Princess Debut revolves around relating harmoniously with other people. There is a tangible difference in the experience of these two games, but they also incentivize behaviours differently. Taptaptaptaptaptaptap seems to raise your heart rate, and swoosh~ swoosh~ swoosh~ probably lowers it. It’s surprisingly physically demanding, and requires a significant amount of sustained player attention. Get a screen protector if you’re going to play it. The latter, at least once the player is past the first few levels, requires frantic jabbing, scraping, and spinning. It’s also important to note that PD’s prompts for action appear one at a time, while EBA will display multiple points, requiring sequential action, simultaneously.
(Amptor)-1.png "princess debut")
Of those three actions, PD only includes the touch-and-drag movement, which provokes questions of “ease” and “challenge” we’ll address later. EBA includes prompts to tap certain areas, drag the stylus along a path at a set pace, and, at the end of each song, draw circles as fast as possible in the center of the screen. The game opens on a square-jawed middle-aged man with a Nick Fury eyepatch grunting the words: “Ok, men…”ĭespite looking and sounding completely different, I hear Elite Beat Agents mentioned almost every time I show someone Princess Debut, often alongside the word “ripoff.” EBA did come first, and there are similarities between their rhythm mechanics (though only one has a romance element, sadly.) Both consist of touching the DS’ stylus to the bottom screen at rhythmic intervals. (This makes slightly more sense in Japan, where Ōendan are essentially cheerleaders.) The Elite Beat Divas, distaff counterparts to the Agents, are accessible as protagonists once the player finishes the entire game on its hardest mode - an interesting move that places women in the category of impressive, capable, and decidedly Other. The EBA is presented as a kind of paramilitary organization whose members are deployed on missions to help people overcome various challenges through inspirational dance. The Agents look like they could at least make it through the first audition to be on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Graphically, it relies on the thick black lines, sharp angles, and perpetually furrowed brows of shounen manga. To explain how Princess Debut succeeds in those design goals, it’ll be useful to draw comparisons to a conveniently well-known piece from the same genre and era: the 2006 DS game Elite Beat Agents.Įlite Beat Agents (like its spiritual predecessor, Osu! Tatakae! Ōendan) might be even more aesthetically masculine than Princess Debut is feminine. My working definition of feminine game design is this: design that intentionally evokes feelings of grace and harmony, often through qualitative and relational incentives. Its cover art - a petite teenage girl, gasping with delight, eyes wide as dinner plates, hair in a perfect up-do - is wonderful in itself, but what makes Princess Debut worth writing about almost a decade later is the way it delivers on the promises that happy face is making. Rather, those external aesthetics are genuinely representative of an internal structure that whose priorities and techniques are expressly feminine. What makes Princess Debut feminine, though, is not its pink menus, delicate soundtrack, or shoujo manga-inspired character designs. (But that would mean striking a crucial Alice in Wonderland reference.)
Princess Debut could only be girlier if her dance instructor was a horse instead of an anthropomorphic rabbit. She spends perpetually sunny days in gardens and beaches with cute boys who are all interested in her. She finds magical accessories that transform into elaborate outfits. It stars a teenage girl who, after trading places with her princess doppelganger in a parallel universe, learns ballroom dancing and wins the heart of at least one handsome prince with the help of her feisty talking animal companion. Princess Debut is a rhythm game and dating sim released, to mild commercial success and critical disinterest, in 2008 for the Nintendo DS. Princess Debut and The Essence of Feminine Game Design
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