Kendall and Kylie Jenner surprised fans this week by releasing a new mobile game simply titled “Kendall and Kylie.” The sisters partnered with Glu Games, the company behind “Kim Kardashian: Hollywood,” and like Kim before them, they’re taking the iOS and Android app stores by storm.
currently playing… Download the @KendallKylieApp in the App Store and Google Play pic.twitter.com/oOzUYbOTaA
— Kendall (@KendallJenner) February 17, 2016
Still #1 with 5 stars now!!! pic.twitter.com/6vecuPM9wp
— Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) February 17, 2016
Here’s what you need to know about the new game.
- The gameplay should be very familiar. Like in Kim’s game, your highly customizable character travels around completing professional and social missions by using energy, money, and K-Gems (their answer to K-Stars). As you pop between California neighborhoods like Calabasas, Santa Monica, and Beverly Hills, you can tap fire hydrants and pigeons to find spare money and energy.
- Social media is huge. One big new component is that your success is measured in social media followers. While Kim’s Hollywood narrative is very traditional (work in a fashion boutique, collect money, and climb the ladder to stardom), Kendall and Kylie’s land of celebrity is much more fluid. Your best friend, Emily Sun, is a vlogger, and many of your missions involve creating videos and recording content with your friends at the beach or at concerts. Every little part of your life can contribute to or detract from your stardom now. Here’s how it works: each time you complete a mission or a social interaction, you have to post about it to your character’s fictional social media feed. If you do well in your mission (3/5 stars or above), your posts gain you likes and followers, but if you don’t do well, you end up losing them. That means no more dipping out of dates once you’ve hit a middle-of-the-road score. If you snooze on your boyfriend, everyone hears about it, and your fans are fickle.
- There are tons of fun Easter eggs. Kendall and Kylie recorded custom video messages that unlock in your character’s social media feed based on your achievements (e.g. “I love your new outfit! Where’d you get it?”). You can also sync the app with Facebook and add any of your IRL friends who are playing the game, so your characters’ feed syncs with theirs. There’s something very surreal about liking your friend’s character’s selfie in a fake social media feed while you’re also in-character.
- It’s vertically oriented. You can tell the designers of this game were teens who are used to having a million apps open at once, because it feels much more intuitive than Kim’s game. While that app still requires you to hold your phone horizontally in order to play, “Kendall and Kylie” lets you keep things casual and vertical. It’s handy, since you spend the majority of your time waiting around for your character’s energy to build back up and you’re probably going to want to check Twitter in the meantime.
Overall, “Kendall and Kylie” is very fun. Like in their sister’s app, there’s a lot of incentive to pay real money for new clothes, K-Gems, and speedier mission completion, but if you’re patient, you can have a good time rising to social media stardom on your own.
Screengrab via Kendall and Kylie
