Toca Boca is a hair simulator game where the goal is nothing, more akin to a sandbox aimed at ages 5-12 to play around with hair styling and have fun messing with the character’s hair. Toca Boca is a franchise I have a lot of childhood memories with, and I used to play with some of their old hair and food simulators, so I knew looking back at one of these games would be good for my research and inspiration.
- Platform played: IOS / Netflix
- Total Playtime: 1hr
- Genre: Sandbox
- Goal: Play around, make cool or crazy styles; experiment
Why did I choose this particular game?
I like how it had an aimless gameplay loop, so I could play with the characters’ hair as much as possible without having a “fail state”. Since the game was one of the modern iterations, I knew they would have more diverse hair types. If you focus enough, you can make a lot of cool hairstyles, similar to how dressing up in Miitopia is, where you can make actual, realistic hairstyles. The game also incentivises you to take advantage of the cool ways to dress up your character by laying out different curls, combs and sprays of choice, where you can do anything to your character’s hair. You can go wacky with it or actually style it realistically (which is what I attempted to do…)
Aspects of the game I like
- I like how the character set-up is just like how it is as a hairdresser and barber shop, and it’s the exact perspective I’d like for my own game (front-facing).
- I love the way the characters react to you dying their hair, cutting, etc. I can imagine a game character from one of my ideas doing the same thing.
- The mirror, being a way to see the background characters/objects, could be a cool function in a game.
What inspirations did I take from this game? (Mostly for Prototype 1)
- I love how stylised the characters are, which is the goal for my game as well.
- I can imagine quick-time events inspired by the way the hair is being styled, etc. – instead of the character just reacting randomly, hair being pulled too hard = quick time event to tell the auntie or you suffer in silence (get debuffed?)
- You can fiddle around with the objects around the mirror and trigger different dialogue with it.
Recreating real-life hairstyles in the game!
I wanted to see if I could recreate some hairstyles I’ve seen on Pinterest in the game. They aren’t that accurate, but the fact that I could play around to get them looking somewhat close was cool.
Shoulder Length Braid Bob
Plaited Long Box Braids
