I Played “Infinity Nikki” for 10 Hours in 3 Days

And I would do it all again.

I didn’t know anything about Nikki or how infinite she was one week ago. I’ve learned, since then, that this game is actually the fifth installment in the series. Does this make me want to go back and play all the other games in the franchise that I missed? Probably not. But did I have an absolute blast in the 10+ hours I’ve already logged into this game? Yes.

Infinity Nikki is an open world, 3D platforming game brimming with joy and excitement at every turn.

At its core, the game is all about fashion. You run around a ginormous open world, looking to craft outfits and competing in styling challenges in order to make clothing pieces. It’s funny that the main goal of the game is most likely the least interesting part to me, but I cannot deny how joyful it is to craft a new outfit and see Nikki dashing around in something dazzling every now and then.

The parts that drew me the most to Infinity Nikki were the 3D platforming elements.

There is never not something happening in this game. Wherever you dash around to, you end up discovering something new to do, whether it’s brushing cute (sometimes weird) animals, fishing, catching bugs, collecting Whimstars or more. In many ways, the game reminds me of Tinykin and Bowser’s Fury—particularly collecting-the-stars thing.

Nikki is most certainly its own unique game, despite the similarities. There are tons of mini-games to play, platforms to jump on, and bikes to ride on. The most exciting part of the game early on is collecting all the new abilities, which are mostly gated into certain areas of the map.

Once you are able to float, glide, play a musical instrument and even shrink into Momo, Nikki’s adorable little cat-like companion, Infinity Nikki becomes a hard-to-put-down game. There’s nothing more joyful to me than a 3D platformer that continues to deliver on its promise of new abilities to gain and fantastic visuals in the background. The addition of caves and bosses makes for a very fun gameplay, one that collectathon fans will struggle putting down.

I do wish the game had a few more challenges up its sleeves, but Infinity Nikki is the ultimate definition of a “cozy game” through and through.

As I get closer and closer to finishing the final main quest (for now), I realized just how “easy” the game was. I wish the game had taken a Zelda-like route, making boss fights more challenging and keeping the platforming to their current difficulty levels. Then again, maybe the game itself wouldn’t have felt as cozy if any small part of it was missing.

The elephant in the room is that this is still a gacha game with in-game currency and microtransactions. But I found, surprisingly, that it was incredibly easy to ignore all of that and just enjoy this free-to-play game.

This might be harder to do the more invested you are in certain outfits (I certainly thought twice about purchasing a Momo outfit here and there), but I have over 10 hours of gameplay and not a single dollar spent so far. I feel that I am likely to continue not spending money on Infinity Nikki’s outfits, but would be more than happy to purchase a DLC or any more gameplay content outside of cosmetics.

Your enjoyment of Infinity Nikki is highly dependent on how much you love open world 3D platformers (me: a lot) and outfits. I can’t wait to keep exploring Miraland and all its ridiculous un-challenging beauty.