Take the ballroom scene from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, swap out the crying vessels for an army of chibi cats, give Belle subtle matter-transforming powers on par with Doctor Manhattan, and maybe… beginning to give you a closer look at the gameplay of Infinity Nikki, an open-world, dress-up adventure game from Singaporean studio Infold and former Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild creator Kentaro Tominaga.
Unveiled this week at Gamescom 2024, it’s the fifth installment in the mobile-focused Nikki series to date, and it’s clearly been a success, with over 12 million pre-registrations to date (albeit many of them motivated by the prospect of collectively unlocking in-game bonuses). It’s also free-to-play, and I have the usual unanswered questions about currency and gacha, but I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for now, since I haven’t spent enough time in my life pondering the tactical applications of ball gowns. Here’s that trailer.
Part of the plot taken from recent preview of Iana Games: The princess or heroine next door to Princess Nikki is searching her closet for an outfit when she discovers an enchanted dress. The dress immediately kidnaps her, pulling her through a portal to the sparkling Narnified Hyrule, aka Miraland. There, she meets the cursed goddess, Ena, who tasks her with saving the world from evil using the power of the missing Miracle Outfits.
Along the way, she’ll gain a ton of novel, fresh looks that give her different powers and abilities – fishing, moving silently, mastering electronics, catching insects, shrinking so she can ride her pet Moogles cat head. This is Final Fantasy X-2’s costume recruitment, applied to the open world. Don’t lose hope for the lack of overtly warlike elements, because war is just fear dressed in taffeta, and the hem is mightier than the sword.
There Is combat, or rather, monster-clearing, but it’s played lightly. Enemies have names like Bouldy and are sometimes literally made up of materials for fancy dresses. The land seems to be inhabited mostly by tailors and stylists, rather than the usual dour blacksmiths and arms dealers. Plenty of Zeldara touches: you get a Pear-Pal similar to the Sheikah Slate from Breath Of The Wild, which is mainly used for photo ops, and one of the dresses lets you glide. There are also dungeons with platforming sequences: one consists of a Dream Warehouse full of paper cranes that represent wishes. Complete it and you can fly away on one. Other things you can ride: magic trains, bikes, mine carts in wine cellars, and a bloody giant bird that follows a set route around the map.
Am I completely charmed? I definitely expect the as-yet-unspecified monetization elements to be as brutal as the saccharine visuals are—it seems aimed squarely at the magpie kids with unregulated access to their parents’ bank cards. But I like the idea of an open world explicitly built around gladragging, because dressing up is secretly the best part of a lot of games—including games that supposedly disapprove of such frivolous pastimes because Look Here, I’m a Serious Art Form or Dressing Up is for Girls . Let’s put it this way: Dark Souls has a fashion scene. Either way, you can read more about Nikki and her doings at Epic Games Store.
For more of the latest news and announcements from Gamescom 2024, head over to our Gamescom 2024 hub.
