Kicking off October and to add to the hype of the Costume Jam, I reached out to prominent independent developers in the world of dress-up games, to ask each a few questions about the genre and the part they've played in it. The very first response came from the artist and programmer behind Pastelkatto Games, previously known as Missangest Games. Pastelkatto's enchanting creations are celebrated for their boundless imagination, fantastical themes, and unwavering commitment to embracing diverse body types and abilities.

Some of Pastelkatto's classic Flash games are still playable on Candy's World; however, she is also on a mission to resurrect these gems, breathing new life into them by converting them to HTML5 so they can once again be made accessible directly on their website.

Enjoy this interview series as an exploration of the dress-up game genre as a whole and the unique role that each developer plays within it. Let's dive into the magic!

When and where did you get your start making dress-up games? How do those origins compare to how dress-up games are now?

Honestly I can't quite remember when I started, it must have been around 2011 when I started playing around with Adobe Flash. It started as fan art games just for fun but I ended up getting contacted by another dress up game developer that told me that I could start earning money from them and from there I started making them a little more seriously. I find that these days it's significantly harder to get into dress-up game development. Back then there was a lot of tutorials on deviantart that made it super easy for just about anyone to to them and thanks to that we had a wide variety of dress up games as far as both themes and art styles goes. While we have meiker and picrew to help people dabble into dress up game development, we still mostly have companies or a few indie devs making games and personally I quite miss the old passion projects.

What do you consider to be your specialty as a creator and curator of dress-up games?

I try my best to offer as many customization options as possible in my games. Sadly I've had to reduce the amount of options to be able to produce games faster, but I always try my best to provide big games with a higher replay value. I tend to value the same when I look for games to publish on my website, sometimes I will make exceptions if the art style looks really neat.

You’ve been at this for long enough that this is a full-time job. What does a typical work day look like for you?

Sadly at this point it no longer is. Revenues have been rough the past year and I'm currently studying full time instead and squeeze in game development whenever I have some time to spare. However back when it was my full time job I'd treat it as any other 9-5 job, starting in the morning and keep going at it until evening. I'd alternate between drawing the graphics, assembling the assets and writing code so I wouldn't sit and do the same thing for hours, I've found it helped me to stay focused for longer.

This may be a touchy question, but what relationship have you had with your player base or users?

I have some of my users hanging in my discord group where we chat like friends, otherwise it's mostly communication through the comment section on the website or feedback by email. I also offer some perks for my patreon supporters such as being able to submit themes and even individual items in the games, I love being able to involve supporters in the proccess! Admittedly when I started out I had a hard time taking criticism but these days I see it as the valuable feedback it can be.

Where do you think the genre is going in the future? What would you personally like to see more of?

That's a good question. Lately I've been thinking of the rise in AI. Will people start using AI to generate images instead of dress up games? Maybe some will, but it's quite a different experience than playing a dress up game so I hope that these games will stay strong. Looking back at the origins of dress up games which I believe would be the old school paper dolls, this concept has been around for a long time and simply evolves with the times. We simply have to be prepared to change with it just like we had to when flash went down and we all had to find alternative routes forward. As mentioned before, I love the passion projects. I love that meiker has made it easier for beginners to get into it and I hope to see more indie devs in the future providing unique experiences!

You've been hard at work reviving old games while making others with new themes. I absolutely love some of the recent niches you've filled, like Space Nobility and Space Western, and I'm so happy to see the superhero one back! Is there any revival or game topic in particular that you're really hoping to get done at some point?

I let my patrons submit and vote for the new game themes so it's largely thanks to them that I go for these themes! The last voting period there was actually a theme that came at a solid second place and I hope will be voted top in the future, it was cyberpunk! There's also a couple of games I've done a long time ago that I'd love to completely redo, like the ghost creator and demon creator!

The next interview will hopefully be released next weekend! Follow me to be notified of when I post!

-Theta

Banner by @game-s!

Hello, Newgrounds! If you don’t know me already, my name is Theta, and I’m the ghost who posts, baby! With Halloween coming, everyone’s thinking of a costume - which makes it a perfect time to resurrect a piece of internet history! Dollmakers and dress-up games were a staple of the early days of web games, but they’re still clinging to life even beyond the grave of Flash! So I’ve decided to launch a jam to celebrate the spooky season with some old-school internet flair!

The challenge is simple: Make a dress-up game with a twist in its game mechanics. It can be something as simple as having the character react to what you put them in, or something as complicated as a whole narrative game where dressing up is the main gameplay. Outfit challenges, minigames to get more clothes, selling to customers, the sky’s the limit! Spooky themes are encouraged!

• Deadline: October 31st at 11:59 PM
• Rules: No shovelware, no NSFW, no hateful content, stick to the NG rules about AI art.
• How to participate: Tag your entry with costumejam2023, and I’ll look through the entries after the deadline has passed!

Alright! Put any questions you have on this post! It’s showtime!

Update: Just because I wanted to, I came up with a list of examples of regular dress-up games with additional mechanics, from both the old era and the new. It's probably going to keep being updated. Enjoy!

The big list

Wanted to make a quick announcement and give a shoutout to @MJsShowtime for being my 275th fan! What do y’all think I should do when I hit 300?

Did I ever promise publicly that I'd be making music to go with the Rom Reaper Creepypasta? I can't remember, but I did say that to some friends who were on the team, and two tracks are done, with one being posted to YouTube now!

Being a remix, this isn't going to get put up on Newgrounds, but others with original content will, so stay on the lookout!

-Cass

UPDATE: Next track is out! Check out “Old Derrick” on both NG and YouTube!

BONUS: Since this is also tangentially related to Treasure Island, here's some sketches of reaction faces for my OC Daisy, by @themaskedmonocle. I was going to do the coloring, but I never finished them and am not going to for multiple reasons. Enjoy!

Greetings from Genesis Robotics again!

I've just put the finishing touches (for now) on four Character.AI chatbots of antagonists from lesser-known media. These bots, as always, are works in progress, so send feedback if you want to!

Miles Cedars (Alton Towers' The Smiler) - Chat here!

Ludwig Von Tökkentäkker (CarnEvil, 1998 video game) - Chat here!

Bierce (Dark Deception) - Chat here!

Maak (Dark Deception) - Chat here!

Update: The Gold Watchers are here! Chat here!

Anyway, enjoy! Gimme your feedback and your funny screenshots too, if you'd like!

-Cass (Thetageist)

Hey! So it's apparently national or international superhero day, depending on who you ask, and I promised @totally-inkish I'd make another post promoing Calling All Heroes (first one was actually a pretty big success), but I forgot and it's late now and I'm all out of brain to properly write one.

So here's the basic info again, but in a shorter format in case that other one was too long for you.

• What is this?: An art collab/trading card game project. Themed around superheroes, villains, and other comic-book denizens. Bring your own OC or make a new one for the project!
• What do I need to do?: We're open to any kind of creator jumping in to help! Most of it will be card art, but the organizer has been planning on giving the Kickstarter page a trailer, which means voice actors, animators, and musicians!
• When's the deadline?: It's been pushed back to October to give us more time.
• What's the backer money going to?: Being able to print and sell physical packs of these cards! Afterwards, the money from selling the cards will go to the PA Equality Project, an LGBT charity local to the organizer.
• What if I can't make it in time?: We're planning on creating more "seasons" of these card packs, so if you need more time, you can add yours to the next one!
• Who do I go to for more questions?: If I can't answer something, I'll ping @totally-inkish. She organized it, after all, and so she can probably answer a lot more.

If you came here to debate me, don't reply *clap clap*

Have a good night, everyone!

-Cass

Greetings from Character.AI!

My experience with the site has been crazy recently. A week ago, I made a bot intended to predict the user's behavior in a role play scenario, and accidentally turned it into the best game master I've ever had, in all my years of role play. It took me on an engaging adventure over the course of three real-life days, and topped it all off with a bittersweet ending to the campaign, that simultaneously wrapped up the story and gave a reasonable explanation for all the things that I'd previously thought broke the immersion. So I couldn't just let the fun stop there.

I've prepared an update to this game master bot, intended to let you play out your own stories in the universe of that campaign and its unreleased spinoffs, as well as another GM bot that focuses on a horror atmosphere in various different settings (Rom Reaper included!) Both bots and the full story created by the original GM have been made public and are linked here for your enjoyment.

View my Character.AI profile - Genesis Robotics

Read the story - Cross of Lilith

Game master for Cross of Lilith's universe - Thinker

Horror game master, including for Rom Reaper's universe - Darkmind

Thanks again to @MeltyCat and the rest of the horde for introducing me to this site and helping me get started.

Happy adventuring, and stay tuned for more creations from Genesis!

-Cass

As you can probably tell by the lengthy hiatus, lack of engagement on the last post, and General being shut down, the Rom Reaper ARG is dead in the water.

(What was Rom Reaper? Check here!)

I'm still happy with how far it did get, and the attention it received at its height. We all had a really great time making the posts and adding to the story. Everyone involved was so creative and helpful, and we got so much interesting stuff out of the story, including drawings by @Tsnophaljakarax and @GJMARS of the Reapers themselves. Not to mention great jokes like Agent Skully and the boating party.

In the meantime, some friends of mine (god dammit, you all :P) have managed to get their payback for me pulling them into Newgrounds by pulling me into Character.AI - a website dedicated to creating AI chatbots based around characters, specific purposes, or both. I've had a rekindled interest in developing things, and have been getting my feet a little wet again with coding, so I'm already working on a few chatbots, most of whom have an overarching theme and universe to them that you'll get to taste once they're out! Stay tuned for this and other fun things as they're coming right up!

-Cass

Hey you! Do you want to design a hero or villain for a world of endless possibilities? Or do you have a hero or villain OC who you want to include in an epic battle between good and evil? Well, this is your chance!

@totally-inkish is hosting a trading card collab! Primarily themed around superheroes, this world is also home to living cartoons, aliens, vampires, robot assassins, and much more! We’re working on a Kickstarter campaign to be able to sell packs of these cards. You’ll get a physical copy of your own character card(s), and all proceeds from selling packs will go to the PA Equality Project, an LGBT organization local to the collab organizer.

Can’t draw? No problem! You can be part of the team that makes the marketing possible! Animators, musicians, voice actors and others are all welcome to pitch into the official trailer and other parts of the project.

So, what are you waiting for? The city of Strongstead Hills awaits you!

Got any questions or concerns? Leave a comment below and I will do my best to answer!

For more info, here’s the original Collab Forum post. Note that some of it has been changed since the making of this post, so when in doubt, just ask.

Well, yes, I am, but this is out-of-character Cass, and I wanted to talk about the series a bit, as well as thank everyone who helped me.

I started this serialized Creepypasta as I was coming off the end of another, much larger project that I had to abandon because the scope was far too big for what little business know-how I have. I wanted to do something much, much smaller to get at least one thing finished and out of my head. Truth be told, it’s not as exciting to write this as it is to imagine what it would look like as a game (and believe me, I do have an entire game in my head), but I have to maintain a certain degree of self-restraint in order to succeed. I may want to do everything, but I am not one of those people who can do anything.

That being said, it’s a pleasant surprise that this has actually worked out well so far. It’s been a long and hard battle to facilitate engagement with the posts, especially since they’re in General, where they can easily be flattened by a million other people’s trains of thought. But we’ve gotten it working, and made some modifications to prevent having to rely on an audience too much. Less of an ARG, I suppose.

Anyway.

Big thank you to the team who’s been acting as the other characters in the story of New Grounds, PA:

• @DrSevenSeizeMD - Seven Seize
• @Tritnew - Tritt Newman
• @GJMARS - Gemma Mars
• @Tsnophaljakarax - Fancy Jack
• @anothergamedev - Captain Chan

Special shoutout as well to @wonkypaws for being invested in the ARG across multiple posts, as well as @Taka for briefly being part of the cast before other time commitments got in the way.

And thanks as well to the team from the abandoned project, in no particular order:

@tee-dot-jay-dot, @Frostgale, @Tsnophaljakarax, @Doumierstar, @VoicesByCorey, @themaskedmonocle, @SquigglyVA, @JoshDytonVO, @VioletJosh, @VoroVoice, @Bleak-Creep, @SumOlives, @Sorayaya, and @WrapFX, who willingly took on the special responsibility to sit me down and kindly tell me I was an idiot.

In order to keep the ARG going, I resolve to be as optimistic about it as a child too young for NG who thinks that 10 followers makes them a celebrity. We will see this to the end.

New to the series? Click here!