How Infinity Nikki became the ultimate dress-up game—and so much more
11.25.2024
By Carli Velocci, Contributor
Now we have Infinity Nikki, the first Nikki title that's been able to leave the mobile space, and Chinese developer Infold Games' (a new international imprint under the Papergames umbrella) first non-mobile title ever. Infinity Nikki is releasing on mobile, PlayStation 5, and PC on Dec. 5, and if you didn't know the series' history, you wouldn't know how gigantic this game actually is in context. Infold Games not only used Unreal Engine 5 for the first time—upgrading from Unreal Engine 4 around 12 months before launch, no less—but it had also never made a PC or console game before. While its games have been wildly successful on mobile, it wanted to take a risk and expand the idea of what Nikki could be.
And Infinity Nikki truly is the biggest Nikki game to date: It's not just a dress-up game like its predecessors. Sure, fashion will be a huge component (you can't have a Nikki game without the ability to put her in adorable outfits), but Infold went the extra mile and integrated platforming, open-world exploration, fishing, pet grooming, photography, and even new kinds of multiplayer elements. This isn't just about new platforms; Nikki got a huge makeover, and at least 30 million players (if pre-registration numbers are any indication) are going to get to see it.
Nikki's backstory
Nikki began life in Nikki UP2U: A Dressing Story, all the way back on the iPhone 5. The concept was simple: dress up ordinary girl Nikki in the best outfits for the occasion to get the highest score. Infold Games founder Runhao Yao was finishing up his postgraduate degree and wanted to make a casual mobile game that was higher quality than others he was seeing on the App Store at the time. Yao hired three strangers to help finish Nikki UP2U, and they all decided to keep making games full-time.
Nikki UP2U set the stage for what the Nikki series would become. It doesn't have as many features as later games, such as competitions, but the familiar bones are all still there. She has her iconic long pink hair and Momo has his short yellow cape. The UI was set, along with how users put on clothes, wigs, and makeup, and became the basis for how future series entries would work. Players would put on an outfit and get a rating based on how well they followed the prompt. Granted, it was never about looking the best, but about using the labels given to you to put together the highest-scoring outfit. More importantly for the quality aspect, it had a story that would progress as you gained experience and met other characters that built out Nikki's backstory and world.
The 2013 sequel Nikki UP2U 2: World Traveller greatly expanded the whole concept, with more shops and the introduction of crafting. The biggest change was to its story, with Nikki having to search for her missing father and follow a mysterious map. Nikki UP2U just had Nikki living her everyday life with her family and her cat; the follow-up would be something much grander.
World Traveller is called the first "mainstream" Nikki game on the Papergames website in that it was the first to be added to a global app store and to have an English-language version, which was called Hello Nikki: Let's Beauty Up. While it was popular, the Nikki series struck gold with Love Nikki in 2015. This third entry offered way more features to longtime Nikki players, but newcomers were also able to get in on the action with plenty of gacha options, including frequent events with limited-time outfits that can get you coming back for years (something I can attest to). It also had the most fantastical story to date. Here, Nikki is no longer just a regular girl; she's transported to Miraland, where she has to compete in fashion battles in a wide range of conflicts, from small interpersonal ones to full-on political warfare. Papergames touts that Love Nikki has reached more than 100 million players globally, and it's still listed on app stores today.
But that wasn't enough for Papergames. Shining Nikki was released in 2019. The experience was similar to what players got in Love Nikki, but with one big difference: 3D graphics. The Nikki games have always been gorgeous, with extraordinary amounts of detail particularly given to the outfits. With Shining Nikki in 2021, the studio pushed how they made games, switching to Unity and adding even more ways for the player to bond with the main character.
Vice president of business development Alicia Huang said that the Nikki series' evolution parallels the studio's growth. "It relates a little bit more to our company's growth and as an organization," she explained. The first two games were independent ventures, and as such were much smaller in scope. By Love Nikki, the company had grown to a few hundred people, but was still using a third-party publisher, hence why it was able to get localized in different languages for the first time. Shining Nikki moved the series to 3D.
Even from the beginning, the Nikki series was a unique part of the dress-up game space. While fashion is a huge element, Nikki has always been so much more than that. There was always a story driving the player forward through the main quests, and a huge gacha element kept people engaged. You can draw a straight line between the success of Love Nikki to the Roblox juggernaut Dress to Impress and the explosion of the genre as a whole in the West.
But that was all for mobile. The studio wanted to go even further.
Infinity Nikki is an evolution for Nikki and Chinese games
Infold Games is about taking technological risks just as much as it is about making Nikki games. This new entry was inspired by the state of the world in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, and while previous Nikki games have touched on darker topics and even put Nikki in the middle of a war, the team wanted to do something a bit different.
"We come to realize 'OK, maybe we should make a game that is happy, that is about making peace with the world, that is about people—the core experience being people finding the happy moments in daily life and also interacting with the beautiful world,'" Huang said. "So the whole core inspiration for Infinity comes from I would say a very similar emotion that relates to all the Nikki series, that's very positive, that has emotional connections, that's something universal and upbeat." And to get that message out there, it had to be on more platforms than just mobile.
Infinity Nikki definitely has a lighter tone than some of its predecessors, focusing on concepts like joy and positivity rather than raw emotion. The pace is relaxed, with few tasks for people to actually take on. They're encouraged to wander and interact with what they find. With photography, players can pose for the camera and then admire the resulting images and all the little creatures that show up in them. There are even ways to leave messages for other players. It's a single-player game, but it's not competitive.
"I think the narrative style of the game is kind of lighter, I would say it's lighter, it's more subtle," Huang said. "In combat, we don't use the word 'fight.' We use the word 'purified.' That implies that most NPCs, most animals, creatures in the world are kind… I think that's something that we want to convey in this Infinity Nikki generation because… if we want a healing experience, if we want something that is about making peace, then we want the whole world and narrative to be a little bit lighter."
Infinity Nikki is about letting players see the world of Miraland, and so the developers wanted to ensure they saw it. They chose to make the game an open-world platformer. This isn't a genre mix you see too often, but Huang said it actually helps the players see more of what's around them. She agrees that it was a "weird choice," but explains it made sense.
"When you play the game, you pay attention to the enemy or the events that's happening towards you. You tend to have all your attention about following an NPC to do the quest… your whole attention will be surrounding the task… but not the world around you," she said. "Platforming is the right mechanic because when you platform, you pay attention to the character itself and also to the environment around you."
The platforming also isn't as intricate or timing-focused as it would be in another game. There aren't time limits, and you're not being forced to go in certain directions to fulfill an important quest. The focus is on the aesthetics, with even more attention given to outfits, but also to environmental and character design. The dress-up mechanics are an integral part of the experience, as different clothing grants Nikki various abilities and boosts. Crafting is also here, with players gathering materials in the world to create and upgrade their outfits.
And to make the game they wanted, they had to move engines again. They started in Unreal Engine 4 before making the switch to Unreal Engine 5, which Huang described as "very ambitious," especially among other Asian developers. Unreal Engine 5 had the tools for everything they wanted to do. They could use its cloth creation features to give the player the illusion that the outfits have weight or are transparent, with each fabric having unique properties. They could utilize new lighting options and reflections (extremely important with glitter or rhinestones). Infinity Nikki isn't photorealistic, but it's a realistic fantasy in the Nikki style.
"It's only with the Epic engine that we can deliver a world that's very immersive, that's very convincing. And if we want people to feel happiness, the happiness itself has to be very convincing, it has to be real," Huang said. "Even if that looks a little bit technologically impossible and [then with] super challenging needs, a lot of investment needs a lot of collaboration with the Epic team. We made the decision very fast."
According to Huang though, that wasn't met with too much resistance. "We follow a very pro-designer culture in the company. We want the whole ideation process to be smooth and to be powered by the latest-generation design technology."
Nikki has always been unique to the Chinese and broader Asian markets because it's a game series specifically for a female audience. Technode wrote in 2019 that while there are a lot of games made for girls, most developers also make games for a male audience. "Papergames has consistently treated female players as their primary audience, with all published titles being aimed at them," the report said. The playerbase is very mobile focused, with the majority of video game players using high-end mobile devices as their primary platform. Console and PC gaming is still rare, although that's set to change with the success of Black Myth: Wukong and now Infinity Nikki.
Regardless of the platform, the Nikki series shows no signs of slowing down; Infinity Nikki will be updated for the foreseeable future. The plans are to release a new region every six months and offer monthly activities and different themes. It's much larger than its predecessors and the gameplay is different, but this is still a Nikki game, which means you need to get as many outfits as possible. And because it's on most platforms, it has the potential to reach even more players who will get to befriend Nikki for the first time.
Infinity Nikki will release on the Epic Games Store on December 4.