There is something I have to confess and I hope it won't make you think worse of me: I like Thomas Kinkade paintings. Yes, I know, Kinkade was by all accounts a real scumbag, I know his work is considered the definition of mass produced, commercial, purely decorative shlock. No, I'd never actually hang one in my apartment. But on a basic level, I enjoy his particular style of over saturated, saccharine idyllicism. Not ironically, either, I simply think there is an allure to art that portrays an idyllic or utopian vision, even if it only does so in a very unreflected and commercial fashion. I think critics of that style of art dismiss it as purely escapist, as artistic comfort food but I have a slightly different perspective: by presenting impressions of beauty and harmony it makes the viewer question the absence of both in their real life. In a way I think utopian art could be the most radical art of all, in that it can point out exactly what we're deprived of.
Now, I don't think most of it is made with that in mind and the game this thread is about certainly isn't but Infinity Nikki is, take this as either a compliment or a condemnation, the closest we've ever gotten to a fully explorable Thomas Kinkade painting.
Infinity Nikki is the newest installment of the "Nikki" series of mobile games. A series, you might be surprised to learn, neither Mirai Nikki nor Yume Nikke are a part of. No, the Nikki games are a series of dress up games with, I understand, visual novel elements and... listen, I haven't played any of them and for as much as I can tell, they play nothing like this one. Infinity Nikki, on the other hand, is an open world action-adventure collectathon platformer.
So, Infinity Nikki is about a girl named Nikki who gets spirited away to another world named Miraland where she has to sort out some problems before she can return home, using super powers bestowed upon her by wearing magical outfits. Miraland is a whimsical place of cozy alpine towns, cute animals, pretty flowers, magical creatures and mostly kind people. It's the setting for what is ought to be the coziest take on an open world action game that anyone's ever made.
So, what does it play like? Well, structurally it invites comparisons to Zelda: Breath of the Wild in that you explore an open world, take on quests, sometimes enter a dungeon but in terms of what you actually do, it's a lot closer to a collectathon platformer like Mario Odyssey or a Banjo game. A lot of the time between more clearly defined quests is spent engaging in various platforming challenges or solving minor puzzles or engaging in an honestly astounding number of minigames to acquire various ressources necessary for progress.
There's an equivalent to Mario Odysseys Moons in the form of Star shaped jewels you get for completing challenges, an equivalent to Mario style coins that act as currencies, a frankly absurd amount of crafting ingredients to craft new clothes you acquire but picking flowers, catching insects, fishing, grooming animals or defeating enemies. There are various other resources required for leveling up. Long story short, a lot of it is spent exploring the world and collecting stuff. There is also some very simplistic combat, which consists mainly of shooting a projectile while avoiding attacks but it's clearly not the focus of the game.
Now for the elephant in the room: Infinity Nikki is what's called a Gacha game. As I understand a business model original conceptualized for mobile games with rudimentary gameplay that are free to download but you'd spend money to collect characters. Now, this style of game got popularized when a clever chinese studio named Mihoyo figured that this sort of thing would be received a lot more positively if you built an actually enjoyable game around it l. So they released a little title called Genshin Impact, a sprawling open world action game that, at this point, has hundreds of hours of content that's downloadable for free but still makes money by letting you pay to gamble for characters and items or simply speed up your levelling progress.
There's... a bigger discourse to be had here. A business model like that is, by definition, walking a thin line between being justifiable and being manipulative and I'm not remotely familiar enough with most titles that use it to make a qualified statement. On one hand, it clearly holds some risks for people vulnerable to gambling problems or people who struggle to keep track of their finances, on the other hand, a lot of those games are very legitimate games with quasi Triple A production values and very strong game design that are available practically for free, are supported with years worth of content that's more reminiscent of subscription based MMO's and are made by genuinely passionate developers.
Like, not to sugarcoat anything, but particularly Chinese studios are... kinda cooking there, honestly. I've only recently looked into the scene, but games like Wuthering Waves or upcoming titles like Arknight Endfield, Neverness to Everness or Ananta are developing a very interesting blend of Japanese und Western gameplay and design conventions that I think it would be very unwise to dismiss just because they follow a less established and often exploitatively implemented business model.
Now, I have very little experience with this kind of game outside of, like, 5 hours I've played of Genshin Impact but so far Infinity Nikki has probably the least intrusive implementation of Gacha mechanics I've ever seen. Instead of characters it's used to unlock clothes which are mostly purely cosmetic and while it lets you bypass some grinding, the grinding is rather inoffensive. Now, there definitely are some idiosyncracies of the genre in there, the exact thing that made me put Genshin Impact aside, in that there's this rather kafkaesque labyrinth of claimable rewards and leveling different attributes using different ressources but it honestly affects the actual gameplay a lot less than you might assume. You can mostly ignore it and focus on the moment to moment gameplay of questing, exploring and collectible hunting and so far there's never a moment where it feels like the game is coercing you into spending money. I haven't spent a cent and I never felt it impeded my progress or withheld content for me.
Again, your mileage may vary and if you disagree with this business model on principle, well, I'm not gonna argue with it but so far I got more enjoyment out of this while spending no money than I get out of some games I bought for 60€. Take that as you will.
So, to leave this digression behind me, why do I consider Infinity Nikki to be a worthwhile game? Well, for one I've always been fascinated with games that try to make something other than combat their core mechanic without... well, being boring. And considering "open world platformers" are already an incredibly underrepresented genre, that alone makes Nikki worth a look. Add to that its wide variety of side activities that it genuinely keeps introducing throughout its current runtime and you'll get a game that goes above and beyond of providing and entertaining and varies experience.
The other half is its presentation which I'm sure will read as too saccharine to a lot of people but for me has just the right balance of being cutesy and girly enough to be cute but not cloyingly childish. Let me put it this way: Infinity Nikki looks and is written like the sort of thing you'd get if Disney pulled Tetsuya Nomura off of Kingdom Hearts to write and direct their next animated princess movie but told him not to get too crazy with the story. So you still get a lot of, honestly very silly, lore and an entire system of metaphysics about more or less literally wishing upon a star and dialogue laden with proper nouns but it's all part of this simple, light hearted adventure story with pretty people and cute critters and fairy tale villages. Hell, it even has a designated marketable talking animal comic relief sidekick! Who is surprisingly not that annoying and occasionally even funny and likeable!
So, that's what Infinity Nikki is. A cross between Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey wrapped in a Disney Princess movie directed by Tetsuya Nomura. If that sounds at all appealing to you I genuinely recommend giving it a try it is, after all, free. The actual dress up side of it is actually a rather understated part of the gameplay. You get the dresses that grant you abilities as part of the main quest and all the cosmetic ones really only factor into a fashion competition minigame that seems to be mostly optional and never requires any of the paid ones. It's girly and cutesy and, surprisingly enough, actually quite good. I imagine it would be a lovely game to play with younger kids, if you have them but it's still a pretty good time if you don't.
Infinity Nikki presents an interesting effort to mix platforming, idyllic and whimsical aesthethics and a wide variety of activities into a sugary cake that feels unique next to more conventional open world games and, in my opinion, deserves better than to be entirely dismissed as being "for kids" or "for girls" or being viewed as a predatory money sink for suckers. This is a game with a lot of genuine effort and talent put into its gameplay and visuals and it makes for a genuinely charming and relaxing experience.
Now, excuse me, I need to play some Soldier of Fortune to get my testosterone level back up.
Now, I don't think most of it is made with that in mind and the game this thread is about certainly isn't but Infinity Nikki is, take this as either a compliment or a condemnation, the closest we've ever gotten to a fully explorable Thomas Kinkade painting.
Infinity Nikki is the newest installment of the "Nikki" series of mobile games. A series, you might be surprised to learn, neither Mirai Nikki nor Yume Nikke are a part of. No, the Nikki games are a series of dress up games with, I understand, visual novel elements and... listen, I haven't played any of them and for as much as I can tell, they play nothing like this one. Infinity Nikki, on the other hand, is an open world action-adventure collectathon platformer.
So, Infinity Nikki is about a girl named Nikki who gets spirited away to another world named Miraland where she has to sort out some problems before she can return home, using super powers bestowed upon her by wearing magical outfits. Miraland is a whimsical place of cozy alpine towns, cute animals, pretty flowers, magical creatures and mostly kind people. It's the setting for what is ought to be the coziest take on an open world action game that anyone's ever made.
So, what does it play like? Well, structurally it invites comparisons to Zelda: Breath of the Wild in that you explore an open world, take on quests, sometimes enter a dungeon but in terms of what you actually do, it's a lot closer to a collectathon platformer like Mario Odyssey or a Banjo game. A lot of the time between more clearly defined quests is spent engaging in various platforming challenges or solving minor puzzles or engaging in an honestly astounding number of minigames to acquire various ressources necessary for progress.
There's an equivalent to Mario Odysseys Moons in the form of Star shaped jewels you get for completing challenges, an equivalent to Mario style coins that act as currencies, a frankly absurd amount of crafting ingredients to craft new clothes you acquire but picking flowers, catching insects, fishing, grooming animals or defeating enemies. There are various other resources required for leveling up. Long story short, a lot of it is spent exploring the world and collecting stuff. There is also some very simplistic combat, which consists mainly of shooting a projectile while avoiding attacks but it's clearly not the focus of the game.
Now for the elephant in the room: Infinity Nikki is what's called a Gacha game. As I understand a business model original conceptualized for mobile games with rudimentary gameplay that are free to download but you'd spend money to collect characters. Now, this style of game got popularized when a clever chinese studio named Mihoyo figured that this sort of thing would be received a lot more positively if you built an actually enjoyable game around it l. So they released a little title called Genshin Impact, a sprawling open world action game that, at this point, has hundreds of hours of content that's downloadable for free but still makes money by letting you pay to gamble for characters and items or simply speed up your levelling progress.
There's... a bigger discourse to be had here. A business model like that is, by definition, walking a thin line between being justifiable and being manipulative and I'm not remotely familiar enough with most titles that use it to make a qualified statement. On one hand, it clearly holds some risks for people vulnerable to gambling problems or people who struggle to keep track of their finances, on the other hand, a lot of those games are very legitimate games with quasi Triple A production values and very strong game design that are available practically for free, are supported with years worth of content that's more reminiscent of subscription based MMO's and are made by genuinely passionate developers.
Like, not to sugarcoat anything, but particularly Chinese studios are... kinda cooking there, honestly. I've only recently looked into the scene, but games like Wuthering Waves or upcoming titles like Arknight Endfield, Neverness to Everness or Ananta are developing a very interesting blend of Japanese und Western gameplay and design conventions that I think it would be very unwise to dismiss just because they follow a less established and often exploitatively implemented business model.
Now, I have very little experience with this kind of game outside of, like, 5 hours I've played of Genshin Impact but so far Infinity Nikki has probably the least intrusive implementation of Gacha mechanics I've ever seen. Instead of characters it's used to unlock clothes which are mostly purely cosmetic and while it lets you bypass some grinding, the grinding is rather inoffensive. Now, there definitely are some idiosyncracies of the genre in there, the exact thing that made me put Genshin Impact aside, in that there's this rather kafkaesque labyrinth of claimable rewards and leveling different attributes using different ressources but it honestly affects the actual gameplay a lot less than you might assume. You can mostly ignore it and focus on the moment to moment gameplay of questing, exploring and collectible hunting and so far there's never a moment where it feels like the game is coercing you into spending money. I haven't spent a cent and I never felt it impeded my progress or withheld content for me.
Again, your mileage may vary and if you disagree with this business model on principle, well, I'm not gonna argue with it but so far I got more enjoyment out of this while spending no money than I get out of some games I bought for 60€. Take that as you will.
So, to leave this digression behind me, why do I consider Infinity Nikki to be a worthwhile game? Well, for one I've always been fascinated with games that try to make something other than combat their core mechanic without... well, being boring. And considering "open world platformers" are already an incredibly underrepresented genre, that alone makes Nikki worth a look. Add to that its wide variety of side activities that it genuinely keeps introducing throughout its current runtime and you'll get a game that goes above and beyond of providing and entertaining and varies experience.
The other half is its presentation which I'm sure will read as too saccharine to a lot of people but for me has just the right balance of being cutesy and girly enough to be cute but not cloyingly childish. Let me put it this way: Infinity Nikki looks and is written like the sort of thing you'd get if Disney pulled Tetsuya Nomura off of Kingdom Hearts to write and direct their next animated princess movie but told him not to get too crazy with the story. So you still get a lot of, honestly very silly, lore and an entire system of metaphysics about more or less literally wishing upon a star and dialogue laden with proper nouns but it's all part of this simple, light hearted adventure story with pretty people and cute critters and fairy tale villages. Hell, it even has a designated marketable talking animal comic relief sidekick! Who is surprisingly not that annoying and occasionally even funny and likeable!
So, that's what Infinity Nikki is. A cross between Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey wrapped in a Disney Princess movie directed by Tetsuya Nomura. If that sounds at all appealing to you I genuinely recommend giving it a try it is, after all, free. The actual dress up side of it is actually a rather understated part of the gameplay. You get the dresses that grant you abilities as part of the main quest and all the cosmetic ones really only factor into a fashion competition minigame that seems to be mostly optional and never requires any of the paid ones. It's girly and cutesy and, surprisingly enough, actually quite good. I imagine it would be a lovely game to play with younger kids, if you have them but it's still a pretty good time if you don't.
Infinity Nikki presents an interesting effort to mix platforming, idyllic and whimsical aesthethics and a wide variety of activities into a sugary cake that feels unique next to more conventional open world games and, in my opinion, deserves better than to be entirely dismissed as being "for kids" or "for girls" or being viewed as a predatory money sink for suckers. This is a game with a lot of genuine effort and talent put into its gameplay and visuals and it makes for a genuinely charming and relaxing experience.
Now, excuse me, I need to play some Soldier of Fortune to get my testosterone level back up.
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