Nikki is a series of mobile games that I’ve never heard of before. My dear friend and editor for this blog, Lily, was the one who introduced me to it. She’s a really passionate fan of this series and she often shares with us either her creations or just talking about how bonkers the plot is in some of these games. In Shining Nikki especially there have been multiple apocalypses, coups and very tragic character deaths, the story really aims for the sun… in a series of Dress up Games!

There’s a couple of reasons why I never actually played these games: first of all my relationship with mobile games is complicated at best; Even in games where I managed to maintain a constant cycle of logging in and grind, after a while I started to get really bored by them and I was never able to actually absorb the stories they wanted to tell because of the very short bursts nature of the gameplay. At the end of the day I realized that the ones I managed to invest more time into were more because I was sharing the experience with my friends rather than actually enjoying the gameplay loop.

The other reason was the genre of the games. Because of my upbringing as a typical male, I ended up internalizing the idea that collecting clothes to play dress up was something definitely not for me, and it didn’t matter how good the story could be because as I said before the nature of mobile gaming prevented me from actually following it well. So what actually drove me into giving a shot to Infinity Nikki?

It’s a very simple answer actually… A change in gaming platform and a slight genre shift.

Infinity Nikki

When the game was first revealed in December of 2022, it looked like a very ambitious project for this team. Miraland this time was going to be a massive open world, the clothes would’ve given Nikki an extensive set of abilities, and the game wasn’t relegated to the mobile market: it was going to come out on PC and PS5. That first trailer instantly piqued my interest, and thus December 7th of 2024, which for a cute detail is also the birthdate of the protagonist Nikki, Infinity Nikki finally came out and my first impression was extremely positive.

The story begins with our protagonist, Nikki, transported into the world of Miraland where she meets with a woman called Ena who is chained up in a temple. Ena gifts Nikki the “Heart of Infinity” and she begs her to help save Miraland from the darkness that threatens to destroy it. The only way to do that is for Nikki to gather the Miracle Outfits thanks to the power of the heart of infinity.

At that point that the game opens up to the player, the main objective throughout the story is to gather the Whim Stars to power up the heart of infinity. Collecting them can be just as simple as finding them out in the world, winning them in combat, or by solving some tricky puzzle rooms called Curio that would challenge both your brain and reflexes.

The world is your personal playground and there’s ton of secrets to find: chests that would include new clothing in their rewards, minigames to give you a little distraction, a ton of locations to take pictures of to unlock new features for the mandatory photo mode, and finally the Dews of Inspiration, a collectible which is hidden in the most far off and unthinkable places to really test your exploration instincts, and can be exchanged with various rewards once collected.

All of these elements instantly triggered my love for the platform genre, Infinity Nikki follows to a tee the collectathon formula first established by games like Mario 64, and it’s always fun to discover new hidden locations and collectables that you might’ve missed the first time you went through a particular area.

Miraland is also visually gorgeous, every location is very rich in detail and easily identifiable to really leave an impression on you while playing. And this is just a small part of a very expansive world that’s going to feature seven different explorable realms each with a different aesthetic and identity. If the game reaches that far and I’m still invested it will be really fun to see what they can come up with.

The game handles this new approach to gameplay very well: those coming from the old formula are certain to feel alienated by this drastic shift, but in my opinion, the game introduces everything really well and escalates the challenge very gradually so that everyone can get used to it at their own pace. Although… I realize that my point of view might be severely influenced by the fact that I’ve been playing these types of games for more than 30 years. I recognize that I’m way too much of an expert in this genre to fairly recognize what could be objectively hard for a newbie, unless it’s a game that really focuses on its difficulty from the get go, games like Celeste for example.

So what’s the function of the dresses?

Their main function is being the source of Nikki’s abilities, ranging from explorative abilities like gliding and shrinking, to abilities needed to gather materials to other recreational abilities which might be needed for some missions, but otherwise they’re there for fun: like the musician and the various instruments that you could even use to compose stuff if you’re dedicated enough!

Some abilities are pretty much useless in terms of gameplay but are more for aesthetic purposes like creating bubbles or rainbows. Probably meant more to be used for photo mode, or playing with the environment like the ability to summon puppies at your follow.

The other but not less important usage is for the style challenges: in this world fashion is everything and often we’re gonna find ourselves in need to prove our worth in these competitions. Just follow the criteria for the challenge ahead and win the approval of the jury. There’s however a funny contradiction in this system… since the worth of your dress is more dictated by number stats rather than actual good taste, you don’t really need to put together a good looking combination, just pile on your clothes with the highest stats and even if will end up looking like someone that just picked up clothes while under the influence, you still gonna be the winner!

This outfit actually won against a style challenge boss

The last thing you’re gonna need all these clothes for is… just to have fun being creative! Nikki is basically your own little personal doll and your mission of putting together the most complete wardrobe imaginable is just so that you can flex your creative muscle and explore every possibility! There’s a ton of creative people online making very interesting combinations and also very evocative photos, thanks to the level of freedom this game provides.

As a very standard male that I am, I always had a very snobbish and dismissive attitude about fashion, and thus I thought this was gonna be the component I just wouldn’t care about… But I gotta admit that I’m having fun finding some new clothes and asking myself “What should I pair this piece with?” and thus creating my own new looks for Nikki. We also like to challenge each other between friends, picking up a random piece of clothing and trying to come up with a combination that fits well, the end results are always really funny. Even though the end result is mostly Lily being disgusted by how either boring or straight up terrible my combinations are, but who knows… Maybe I’ll be able to surprise her one day!

You can obtain clothing in two ways, either a gacha system or by crafting: during the game we’re gonna be rewarded with various projects (called sketches) for new clothes and we’re gonna have to farm the correct materials in order to put them together in various ways: collecting plants, grooming animals, fishing, bug catching and fighting.

This process is simple on paper, but some of the rarest clothes require some items that can be very time consuming to farm, like: items that are collectible only once per day, items that need your gathering ability to be at a certain level in order to collect them. It’s a cascade effect that makes all this a long and sometimes tedious routine and I won’t lie, sometimes the idea of gathering rare materials I find very boring, thankfully there’s always my friends to hang around with to alleviate the tedium. It’s for this reason that I see these games as something that are better to experience with others rather than by themselves.

That’s all well and good but, what about the story?

Unfortunately the story is the part of the game that just lost me. The premise is fine and could be something cool: Miraland is guided by the wishes of its inhabitants and for a while it was believed that the entity responsible to fulfill these wishes had disappeared. Taking advantage of this, a cloaked figure is roaming around Florawish spreading around these wish fulfilling bottles that put the user into a coma. To make things worse, people have been mysteriously disappearing and strange creatures called Esselings are emerging from the darkness that threatens to envelop the entire region.

Being the first chapter I was expecting a slow opening more focused about introducing the setting and characters rather than starting with some world threatening events from the get go… unfortunately the story went way too slow, not one of the characters was all that interesting, the main villain for as much of a nice of a backstory ended up having failed to be as imposing as he needed to be. Nikki as main character doesn’t have a lot in her favour, she’s a nice girl doing what’s right and being carried by the flow of events. The ending of the story has teased a lot of new worlds and thus I am optimistic for a redemption in the future, but the start wasn’t really the best.

I feel bad saying this because I really love the charming and whimsical presentation of this game, but when the biggest conflict of this first section was between blue fairies that look like mascot characters missing the price tag and creatures that I can only describe as floating rags… It’s very hard to take everything that’s happening with any ounce of seriousness. I’m not against the very joyful and light-hearted tone they wanna set, I’m a big fan of games like Kirby, but there really comes a time when the atmosphere it’s too much of a clash with the kind of story you want to tell.

So, am I satisfied with Infinity Nikki?

Absolutely! It’s a game that I’m playing daily for at least an hour at a time making daily missions, gathering resources, completing some missions to gather currency for the gacha banners and overall I’m having a lot of fun and it’s really a cozy game to play.

It’s a game that I feel like recommending to everybody, even if you don’t jive too much with collectathon platformers, or even if you aren’t entirely convinced by the dress up component of this game… give it a shot! It’s free to play and might genuinely surprise you and maybe help you find an appreciation for a genre you didn’t expect to.

I also have to praise the developers for the constant support and attention to player’s feedback, the updates and patches have been coming quickly to always leave the players with something to do and very recently they released an interactive official map to help players in the hunt for the collectibles. They’re always on point and you really couldn’t ask for something better in a game of this genre.

Of course all of this comes with the premise that you’re playing a gacha game, a genre that inevitably tends to become very predatory by design. I never suffered from completionist tendencies, and in this game I always had to leave some banners behind because of lack of in-game currency. I never found myself in a situation where I had to invest real money to continue the plot, but you’ll still be unable to get all the clothes from the gacha banner by relying on in-game currency and at that point you either wait for a re-run… or just give them your real world money.

If you’re susceptible to the fear of missing out and really want your completion at all cost, than I can’t recommend this game in good faith because it would wear heavily on your worst instincts. Gacha games can be fun but you have to play responsibly and not succumb to predatory tactics. It’s really not that different from gambling in some aspects.

And with all that said I leave the rest to you, what do you think about Infinity Nikki? Were you fans since before this game? What do you hope to see in the future? I am really curious to hear your answers, in the meantime I’ll leave you with a little collage of some of my favourite outfits and maybe some of Lily’s if she wants to contribute.