Welcome to Florawish, I guess

If you'd have asked me what game I was going to fall all the way into, I would not have put Infinity-fucking-Nikki on the list. 

When I heard this game was coming out, and what it's pedigree was, I was immediately sort of rage-fascinated. Why was the cellphone paper dolly dress-up game getting a "real" hardware installment? Why were people associated with Breath of the Wild working on the environments?? What would this look like?? I had, once in the past, installed a "Love Nikki" game on my phone. What coaxed me into installing it in the first place, was how screen shots seemed to kind of imply there was a story going on here, with lore. However, I remember loading that game up like once, being kind of overwhelmed with the interface and all the immediate pop-ups and login bonuses and cash shop currency giveaway announcements like every other mobile cash-grab and not really digging any deeper than that. Also, I only ever really want to game on my phone when I don't have signal to doomscroll memes, so a game that needs to be online to work usually dies on my phone (yes, I realize that's most of them, but offline-functional mobile games do exist, and I am who they are for). Besides, pretty princess dress-up is not really my core interest set. I can barely dress myself. I'm a black clothes, graphic t-shirt, hoodie kind of asshole.  

So, at the very reasonable price of free-99, I figured I was going to install this game, be here for this weird cultural moment but generally lose interest quickly, have a laugh either at how bad it is, how bad "girl" games are in general, or how I am clearly a terrible girl, and get on with my life. Maybe finally start digging into my backlog. I didn't want to touch it until I finished Veilguard, obviously, and then it was going to be the small break before I dove into finally playing all the way through Dragon Age Inquisition. That's my "real" next game.

So imagine my surprise when I lost an entire day to it by accident. 

Guys, Infinity Nikki is the actual game I'm playing right now, and I expect to continue for a while.

The thing that got me (and I had been playing for a few hours before I realized what had happened) was how bad this game triggers my Skyrim Syndrome. You are constantly heading toward one goal, and noticing something out of the corner of your eye, or just a little off the path. Maybe it's a resource you can gather, or a puzzle game, or some kind of observable event, or an NPC making "I haveth a quest for you" noises, or a cat desperately needs petting. So, you go over there, and you do some kind of right-now action, and you notice a little farther off, there's another one. Or maybe you catch sight of a higher value resource off in the distance. Or maybe you can't quite tell what's going on over there, but you can tell it's likely something meaningful or interesting. And suddenly, it's been 5 hours, you're 743meters away from your quest target that was 15 meters away from the place you left from, and you're brushing a pony. You approached the pony because you got the drop on him even though they usually hear you coming from super far away and take off running, so you couldn't pass up the opportunity, because you need some of his mane hair to construct a sweater you got the plans for out of a random treasure chest that was guarded by the monsters you could not just leave there when you caught sight of them looming in the trees after you finished fashion-battling some guy you ran into standing by the lake you were only at because there was a glowing fish in it. There is ALWAYS something to do near you, and also things that beckon you to explore off in the distance. The landscape is littered with flowers to pick, NPCs to talk to, minigames to play, and enemies to defeat, without feeling cluttered or overwhelming. 

I have not gotten deep enough into the main storyline to know what the deal with the lore is, but I can tell that the world is quite large, with at least 5 countries having been ambiently mentioned in a way that gives me the impression I will end up visiting them. Also I am in the starting town, and my plucky mentors have already explained that this world's God used to be very directly present in all of their lives, possibly in living memory, but that God has since left and man has used technologies and magic fueled by the remnants of His blessings to fill in the gaps and make a peaceful and fulfilling world, though they still mourn their God's loss and base a lot of their culture around "wishing," which is how they describe their form of prayer. There are cults. There is geopolitical conflict. The ruins that litter the woods are tied to specific historical events.

Also I am still based in the starting town, quite a few hours in, though they just recently introduced me to the concept of vehicles (a cute pink and purple bike with a basket for my talking stuffed animal buddy) and a distant location I'm going to be visiting sooner rather than later. This is relevant, because one of the key features I've come to expect from free RPGs is that you usually get kinda dragged by the story through the first couple areas in fairly quick succession. Small camps or towns, which run out of interesting things immediately. This game dropped me in a bustling little town, which I have ranged out of and come back to a few times as if I live there. I am being given the chance to get to know this town -- for it to matter. 

They also haven't bombarded me with a zillion new skills all at once. Your skills are derived from magical "ability outfits," which on one hand means you just can use them, at max strength, immediately, but also each new one that is introduced involves receiving the plans for the outfit, crafting the outfit, wearing the outfit, and using the skill. The crafting bit isn't a huge thing. The odds are high that you already have more than enough materials in your bag, and it's as simple as hitting "select all" and "quick craft" and BOOM, you have it, but they introduce these skills one at a time, over time, and not even in succession. Also only one of the early skills is combat-related. You technically have 2 offensive moves with the "purification" dress: an energy ball and a ground-pound. The ground-pound does damage but you use it more for opening boxes and cracking big tree nuts. And that's it. That's fighting. The rest is "try not to get hit because you are wearing chiffon, not armor, homie." This is a thing you will do, but it doesn't appear to be the core gameplay loop. The other abilities I've gotten so far are: Jump Real Good, where my ruffly, flowy blue dress gives me the ability to double-jump and glide for short distances, as well as fall gently and control that descent. Pet Cat (animal grooming), where I sneak up on critters who are various levels of skittish and uninterested in me to accost them with a grooming brush, which gives them some love and gathers animal products like fur and feathers for crafting. Bug catching, self explanatory, also involves sneaking up on anxious wildlife, this time snatching them up, also as crafting materials and "design inspiration." Fishing, self explanatory, we MUST have fishing. It isn't hard, and it is debatable if it even qualifies as a minigame, but I have to push just enough buttons that it feels like an active process. And, for a current in-game festival, I have a dress that lets me play a flute. I have to literally play notes, and that means every noise it makes is truly terrible, but I can do it. 

I'm having a legitimately great time. There's so much to do, with varying levels of difficulty and significance. The environments are beautiful and a joy to explore. I can get what I need so far without dipping into the siren call of the cash shop, which is 100% there, but not blatantly the only way to play at any kind of enjoyable pace. I can earn tokens to participate in the shiny clothing gatchas in-game. I expected the fashion design to throw me, less because I'm so fashion-dumb, but because I kinda expected the game to make you look stupid unless you pay. But, nope, I've managed to have some fun cobbling together nice looks. The fashion battles are... Fine. They aren't torture, but part of that is because there is a "Recommended" button where the game cobbles together an outfit based on what you have with the highest scores in the battle's aesthetic category. "Sweet date night" battle? Here's a hodge-podge of everything with the highest "sweet" stat. So far, I always look like I crawled out of a Salvation Army bin with the computer's suggestions, but putting together something on my own that looks more coherent to me tends to produce lower scores. But, I am bad at fashion, so maybe I just don't understand what's hot. I am grateful for the button, because my clothing inventory is already out of control. Coats and dresses and pants and shirts and hats and rings and necklaces and shoes and hairstyles... I do appreciate that there isn't just one aesthetic at play here. Sometimes it's evening gown prom dress time, sometimes it's workout gear time, sometimes it's office chic, or punk, or ripped jeans and a graphic t-shirt. Personally, I'd think it was a little dumb to go tromping around in the woods dressed like a cupcake with stilettoes the whole time. The whole process has been shockingly well-thought out, deep, and entertaining. 

Honestly, it's a little suspicious. No one puts this much heart into a F2P. There is always a point where they expect to make some money. Despite it being single player, they do have a couple systems by which you can share your fashion and photography acumen by taking selfies, which the game pulls from the internet like the messages you could leave each other in Dark Souls. You can post your photos in an hourglass in the location you took them, and other players can come upon them, look at them, and pull a copy of your character from the photo into their world to take a group photo with (which is a little weird since you're both Nikki, regardless of styling, so you're taking group selfies with alternate universe copies of yourself...), and you can set up a flower on bodies of water with a hologram of yourself and a message in an effort to make friends (all you can do with a friend is chat, I think). That kind of thing gives the kind of people who buy stuff in cash shops the ability to show off, which is how you make money on a free game. A lot of the population who never pays anything is there so that the kind of person who does buy stuff has someone to be better than. But, they're rarely this interested in whether or not the free player is having this much fun. 

I guess we'll see!