There’s darkness around the edges of Infinity Nikki’s idyllic townscapes and romantic dresses, a traumatic scarring that’s left the pastoral fantasyland of Wishfield — the starting region in Infinity Nikki’s larger world of Miraland — on edge. For every beautiful gown and pup with twee, cable-knit fur, Wishfield has a cruel, devastating reality: Violence in a neighboring region has left Wishfield harboring war refugees, and mysterious trinkets that prey on people’s hopes and dreams have citizens falling into incurable comas.
The war, ironically, is the backdrop of Infinity Nikki, a table setting for the desperate world. Instead, Infinity Nikki’s story centers on the coma incidents, which bring Nikki across Wishfield’s several different locations in search of answers. She’ll find glimmering fish shaped like luxury handbags, the ghosts of worn clothing, humans imprisoned by adorable fairies, and a stunningly complex plan to exploit the residents of Wishfield’s wishes.
Infinity Nikki is the fifth game in developer Infold Games’ Nikki franchise, and the first of the series for consoles and PC: Each prior game — Nikki Up2U, Miracle Nikki, Love Nikki: Dress Up Queen, and Shining Nikki — was mobile-only. In practice, this means that Infinity Nikki goes beyond the franchise’s typical visual novel and fashion closet gameplay and pulls Nikki into a three-dimensional open world that lives up to the duality of the franchise — a blending of lighthearted, playful fashion battles in a robust fantasy world under a shadow of darkness. Infinity Nikki presents it through the lens of Nikki herself, ever the one to turn to hope.
Infinity Nikki isn’t an expansion or sequel to any of the previous games and seemingly operates in an alternate timeline within the same world. The free-to-play, open-world game begins with Nikki being transported to Miraland and thrust into its society, namely by way 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 war of the gods. You see, it’s not necessarily weapons that give people power in Miraland (though Nikki lore does include guns). It’s clothing, 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 conflict because a blood curse severely punishes those who use violence.) Nikki quickly enlists in 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 overarching goal is to find inspiration to create a Miracle Outfit that’ll save the world, her first order of business is crafting Ability Outfits necessary for navigating Miraland and its dangers. She has equally adorable outfits for catching bugs, 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 soothe nerves), and her shrinking 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 storyline. While Infinity Nikki is an open-world game, you’re better off following the main storyline and completing side quests along with it; a lot of areas are gated off until the story progresses. That said, it’s worth exploring the areas Infinity Nikki’s main quest takes you to; the corners and crevices are where you’ll find the details of Nikki’s complicated lore.
For a franchise with such beautiful clothing and a storied history with fashion, there are surprisingly few instances where it comes seriously into play in the story. It’s there, sure — but the somewhat optional Stylist Duels are where your closet is most important. These are the traditional fashion battles that the Nikki franchise is known for, with few changes: From a closet full of gorgeous clothes, you choose the most powerful, styling around the theme of the duel, to reach the highest score possible.
Like the mobile games, winning comes down to numbers more than fashion sense — one of my biggest ongoing frustrations with the franchise. Largely, this meant I created tons of god-awful outfits simply because they scored well. My best fashion was simply for fun, and for Nikki to wear throughout the journey (when she’s not in her Ability Outfits, which switch on automatically and suddenly when activated by a keyboard button push).
I say these Stylist Duels are somewhat optional because progress on the main story isn’t contingent on completing them, but you do need to finish them all to create the Miracle Outfit and trigger the endgame. I ended up completely ignoring these battles until I’d completed everything up to the creation of the Miracle Outfit, when I was forced to. But that was not by choice: For quite some time, the early build of Infinity Nikki caused the game to essentially crash anytime Nikki talked to a duelist. (The game didn’t automatically crash out, but it basically locked the game on a frozen screen.) Even if I wanted to — and I did! — I couldn’t access this part of the game until Infold Games updated it with a pre-launch patch.
Combat is nearly nonexistent; Infinity Nikki is not the game for you if you’re looking for complexity in this area. You’ll largely use your purification outfit to shoot bursts of energy at little, easily defeated monsters that guard rewards. There are several “boss” battles that are set up as if they’re meant to be dramatic centerpiece battles, but they fall flat due to the limited combat systems. I didn’t come to Infinity Nikki to be wowed by combat, but even I felt disappointed with these few areas; the game would, simply put, be better without them. There are a few moments that called for more emotional weight, and the lackluster combat left these consequential sequences feeling undersized. Infinity Nikki does have challenges in its platforming, which is found throughout the world in small moments and elsewhere in elaborate dungeons that feel like a mad dash through a glittering pink makeup factory that’s been overrun with terrible vines.
Infinity Nikki, for 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 ahead of the game’s release, Infinity Nikki was full of bugs, both inconsequential and game-breaking. On the smaller end, these bugs were the typical sort of thing — floating animal models, missing textures, and inconsistent clicking delays in the menus. But on the game-breaking side, the flow of the game was severely messed up due to the Stylist Duel issues (meaning I grinded them all out at the end of the game), and another bug halted progress on the main storyline for days until a patch. That’s on top of frame rate and performance issues, like missing translations, extensive pop-in, and occasional stuttering. Those larger issues have been fixed as of writing, at least on Windows PC, but several of the smaller problems may still be present at launch. These larger issues will certainly get fixed, but I’m not confident that everything will be solved by launch due to the scope of the game.
The other piece of Infinity Nikki that I’ve found hard to speak to while playing a pre-launch build is the currency system. Like any other gacha game, Infinity Nikki has several in-game and premium currencies 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 builds were loaded with the in-game currency for pulling the special, elaborate outfits. (Think the gacha system in Genshin Impact, where you’re pulling for characters, except in Infinity Nikki, you’re pulling for clothing pieces.) These clothing pieces are often powerful score-wise, but they’re not Ability Outfits — those are discovered through gameplay. Largely, the outfits available so far haven’t been my vibe, either, so I can’t imagine spending anything to acquire them.
Image: Infold Games/Papergames
But free-to-play games like this are free for a reason: The developer expects to make money elsewhere. The currency used to purchase vouchers for the special pulls is called Diamonds, which are earned through gameplay. However, to have enough to make a lot of pulls, you may be incentivized to purchase the Stellarite currency with real money, which can then be transferred one-to-one into 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 acquired only through gameplay and used to purchase items from in-game vendors, for instance.
All of this is to say that Infinity Nikki is complex down to its core: It’s the story of exploitation, war, and wishes mixed with its candied exterior. It’s also the overwhelming menu that’d scare off the most “hardcore” of gamers, and its sheer breadth of clothing options, down to socks and shoes, that allow for any sort of style. In video games, fashion has always been power, even if it’s not immediately obvious to the average player. In games like Elden Ring or Destiny 2, players go scorched-earth to find the most powerful gear — a helmet that’s resistant to fire attacks, perhaps, or a chest plate that increases damage dealt. Infinity Nikki takes that idea very literally, eliminating the sort of stereotypical violence traditionally seen in video games while still holding true to the series’ deep, intriguing darkness and shimmering frivolity. Developer Infold Games has created the most earnest (and sometimes absurd) story with Infinity Nikki, centered around a traditionally feminine value — style! — that connects all sorts of different players. What you get is something that’ll both bewilder and dazzle you, even when it’s frustrating.
Infinity Nikki will be released on Dec. 4 on Android, Apple iOS, PlayStation 5, and Windows PC. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code provided by Infold Games. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.