Nikoderiko: The Magical World – Director’s Cut Released as Free Upgrade

In 2024, indie developer VEA Games released Nikoderiko: The Magical World, their love letter to classic platformers. Now, they’ve released a Director’s Cut that refines gameplay and adds new content, and they’ve offered it as a free upgrade.

If you missed out on Nikoderiko the first time around, it’s a family-friendly platformer with an art style inspired by Saturday morning cartoons. It stars mongooses Niko and Luna and can be played in single-player or couch co-op. You travel through the game’s varied worlds on a quest to retrieve an ancient relic stolen from you by the nefarious Baron Grimbold, and you can team up with animal mounts to defeat his Cobring army and save the local tribes.

Since the release of the base version of the game, the dev team has received extensive feedback from players and worked to improve on as much as possible with the Director’s Cut.

“We have a lot of emails; I personally read and answer every email,” said Dmitry Smirnov, founder of VEA Games and director of Nikoderiko. “We tried to implement all the necessary features you asked for. There are a lot of ideas for the game and how to improve the game. It really helps us to make a good game a great game.”

One of the biggest improvements to the Director’s Cut is the expansion of its difficulty options, which target a wider range of players and experience levels. For hardcore players, there’s a new Hard Mode with level modifiers.

“It will push players,” Smirnov said. “There are more challenges, more hard but honest mechanics. We would like to give you the experience of a soulslike game in a family platformer.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Easy Mode has been made easier, lowering the barrier to entry for younger players or those new to gaming or the platformer genre. It is a family game, after all.

“We decided to make it more accessible for kids and younger players,” Smirnov said. “While we were developing Nikoderiko, it was nice to know that my kids will be able to feel the same impressions like I did in my childhood.”

Keeping with the theme of making Nikoderiko accessible to as many people as possible, the Director’s Cut adds text and voiceover options for several languages, including German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese. It also adds Steam Deck compatibility for the first time.

There’s also a new secret eighth world for players to unlock, with its own hidden treasures and new boss. With the new world comes new music from veteran composer David Wise, who composed the soundtrack for the base game. Wise has worked in gaming for more than 30 years and is probably best known for his composing work in the Donkey Kong Country series.

“On my fourth birthday, I got a present and it was Donkey Kong Country,” Smirnov said. “I always loved to play with my brother, and it changed a lot of my direction in life, because I was very inspired by the graphics and the mystical and atmospheric music.”

In addition to all the new content in the Director’s Cut, it also refines what was already there. Graphics have been upgraded, animations have improved, and performance has been optimized across all platforms.

If you’ve already bought Nikoderiko, the Director’s Cut is available as a free update and is compatible with your previous saved games, so you don’t need to start over. For the achievement hunters, the update adds new trophies and achievements on the appropriate platforms.

If you haven’t picked it up before, the Director’s Cut has replaced the base game on all platforms, so buying it now will get you the expanded version. It’s available on PC, Nintendo Switch, PS4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, and Amazon Luna, so it’s safe to say you probably have access to it. It’s also offered on sale pretty regularly, so you can always wishlist it on your preferred platform and buy it when it’s at a price you’re comfortable with.

For the collectors among you, a physical release was recently announced and is scheduled to release on August 22. The base game will be available on its own, and there will also be a Collector’s Edition that comes with the game, David Wise’s soundtrack on CD, and an official artbook with around 100 pages.

For more information, check out the game’s official website or join the community on Twitter for updates.