Infinity Nikki is a literally glowing example of what video game graphics can be.
The fifth in a series of dress-up titles from Infold Games, Infinity Nikki is also the first to embrace elements of RPG action-adventure. But instead of tracking down weapons and battling bad guys, this installment finds its wide-eyed heroine solving puzzles by collecting enchanted outfits found throughout a series of wondrous lands.
Infinity Nikki
- Available on: iPhone, iPad
- Based in: Shanghai
- Awards: Apple Design Award winner for Visuals and Graphics (2025), App Store Awards Game of the Year finalist (2025), App Store Editors’ Choice
Download Infinity Nikki from the App Store >
The fashion-forward gameplay still remains, of course. Nikki’s dress sways and waves every step of the way, while capes sparkle and drift in the wind. Different outfits are imbued with different abilities that allow players to guide Nikki — and her cat companion, Momo — through clever puzzles. And from quaint cobblestone towns to distant mountains, every corner of the game’s Miraland — brought to life with cutting-edge visuals — is awash in beautifully realized lighting and effects from advanced shading techniques like Global Illumination. (Executive producer Kentaro Tominaga previously worked on several installments of the Legend of Zelda series.)
It’s a wonderland of texture, light, and animation — and the 2025 Apple Design Award winner for Visuals and Graphics. To find out more, we caught up with Douhu, Infinity Nikki’s lead gameplay systems designer for outfits; Ade, lead programmer; and Dodie, art director.
Why did you decide to make this fifth installment an open-world RPG?
Douhu: When we started thinking about this six years ago, we already knew it would be an open-world game. So we asked ourselves: How do we go about bringing Nikki into that space? And how do we set it apart from other open-world games on the market?
To make these worlds as immersive as we can, we keep an eye on all the details, all the time.
Douhu, lead gameplay systems designer for outfits
This is the first Nikki game to include action-adventure elements and light combat.
Douhu: Yes, but we knew that combat wouldn’t be part of the game’s core play. The Nikki series has such a defined style. We thought a lot about how to maintain that.
How many people worked on the visuals for this?
Douhu: Oh, it’s a huge team — roughly 800 people. It’s a fun but a complicated job. We have a lot of visual pipelines all going at once: cutscenes, the NPC ecosystem, lighting, performance. The production complexity is so high.
The payoff for that work seems to be everywhere: The game is full of fabrics, sparkles, environments, and natural elements.
Douhu: And we think about all of them. For instance, when Nikki runs up a flight of steps in a cutscene, we don’t want her to stamp her feet down. We want her to move lightly and elegantly. All the sounds you hear are based on real-world sounds, though we’ve added some imagination to them in post-production editing. To make these worlds as immersive as we can, we keep an eye on all the details, all the time.
Nikki’s double-jump is especially elegant; it