How Is Infold Going To Get Players Back To Infinity Nikki From Here?

When I agreed to play Infinity Nikki’s closed beta in October 2024, I just needed something to write about for work that month and had no clue that it’d spark a still-growing love for gacha gaming. I’ve written about Infinity Nikki time and time again since its launch because I’ve watched it grow and seen a fandom arise around this lighthearted adventure. As a woman who grew up getting nudged out of spaces by sexist stereotypes, it’s been a delight to have a fun, feminine game and a community of girlies to share it with.

But now, longtime players like me are worried Infinity Nikki might not hold out for much longer. While developer Infold has churned out update after update to address technical bugs that plagued the launch of version 1.5 – which was meant to be the biggest and most promising update yet – it’s still been a turbulent takeoff with the game’s wings firmly duct taped to its fuselage. Infold has already patched over 100 game-breaking bugs that were somehow still in the game when the version launched on April 27, but non-technical aspects are going to be a lot harder to correct.

Bugs And Boring Gameplay Has Stylists Retiring In Droves

The version 1.5 update for Infinity Nikki was, in a word, terrible. Fans were promised a multiplayer mode that, at long last, was more fleshed out than simply posing for photos with other Nikkis, but the addition was left wanting.

While I talked before about wanting a dress to impress mode that’d let me show off outfits to my friends a la Roblox runways, the Swish and Stitch Soiree left a lot to be desired. It’s most active past 10pm for your server time, but if you’re like me, that’s past your bedtime. You can go during the day, but you’ll seldom see other actual players there.

The real co-op was added to the new area, the Sea of Stars, but even that was dismal. Your options for playing with others include holding hands, taking photos, riding a seesaw, or even participating in such cool minigames as putting coconuts into a basket. Not big on that? Try the star minigame – that one has you putting stars into a bottle instead, and near a different beach no less.

You had to get to this new multiplayer first, though, which required an unskippable cutscene that reintroduced the game and completely changed its direction. Along the way, fans whispered incredulously at the quickly growing completion requirements on the limited-time banners, watching full outfits rise all the way to requiring 11 5-star pulls to complete. With Revelation Crystals predictably limited in a game that’ll sell you some in a microtransaction, finishing an outfit before the end of a banner’s season was becoming increasingly impossible if you weren’t pumping cash into the flimsy gacha.

At least there was the dye workshop, though, allowing us to color our outfits as promised. There are dozens of items you can alter to your hearts content, provided you’ve got the materials to unlock the color palette you want. Don’t have enough? You can always buy some from the in-game store.

Plenty of players have been crying out for darker clothing – us goth girls yearn for blackout versions of the wardrobe – and I don’t know about the other former Hot Topic kids, but I cannot afford to unlock the black palette, so I guess it’s more flowery frocks for me.

What Can Infold Do To Bring Players Back?

I recently began dating someone, and showing off games you like is always a critical part of starting a relationship with another gamer. He and I have known each other for a while through friends that all play Genshin, but we agreed to show off our individual gacha fixations on our first date. He eagerly walked me through Zenless Zone Zero, passionately explaining colorful cities and character catalogs full of life, a combat system he’s mastered, and even the reduced television system that fans didn’t really love when it launched. After that, I just wasn’t excited to boot up Infinity Nikki when it was my turn to present.

There’s no groovy Jessie J song to welcome you as Nikki gets Isekai’d into Miraland anymore, and the repetitive new intro with The Seer quickly became a joke as the game updated its resources. I walked my partner through Florawish and showed off my wardrobe from before I started using my Diamonds to upgrade Eurekas, and then we made our way to the Sea of Stars. Here, I failed to hide my disdain for the 1.5 update as I popped in and out of the Animal Playtime area – I’m showing the game I cover for the job I enjoy to the guy I like, and it’s so boring now. At least he was there with me the first time I ever got to ride the seesaw with another astral projection Nikki; if there is one someday, I’m sure we’ll tell the story at the wedding.

I thought I was just being a curmudgeon, but community sentiment seems to agree. When the update first launched with disastrous bugs and boring content, a boycott on spending real money was called to action. When Infold began taking down posts about the boycott, players coined the term “girlcott” instead to get past content filters and proudly marched their stylish high heels forward. The game launched on Steam to completely abysmal reviews, scores tanked in both major mobile game app stores in the West (though the iOS app store is back to 3.9 at the time of publish on this article), and console versions being all but inaccessible at launch sank the scores for PS5 as well.

So what now? My new partner showed me how much he loves Zenless Zone Zero, another late arrival to the exploding gacha market that had a rocky takeoff but eventually found its footing. I’m truly hoping the same thing happens to Infinity Nikki, with its devs apologizing consistently through in-game mail. Infold has offered dozens of consolation rewards and has kept players flooded with premium in-game currencies since then, but free money is worthless if you can only spend it on a game you don’t even want to play anymore.

I am, from the bottom of my Heart of Infinity, rooting for Infinity Nikki – it’s my wish every time the ultra-boring ‘wish on a shooting star’ daily in the Sea of Stars pops up – and I’m cautiously optimistic that the community feedback will be taken on board. I just hope Infold knows that, after how bad the 1.5 launch was and remained for more than a month, it’ll be putting out version 1.6 to remarkably fewer players no matter how good it ends up being from there.