Infinity Nikki beta preview: Style saves the day

We went hands-on with an Infinity Nikki beta preview and came away impressed by how well Infold blends style, open-world exploration, and heart together

Infold/GLHF

I knew it was over after I clicked on Infinity Nikki’s wardrobe menu. I’d spent several hours exploring Miraland’s cottagecore Florawish region in an early build ahead of the sandbox game’s official closed beta, squirreling away outfits and accessories as I went along, but I didn’t actually know where those outfits and accessories lived. It’s an odd thing for a game about dressing up to overlook telling you, but that was fine. I was happy enough exploring, helping people, and taking an absurd number of screenshots — Nikki’s default outfit is cute enough anyway. Then, I saw all the options in front of me and realized how much danger my free time was in.

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Infinity Nikki takes the styling and dress-up formula from Love Nikki and Shining Nikki and fits it over an open-world exploration game with gentle RPG elements. I had the chance to play an early build of Infinity Nikki's closed beta, and while I was already interested in the concept, I came away impressed by just how well all the pieces of this particular outfit blend together.

Nikki and her best friend, an adorable talking cat named Momo, are exploring an attic when a magical vortex pulls them into Miraland and gives Nikki a miracle outfit, a magical dress that grants her special powers. A chained goddess stuffs the Heart of Infinity in Nikki’s ribcage and tasks her with finding the rest of the miracle outfits and saving the world. Fashion really is that important.

The Heart of Infinity gives Nikki the power to absorb Whimstars, manifestations of whimsy and creativity dotted around the land. Collecting Whimstars lets Nikki unlock new design concepts for outfits that grant her special abilities — the extraordinary, such as flying and creating magic bursts of wind, and the practical, including fishing and bug catching.

Looking out for shoes that actually match her dress / Infold/GLHF

The best way I can think of to describe it is if Genshin Impact and Gust’s modern Atelier games had a very calm child. Saving the world is important, but Infinity Nikki wants you to explore everywhere, help people with their problems, fix a dragon poet’s writer’s block issue, and pick some flowers along the way. You can pet twee little Shirtcats – tuxedo cats by another name – hop across lily pads to gather flowers, watch the sun sink under the horizon while nearby lamps slowly come to life and cast their soft glow across everything. There’s no rush, little danger, and every reason to take your time and enjoy what you see.

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It’s all very sweet and charming, but Infinity Nikki, thankfully, stops just short of being saccharine with its wholesome sweetness. Part of what keeps it grounded is how human its NPCs and quests are. Sure, most of the people you meet have no more than two personality traits, but their lives, loves, and wishes are believable and tap into universal shared experiences. One young woman in Florawish tied a wish bottle to a wishing tree with the fervent hope that her sick mother wouldn’t die. Just down the road, an elderly man asked for help finding lost pages of his diary, and a young child came to terms with the fact that her father wasn’t coming home.

Where does the ink come from / Infold/GLHF

It’s a curious blend of melancholy and wholesome vibes, but it works and actually underscores Infinity Nikki’s message about the role creativity and beauty should play in our lives. Infinity Nikki’s world makes it clear that peace,love, and beauty aren’t guaranteed and that sometimes, things don’t work out the way we hope they would. Pretty clothes won’t fix that, but empathy and a willingness to help can make a start. 

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Nikki’s open world borrows from Genshin Impact and Zelda: Breath of the Wild. You find waypoint landmarks that serve as fast travel points and random challenges scattered around the world. Some are cute platforming challenges, such as riding a cloud around obstacles, and others are rather blatantly inspired by Breath of the Wild and take you to instanced domains where you push blocks and maneuver magic spheres into platforms.

More creativity in these segments would certainly be welcome, though Infinity Nikki has other mini-games and diversions with stronger identities. Box games are a particular favorite of mine — compact little challenges where you control a wooden origami crane as it flies through a forest or try to score a goal with a small wooden football. There’s even a fun little 2D runner you have to play when you adjust the in-game clock.

Finding no socks that matched my outfits was legitimately a form of torture / Infold/GLHF

The actual dress-up portion is probably exactly what you’d expect if you have any experience with Nikki games. You earn and craft full outfits or individual pieces across several categories, from blouses and skirts to bags, backpacks, socks, earrings, and even makeup. As long as you have the materials to craft an item, you can whip it up in an instant and keep it forever. Outfits have scores in specific categories, including romance, sweetness, and, rather concerningly given how young everyone looks in Infinity Nikki, sexiness. I didn’t reach a point where any of these categories mattered, so I just enjoyed mixing and matching whatever looked nice.

There’s a handful of daily missions to complete that reward you with crafting materials, and you’ll probably find outfit pieces and other materials in the wild or from completing quests. Infinity Nikki is a gacha game, so all of these come with star rankings. In my experience, you can ignore that entirely. I was perfectly happy with my common little 3-star jeans-and-shirt outfit and didn’t miss out on anything by not landing the fancy 5-star ball gown. All that is to say that, despite being a gacha game that wants you to spend money on items for a chance to get rare 5-star outfits, you really, really don’t have to. And shouldn’t. Just use what the game gives you.

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Saying you enjoy inhabiting a game’s world is terribly cliched, but it’s also an accurate description of how I feel about Infinity Nikki. Infold’s art direction here is easily one of the best in modern gaming, a delightful blend of realism and idealism built with soft, vibrant colors that feels rewarding just to wander around in. Finding materials and Whimstars was the goal, but I happily spent time just walking through the woods, petting sheep, and making my way to the shore. It helps that Nikki’s soundtrack is as good as it is, too, with an impressive range of tracks and sounds. Soft woodland ambience gives way to Mediterranean-style sounds as you approach Florawish’s fishing neighborhood, and that turns into a laid-back instrumental cottagecore track once you enter Florawish proper. It genuinely is just a delight to experience.

A fairytale is the only place you could scrub a cat and walk away still living / Infold/GLHF

Maybe it’ll get old after a while, especially once you’ve seen all there is to see in Miraland. It’s unclear whether Infinity Nikki is a live-service game that, like Genshin Impact, will evolve over time, with new areas to explore and puzzles to solve.

But if it never becomes much more than what I saw in the pre-beta build, I’m actually fine with that. I played the beta a week after a major hurricane devastated the town I live in, and access to food and essentials is still limited. I write this as another natural disaster is about to unfold in the Florida city where I grew up and spent my early adulthood, and where family is now deciding whether to evacuate or risk their lives by staying home when the storm comes ashore.

Nothing can fix these kinds of problems. But the point of Infinity Nikki is reminding us that beauty and creativity can heal, and escaping into its world, wandering the plains of Miraland and piecing together fantastical outfits – not having to recognize and think about everything else going on around me, even just for an hour – proved the truth of that concept and also how essential games like this are.