Take the ballroom scene from Disney's Beauty and the Beast, replace the groaning utensils with an army of chibi cats, endow Belle with discreet, Doctor Manhattan-level matter-transforming powers, and you might just be beginning to get closer to the experience of Infinity Nikki – an open-world dress-up adventure from Singapore-based Infold and former Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild developer Kentaro Tominaga.
Shown this week at Gamescom 2024, this is the fifth installment in the so-far mobile-focused Nikki series, and it seems to be a hit, with over 12 million pre-registrations to date (though many of those are driven by the prospect of collectively unlocked 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, because I haven’t spent nearly enough of my life thinking about the tactical applications of ball gowns. Here’s that trailer.
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A snippet of the plot is taken from a recent preview by Ian Games: Nikki, a princess or neighbor heroine, is rummaging through her wardrobe for an outfit when she discovers an enchanted dress. The dress immediately takes her off and drags her through a portal to the glittering Narnified Hyrule that is Miraland. There she meets a cursed goddess, Ena, who tasks her with saving the world from evil using the power of the lost miraculous outfits.
Along the way, she'll pick up a billion other new looks that grant her various powers and skills: fishing, stealth, mastering electronics, catching insects, shrinking to be able to ride on her pet. Moogle cat head. This is the clothing language of Final Fantasy X-2, applied to the open world. Do not despair at the absence of expressly warlike elements, because war is only fear wrapped in taffeta, and the hem is mightier than the sword.
There East Combat, aka monster-purging, is light. Enemies have names like Bouldy and are sometimes literally made of materials for fancy dresses. The terrain seems to be populated mostly by tailors and stylists, rather than the usual blacksmiths and weapons dealers. Zeldary touches abound: you get a Pear-Pal tablet similar to Breath Of The Wild's Sheikah Slate, which is mainly used for photoshoots, and one of the dresses lets you glide. There are also dungeons of a sort with platforming sequences: one consists of a Dream Warehouse filled with paper cranes that represent wishes. Complete it and you can fly around on one of them. You can also move around on other objects: magical trains, bicycles, minecarts in wine cellars, and a large bloody bird that follows a fixed route around the map.
Am I rather charmed? I fully expect the as-yet-unspecified monetization elements to be as wild as the visuals are cheesy—it feels like it’s aimed squarely at magpie kids with unregulated access to their parents’ credit cards. But I like the idea of an open world explicitly built around gladragging, since playing dress-up is secretly the best part of many games—including games that ostensibly frown upon such frivolous distractions 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. Anyway, you can read more about Nikki and her activities on the Epic Games Store.
For more of the latest news and previews from Gamescom 2024, head over to our Gamescom 2024 hub.