Infinity Nikki stays true to its fashion-forward roots

There is darkness around the edges Infinity Nikkis idyllic cityscapes and romantic dresses, a traumatic scarring that has left the pastoral fantasy land of Wishfield – the starting region of Infinity Nikki‘s larger world of Miraland – on the edge. For every pretty dress and puppy with twee, cable-knit fur, Wishfield has a cruel, devastating reality: Violence in a neighboring region has left Wishfield to house war refugees, and mysterious trinkets that prey on people’s hopes and dreams cause the citizens to fall in an incurable coma. .

The war is ironically the background for Infinity Nikkia table setting for the desperate world. Instead, Infinity Nikki‘s story centers on coma events, which bring Nikki across Wishfield’s various locations in search of answers. She will find glittering fish shaped like luxury handbags, ghosts from worn clothes, humans imprisoned by adorable fairies, and an astonishingly complex plan to exploit the inhabitants of Wishfield’s desires.

Infinity Nikki is the fifth game in developer Infold Games’ Nikki franchise, and the first in the series for consoles and PC: Every previous game — Nikki Up2U, Miracle Nikki, Love Nikki: Dress Up Queenand Brilliant Nikki – was mobile only. In practice, it means that Infinity Nikki goes beyond the franchise’s typical visual novel and fashion wardrobe gameplay, drawing Nikki into a three-dimensional open world that lives up to the franchise’s duality – a mix of light-hearted, playful fashion battles in a rugged fantasy world under a shadow of darkness. Infinity Nikki presents it through the lens of Nikki, ever the one who turns to hope.

Infinity Nikki is not an expansion or sequel to any of the previous games and apparently operates in an alternate timeline in the same world. The free-to-play, open-world game begins with Nikki being transported to Miraland and thrust into its society, namely with the help of a government organization called the Stylist’s Guild, which was formed to honor the stylist who sacrificed her life for Miraland in an ancient god war. You see, it’s not necessarily weapons that give people power in Miraland (although Nikki lore do include weapons). They are clothes, imbued with powers that can be used for good or evil. (Infinity Nikki doesn’t really explain why this is, but in other games stylists resort to fashion battles to resolve conflicts because a blood curse severely punishes those who use violence.) Nikki soon joins the Stylist’s Guild and becomes an important figure in solving the ongoing mysteries by collecting several different currencies and resources to build out her closet to save the world.

While Nikki’s overall goal is to find inspiration to create a Miracle Outfit that will save the world, her first order of business is to craft the Ability Outfits necessary to navigate Miraland and its dangers. She has equally adorable clothes for catching insects, harvesting animal products, double jumping and light combat, called purification and used only against monsters. Then there’s her electrician outfit (self-explanatory), her violinist outfit (used to calm nerves), and her shrink outfit (which makes her small enough to ride her companion cat Momo). These outfits are collected across Wishfield’s regions as part of Infinity Nikki‘s history. While Infinity Nikki is an open-world game, you’re better off following the main story and completing side quests along with it; a lot of areas are closed off until the story progresses. That said, it’s worth exploring the areas Infinity Nikki‘s main task takes you to; the nooks and crannies are where you’ll find the details of Nikki’s complicated teachings.

For a franchise with such beautiful clothing and a history with fashion, there are surprisingly few instances where it really comes into play in the story. It’s there, sure – but the somewhat optional stylist duels are where your closet matters most. These are the traditional fashion battles that the Nikki franchise is known for, with a few changes: from a closet full of gorgeous clothes, you choose the most powerful styling around the theme of the duel to achieve the highest score possible.

Like the mobile games, it’s about winning more than fashion sense – one of my biggest ongoing frustrations with the franchise. This basically meant that I made tons of terrible outfits simply because they scored well. My best mod was simply for fun and for Nikki to wear throughout the journey (when she’s not in her Ability Outfits, which turn on automatically and suddenly when activated by pressing a button on the keyboard).

I say these stylist duels are kind of optional because progressing in the main story isn’t contingent on completing them, but you have to finish them all to create the Miracle Outfit and trigger the endgame. I ended up ignoring these battles completely until I had completed everything up to the creation of the Miracle Outfit when I was forced to. But it was not by choice: for quite a long time, the early build-up of Infinity Nikki caused the game to crash whenever Nikki talked to a duelist. (The game didn’t automatically crash, but it basically locked the game on a frozen screen.) Even if I wanted to – and I did! — I could not access this part of the game until Infold Games updated it with a pre-launch patch.

Combat is almost non-existent; Infinity Nikki is not the game for you if you are looking for complexity in this area. You’ll largely use your scavenger to fire bursts of energy at small, easily defeated monsters guarding rewards. There are several “boss” fights that are set up as if they were supposed to be dramatic centerpiece battles, but they fall flat due to the limited combat systems. I didn’t come to Infinity Nikki to be impressed by combat, but even I felt disappointed in these few areas; the game would, in short, be better without them. There are a few moments that needed more emotional weight, and the lackluster combat made those follow-up sequences feel undersized. Infinity Nikki has challenges in its platforming, found throughout the world in small moments and elsewhere in elaborate dungeons that feel like a mad dash through a sparkly pink makeup factory that’s been overrun with hideous vines.

Infinity Nikkifor the most part, was an absurd joy to play, but it felt like it was fighting me every step of the way. Playing an early build prior to the game’s release, Infinity Nikki was full of bugs, both trivial and game-breaking. On the smaller end, these bugs were the typical sort of thing – floaty animal models, missing textures, and inconsistent menu click delays. But on the game-breaking side, the flow of the game was seriously messed up due to the Stylist Duel issues (meaning I crushed them all at the end of the game), and another bug halted progress on the main story for days until a patch. That comes on top of framerate and performance issues like missing translations, extensive pop-in, and the occasional stutter. These major issues have been fixed at the time of writing, at least on Windows PC, but several of the minor issues may still be present at launch. These bigger issues will definitely be fixed, but I’m not sure everything will be fixed at launch due to the scope of the game.

The second piece Infinity Nikki which I’ve had a hard time talking about while playing a pre-launch build is the currency system. Like any other gacha game, Infinity Nikki has multiple in-game and premium currencies that are used to do everything from crafting outfits to rolling for special limited outfits and restoring energy for certain mechanics. No premium currency was available during the pre-launch review period, and the review buildings were filled with the in-game currency to pull the special elaborate outfits. (Think of the gacha system Genshin impactwhere you draw for characters except i Infinity Nikkiyou draw for clothing items.) These clothing items are often strong in terms of score, but they are not Ability Outfits – they are discovered through gameplay. By and large, the outfits available so far haven’t been my vibe either, so I can’t imagine spending anything to acquire them.

But free to play games like this are free for a reason: the developer expects to make money elsewhere. The currency used to purchase coupons for the special features is called Diamonds, which are earned through gameplay. However, in order to have enough to make a lot of moves, you may be prompted to buy the Stellarit currency with real money, which can then be transferred one-to-one to Diamonds. Diamonds are used to restore stamina, but again, Stellarite comes into play if you haven’t earned enough diamonds. The third type of currency is called Bling, which is only acquired through gameplay and is used to buy items from in-game vendors, for example.

All this is to say that Infinity Nikki is complex to its core: It is the story of exploitation, war and desire mixed with its candied exterior. It’s also the overwhelming menu that would scare away the most “hardcore” of gamers, and its sheer breadth of clothing options, down to socks and shoes, that allow for any kind of style. In video games, fashion has always been poweralthough not immediately obvious to the average player. In games like Fire Ring or Fate 2players head to the scorched earth to find the most powerful gear—perhaps a helmet that resists fire attacks or a chest plate that boosts damage. Infinity Nikki takes that idea very literally, eliminating the kind of stereotypical violence traditionally seen in video games, while still holding onto the series’ deep, thrilling darkness and sparkling levity. Developer Infold Games has created the most serious (and sometimes absurd) story with Infinity Nikkicentered around a traditionally feminine value – style! – that connects all sorts of different players. What you get is something that will both confuse and dazzle you, even as it frustrates.

Infinity Nikki will be released on December 4 on Android, Apple iOS, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC. The game was announced on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Infold Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not affect editorial content, although Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased through affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.