I still think the most devastating enshittification I've ever seen has been picrew. One of the few dress-up game websites left that's not flash-based and it's become DRENCHED in ads. You can't open the home screen without being blasted by at least three or four ads. You can't open two picrews in a row without watching a video ad first. When you have a picrew open the ads cover up the different options and sometimes even stack on each other so you have to hit like 2 or 3 different x buttons to get it to go away, only for more to appear seconds later. Evil world
It got worse - they added a subscription service
WHAT
For once I can be the one to promote alternate sites, my time to shine has finally come
Now I will say I do use an adblocker so I can't say how many ads all these places have, but- Here's some other places you can go to dress up little characters on your screen!
meiker.io - A free dress-up/character creator tool/platform filled with a TON of neat little games. There ARE ads on this site unfortunately but imo they aren't overwhelming (and from what I understand them running ads helps keep the site free, so). I've been using this site off and on for years already bc most games are fullbody instead of headshots, which I find more helpful w oc creation, and I can say in my experience it all runs extremely smoothly :) of everything here this site is the most similar to picrew
DollDivine - One of the classic dress-up game websites. Not only is it still up but it is actively being updated with new games, and the owner has been working to try and transfer the old flash games into a program called Ruffle so that they can still be played. Most of the games that I played when I was younger are already back up and working again thanks to this. DollDivine is also the host site for the games featured on Rinmaru Games back in the day so if you were like me and lived and breathed that site for most of your pre-teen years, you will be delighted to know that many of those games were saved here! :D
Azalea's Dolls - Another classic one that is still running and still being added to! If you like Disney/fairytale-esque dress-up games you will love this website, they have some BEAUTIFUL games. They have also been transferring many of their old games into Ruffle, so a good chunk of those will be working again too.
PastelKatto Games - A site owned/managed by one of my personal favourite developers back in the day. While the creator has moved on from publishing their own games they still update the site with other games every so often, and the catalog of games they created over the course of the last decade or so is absolutely worth your time. The range of options they would give to players for characters included a wide range of skin tones, vitiligo, missing limbs + prosthetics, scars/burn marks, and more. Plus their art is also just really, really pretty.
VeggieStudio - If you like anime-esque games then this is the site for you. Their catalog may be quite small, but all the games on this site are beautifully drawn. You may recognize their style if you played any Rinmaru games, as they did the art for a few of those back in the day.
Most of these sites mainly feature games that center around female/feminine characters, but there ARE games where you can make guys/masculine characters as well. But just a heads up in advance. None of them are hardwired for pfp creation either, so if you're looking for that you might not find a lot here. But otherwise, def check these sites out! The flash purge hit dress-up game communities HARD but people have been working to keep things running in some form or another ever since the news dropped. It's been rough, but all has not been lost and a lot of the old games I used to play are now playable again! :D
