Dress Up, Jump Up: Developer Kentaro Tominaga Shares Gameplay Design of Infinity Nikki
With over 100 million players, the Nikki series is a beloved dress-up RPG developed by Infold Games, the overseas label of China’s Papergames.
An action game with a focus on dressing up may sound like a game for casual players. However, Infinity Nikki – the series’ newest installment, coming to PC, PlayStation 5 and mobile – is an open-world game in which platforming action is a key feature. The debut trailer in which main character Nikki traverses a vast open world in a myriad of different outfits surprised fans of the series and newcomers alike.
In May, IGN published our impressions after playing a three-hour demo. We were impressed by how fun and unique Infinity Nikki’s open world is. From its approachable controls and satisfying action and combat to its rewarding exploration and crafting systems, it feels great to play. Needless to say, changing into your favorite outfit and visiting interesting locations is an essential part of the experience. This makes Infinity Nikki more than just an exciting adventure in an epic world. It combines a sense of the everyday with the freedom and immersion only a video game can deliver.
Infinity Nikki has Kentaro Tominaga – who worked on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as a game designer – on board as sub-director. We interviewed Tominaga in Kyoto, Japan, where Infold Games recently opened an office, to learn more about his vision for Infinity Nikki.
“I worked together with the development team in Shanghai for about half a year,” explains Tominaga. “By doing so, I was able to get to know them. Now, I am working from our new office in Kyoto while communicating with the team back in Shanghai.”
Tominaga himself was the first employee of Infold Games’ Kyoto office. Now, roughly 10 people work at the office, while Infinity Nikki’s development team as a whole has over 700 members.
Exploration and Platforming
Upon translating this beloved dress-up game series into an open-world format, Tominaga saw it as his first task to make sure the gameplay would be enjoyable for players with little to no experience with action games.
“In open-world games, you traverse through a large world, and finding hidden secrets along the way is a big part of the experience,” he says. “I thought that combining platforming with this exploration element would result in a fun new kind of experience.”
As Tominaga implies, discovering new points of interest and figuring out how to reach them are an essential part of what make open-world video games so captivating. In Infinity Nikki, the platforming mechanics play a big role in delivering that unique sense of satisfaction.
By obtaining special clothing called Miracle Outfits, Nikki can acquire a wide array of skills. For example, the Floating Outfit allows her to float with a quick press of the jump button, which makes it possible to stay in the air for a longer time and reach higher locations.
“If you look down at the world from somewhere you reached through platforming traversal, you can find the next place you want to investigate – and once you reach that place, you will find yet another place to explore,” says Tominaga. “We made it so that the exploration and platforming work together naturally to create a flow that keeps the player interested and motivated.”
One of the game’s outfits allows the player to defeat enemies by shooting balls of light. To allow new players to slowly get used to such mechanics, Tominaga instructed the team to focus on the relative height of enemies.
“When an enemy is flying in the air, the player needs to jump in order to attack from the right height,” he says. “While it might sound obvious, by doing so, the player isn’t just mashing buttons and must react in different ways, which keeps the gameplay from becoming dull.”
When playing with a controller, the team made sure that jumping and changing the camera angle can be done simultaneously without stress. Infinity Nikki was designed as a unique open world in which the player can explore and make discoveries of their own. At the same time, combat was designed with plenty of knowledge on how to develop an open-world action game.
Infinity Nikki is being developed for not just PS5 and PC, but also for iOS and Android. Developing a game that can be played with keyboard and mouse, a controller or a touchscreen was new for Tominaga.
“Developing a platform game for smartphones was – as I expected – challenging to accomplish, and we are still refining it,” he admits. “We wanted an experience that can be enjoyed in the same way no matter what platform you choose to play on. Since there will likely be a lot of players who haven’t played 3D action games before, we didn’t want the game to be more difficult than necessary. We also aimed for simple controls so that anyone could pick up and play.”
Dress Up, Level Up
By obtaining outfits with skills, the player will obtain Whimstars in order to upgrade the Heart of Infinity, which functions as a skill tree. Whimstars can be found throughout the open world.
“Upgrading the Heart of Infinity allows you to unlock more Miracle Outfits, among other things,” explains Tominaga. “Essentially, it functions as leveling up your character. The player can hunt for more Whimstars throughout the game’s field in between main story events. By implementing elements that reward exploration as well as the platforming mechanics, we created a solid gameplay cycle. The characters and world of the Nikki series are brought to life through these elements. The vast open world offers the opportunity to discover a variety of different scenery, and the player is free to take photos in these environments while wearing their favorite outfits. I always tell the staff that in addition to exploration and platforming, worldbuilding and photo mode function as the four most important aspects of Infinity Nikki.”
Some Miracle Outfits allow the player to gather different types of crafting materials. A cute fishing outfit allows Nikki to fish at watersides, while an outfit that has Nikki hold a butterfly net makes it possible to catch insects at flowerbeds. The Bye-Bye Dust outfit allows Nikki to brush animals she finds in the game’s towns and grasslands to obtain loose animal fur. The animals love being brushed by Nikki and will grow fond of her after she brushes them. Many beta testers fell in love with this feature, which was originally suggested by Tominaga himself.
“When coming up with the idea of gathering material from animals, I realized that skinning them or hunting them for meat was not a good match for Infinity Nikki,” says Tominaga. “Brushing them in return for an item seemed like a better match. It could function as one of the many moments of joy we wanted the game to have.”
While it was his idea, even Tominaga himself was pleasantly surprised when he first saw how animal brushing was implemented in-game.
“From dogs to cats and birds, each animal type reacts with its own unique set of animations,” he says. “Dogs, for example, show their bellies in a very cute way. I was amazed to see how much attention our staff put into these animations. For me, too, it was a lot of fun to see how each animal type reacts.”
Friends in Fashion
Besides exploration and platforming mechanics, Infinity Nikki’s world and characters also play an important role in the game’s appeal. The relationship between Nikki and her cuddly companion Momo is shown in strong yet subtle fashion. When they are suddenly transported to a different dimension at the start of the game, Nikki and Momo crack jokes with each other and work together to overcome obstacles. Nikki and Momo are welcomed by friendly characters in the game’s towns as well. Tominaga says that he and his team put a lot of effort into the game’s characters, especially Nikki and Momo.
“Momo is a very important companion to Nikki, so we chose to put a lot of effort into portraying their friendship,” he says. “For example, Momo walks alongside Nikki during the game. Even when Nikki jumps and floats around the game’s world, Momo does his best to follow her. In shops, Momo will sit on a chair and listen to what the shop owner has to say together with Nikki. We always try to portray how Momo is joining Nikki on her endeavors.”
A lot of effort has been put into how the characters behave in Infinity Nikki’s towns and other locations. Changes in weather and time of day also affect the towns and landscapes.
“The same location can look drastically different depending on the weather,” says Tominaga. “When it rains, Nikki’s clothes will look wet and items such as a picnic set will be moved so that they don’t get wet. I hope players can notice little details that can only be found at a certain place at a certain moment and take photos when they notice.”
Tominaga says new areas will be added to Infinity Nikki after release. Besides the grasslands that we got to play when we previewed the game, there will be areas such as a location covered in snow and a deep forest inhabited by faeries. The variation of locations should make photography even more interesting. During our time with the game, we felt that finding photogenic spots in a vast, everchanging open world proved to be a great match with a dress-up game. Even for a standard open-world game, a deep photo mode is almost seen as essential today. A wide array of camera options and different filters can be enjoyed in Infinity Nikki, and sharing pictures with other players will undoubtedly become an important part of the experience.
We ask Tominaga if Infinity Nikki will provide any methods for players to communicate.
“Of course it will be possible to upload pictures and share them with other players within the game,” he replies. “Players can also join the world of other players to take pictures together. Players can become friends within the game through photography, and we are definitely thinking about ways for players to communicate.
“Also, while this might be added a while after the game’s release, we are planning to add a feature that lets players have their own home to which they can invite their friends.”
Wear What You Like
Styling Challenges are bouts against NPCs to decide who has the best fashion coordination. Styling Challenges have always been a part of the Nikki series, where players combine all sorts of clothes and items to match a certain theme, with the winner being the one who makes the best match. Styling Challenges are present in Infinity Nikki as well.
“Players can have fun gathering coordination items as they play, but we made sure it is not compulsory to advance through the main story,” Tominaga says. “It was important for us to make it something players can enjoy optionally. In a regular open-world game, when players find clothes or armor of high stats, they might end up wearing them throughout the game. For Infinity Nikki, we wanted the player to be able to wear what they want without having to think of the stats of a certain outfit.”
Even when players want to utilize skills like jumping or brushing, it is not necessary to keep wearing the Miracle Outfits that have those skills. When you press the jump button or choose a certain skill from the skill wheel, Nikki’s outfit will change for that moment. Once Nikki is done using the skill, she will automatically go back to the appearance you chose for her. That means players can have Nikki wear whatever they want without having to worry about gameplay restrictions.
In earlier stages of development, it was necessary for players to change into different outfits whenever they wanted to use a certain skill.
“When the game started to shape up, all the developers started to do test plays from the beginning to the end of the game,” says Tominaga. “One of them noticed that the amount of time they were wearing the same Miracle Outfits was too long. When it comes to action mechanics and playability, I can sense problems myself, but this staff member was more aware of what they were wearing when playing the game.”
This example shows that while Tominaga is utilizing his experience to realize his vision for Infinity Nikki, he is open to ideas, proposals and the creativity of other staff members as well. We ask Tominaga what it’s been like working with the staff members of Infold Games for the first time.
“My first impression was that they are a very young and passionate team,” he says. “Many of them are in their twenties or thirties, and they are very motivated to create fun games. In game development, there is never one correct answer. Everyone on the team has their own vision based on the games they have played or the things that they have experienced in the past. This is reflected in Infinity Nikki, which I think is very exciting.”
Moments of Joy
Platforming, exploration, a captivating world and fun photography: All the elements that shape the open world of Infinity Nikki were conceived to achieve one overall goal.
“When joining the team, Runhao Yao (Infold Games’ CEO) told me that the concept for Infinity Nikki was to have players experience moments of joy,” Tominaga says.
Wearing your favorite outfit in a lush green world, engaging with friendly characters, visiting beautiful locations and taking photos are just some of the activities Tominaga and his team crafted to provide those moments of joy. While many of these experiences can be had in other open-world games, Infinity Nikki presents them in a sweet, heartwarming way that lines up with that desire.
Right now, Tominaga’s main goal is to deliver Infinity Nikki to the players and to expand on that world after release.
“I want to focus all my energy on Infinity Nikki,” he says. “I hope I can make it a fun game with as many moments of joy as possible.”
Infold Games’ Kyoto offices were opened because of Infinity Nikki. Through the development of Infinity Nikki, Tominaga’s knowledge is being passed onto many staff members, which will benefit their work on Infinity Nikki and future projects to come.
Finally, we ask Tominaga what kind of players he hopes will play Infinity Nikki.
“I hope Infinity Nikki will become a game that anyone can enjoy,” he says. “I believe in the exploration and platforming mechanics we came up with, and it has been designed so that players can get used to it little by little. Dressing up your character and finding locations that match to take pictures should allow you to feel the appeal of Infinity Nikki. We have developed it so that players of all ages can enjoy it, so I hope that you will come and experience your moment of joy.”
Infinity Nikki is set to release for PlayStation 5, PC, iOS and Android. Check out the official website to find out more.
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