Cosplay Club
The Summer of Demos - Day Thirteen
Cosplay is at the heart of modern fandom, with all kinds of colourful cosplayers at every convention and all over social media. If you like a character in a game or film or show, there’s a good chance someone out there is working on a costume a Halloween party could only dream of. Cosplay Club is all about the craft and community of cosplay, with a focus on magical girl designs.
Designing costumes is the focus of the game, with plenty of customisation options available in the demo and more to unlock in the story mode as development progresses on the full game. I decided to choose one of the templates and tweak it to make a blue-tinged Goth Lolita outfit. You can save costumes as Blueprints to bring out later on, but I found I was unable to proceed after downloading a previous Blueprint in the demo. There was also the option to download other people’s outfits via an alphanumeric code, but I imagine this will be more useful as the number of players grows. It would be ideal if there was a way to search for cosplays to download by names and tags like in Animal Crossing : New Horizons. The cosmic background and lively music made deliberating over the details of my outfit down to the sleeves a delight.
Next is the crafting phase. There are three types of materials used to make your cosplay : structures, fasteners and paint; each providing your costume with different stats that will come in handy later on. Finally you redeem stars to add pins to yourself and Bally (your sentient luggage bag that your mom owned) that give you combat abilities. Before you go to the convention, you get to watch your custom character go through a prismatic magical girl transformation very much in the vein of series like Sailor Moon.
Let’s go into the combat a little deeper. Combat is turn-based, with a Timeline of whose turn is when at the bottom of the screen at all times. Some abilities can swap yours and a foe’s place in the order but it’s generally just useful to keep in mind when planning attacks. Most interesting is the ability to freely move around the circle of combat, which is useful when lining up ranged attacks or trying to avoid melee attacks. Hovering over an enemy with the cursor gives an idea of what they’re capable of, with some of your fellow cosplayers referencing developer Behold Studios’ previous efforts. Some abilities work well together : I found that equipping the lasso ability that pulls anyone closer and the ability that inflicts damage very close by to be a good combination.
After the battle, you earn a pin themed after a goddess that one of the best cosplayers evokes. It grants you combat abilities when applied, so should be useful in the story mode. You also receive new crafting materials and get to wander around the convention centre. The venue is a “live” concert for virtual popstar E-Girl and the venue is rife with cosplayers. Not too much to do there at the end of the demo, but I imagine you’ll be doing side quests and preparing for roleplay fights in the full game. Also something about saving the world? Don’t worry about it.
In a word : sparkling.
Cosplay Club is a turn-based cosplay RPG developed and published by Behold Studios out now in Early Access for PC via Steam. A full release and ports for Nintendo Switch, Playstation and Xbox consoles are planned.
This article is part of the Summer of Demos series, where I’ll be releasing a Demo Diving preview article each day in July. If you liked this article, be sure to share it with a friend or enemy. If you back me on Patreon, you get access to articles one day before they release anywhere else. If we reach £25/month before the end of July, I’ll extend the Summer of Demos into August. Special thanks to my friends Joe and Jay for helping me get screenshots on this one - just would not work in full-screen mode.