can find them through The Big KiSS Page.
  • Charat.me boasts several robust character and avatar creation tools.
  • Picrew has hundreds of user-submitted character and portrait creators for use on social media.
  • Newgrounds has a large section for these, mostly NSFW.
  • Varus Online
  • Zantarni
  • The Customize Avatar feature of Gaia Online. There are with thousands of item poses already available and more and more coming out all the time. In addition to customizing outfits, users can also change the hair and eye styles and colors, along with skin tones. There are even body modification items, (like tails) skin item poses, and even potions that let the user change the avatar's species to something like elf or vampire.
  • Subeta has a feature similar to the Customize Avatar feature of Gaia Online, known as the Wardrobe. Often a case of Awesome, but Impractical, because some outfits can end up costing hundreds of millions of in-game points, but do nothing except look good. The sole exception is zombie 'skins', which permit the wearer to access the 'Shadowglen Underground' area outside of the month of February.
  • Users of DeviantArt seem to like making these. Most of the Flash -> Interactive category consists of these programs.
  • Neopets underwent a major site revamp to let users to this to their Neopets. There's also a dress-up game in-site called Fashion Fever.
  • Chloria Beta - pretty much became Vapor Ware.
  • Kindom of Knuffel. Avatars without lowerbodies.
  • Menewsha, a.k.a. "Mene"
  • Midorea. Very small community, very tall avatars.
  • poupéegirl. Part Fashion Magazine, part Kawaisa, and 100% delightful Engrish. Link.
    • There is a downloadable fan-made Poupée dress-up simulator called Pupemodel that can be used as a dress-up game if you have all of the item codes.
  • TinierMe Beta
  • Everskies. Notably, all the items are made by other players.
  • Doll Divine
  • Stardoll
  • There's one on Kongregate.
  • DirectKISS
  • Looklet is a fashion community that uses faces of real models, real branded clothes and the like. They even host contests where prizes (real clothing) can be won sometimes.
  • Ma Bimbo, and its former English version, Miss Bimbo.
  • My Little Pony has some official ones:
  • Chibi Pixel Doll. It even allows users to submit their own items!
  • The Ford website has its own Mustang customizer for the sake of creating your own Cool Car with various options and sub-models to work from (GT/V6/Boss 302/Shelby GT500), the cars can even be stored in a garage if you link up with your Facebook account, this allows you to compete for comparisons between two models, winning by popular vote. If your muscle car gets a high enough rank and you have enough points, you can even enter to have a chance to win an actual Mustang of the one you designed.
  • SP-Studio, a German fan-made South Park creator. Still popular since 2002; there is a forum where users can request new items and monthly themed creation contests.
  • UglyDolls has the Uglydolls Factory, a website connected to the movie's website, where players can create their own Uglydolls. A few of the creations made from this game show up in the movie's end credits.

    Webcomics 
  • Kid Radd has one for Sheena.
  • In El Goonish Shive, this is used as the basis for virtual censorship when Sarah is naked during the "Nanase Craft And The Crypt of Zappiness" storyline.

    Other 

  • FaceMaker for the Apple ][ is the Ur-Example, dating back to 1983. As the name indicates, the game is about designing a face with customizable eyes, ears; etc. There's also a "Simon Says" Mini-Game which players can use the face for. The game was intended for very young players, akin to a virtual Spiritual Adaptation of Mr. Potato Head.
  • Dolling is a type of pixel art that concentrates on doing just this. Dollers will make "bases", or naked bodies (naughty bits optional), and other dollers will make clothes and hair for the bases. There's a lot of focus on making the dolls as intricate and realistically shaded as possible.
  • KiSS (Kisekae Set System), "digital paper dolls" software system, started back in 1991, on PC-98. See an article with overview on DeviantArt, or this one, with history and list of early software.
    • Just to rub in its Fun with Acronyms side, the event-handling Scripting Language extension is called "French-KiSS". Since the whole point is a plain data/software standard, Linux repositories got one of these, too — GnomeKiss.
    • Of course, it's only the basic use — the "image viewer with transparency and real-time manipulation of overlapped pictures" functionality is applicable more widely than dressing humanoid characters — from the obvious counterpart hobbies (Pimped-Out Car or Gun Accessories) to things like assembly instructions. There are things like a coat-of-arms creator and (in the scripted variety) games.
  • And the 3D design versions. Poser was originally designed to give classic line-and-brush artists a proxy model when they couldn't get a live one in their studio. Now the community is almost exclusively graphic artists, with many designing clothes, and selling through Renderosity (or Renderotica), DAZ3D, Renderhub and many other sites.
  • In Shades of Milk and Honey the town's tailor has a magical version of this, to show potential customers how a dress that isn't even made yet could look on them.
  • Before it became unavailable to use online, Walfas had create.swf, which allowed users to make their own shorts and flashes.
  • a remaster version of retro shoot 'em up game ESP Ra.De. is the combination of An Interior Designer Is You and this trope. It has a Version-Exclusive Content called Irori’s Room (いろりの部屋), where players can customize not just their costumes, but also their rooms (there are 3 characters available: Yuusuke, Irori and JB). They have to complete some missions to get in-game currency for buying furnitures and stuffs.
  • Bombergirl, a spin-off of the Bomberman series, features the agility to change various costume items, accessories, and props the titular Bombergirls can use. Certain costumes can also change the character portraits to match the outfits being worn.
  • In Don't Hug Me I'm Scared, "Digital Style," which dresses up Duck Guy's Digital Avatar in various outfits, is one of the three (and only three) things the digital world allows the characters to do (repeatedly, in increasingly rapid succession).
  • Lacey Games: In the first episode Lacey's Wardrobe, The player helps Lacey picking up cute outfits on specific occasions. It played as typical dress-up game, until the Stalker shows up. It gets worse from there.

Alternative Title(s): Dress Up Game

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