Glamtime never ends in Infinity Nikki, the open world dress-up game from Zelda talent

Load of ballgowns

Take the ballroom scene from Disney's Beauty And The Beast, swap the wailing utensils for an army of chibi cats, endow Belle with low-key Doctor Manhattan-grade powers of matter transformation, and you're perhaps beginning to approximate the experience of Infinity Nikki - an open world dress-up adventure from Singapore-based Infold and former Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild developer Kentaro Tominaga.

Trailered this week at Gamescom 2024, it's the fifth installment in the hitherto mobile-focussed Nikki series and it's seemingly going down a storm, with over 12 million pre-registrations so far (albeit, many of them motivated by the prospect of collectively unlocked in-game bonuses). It's also a free-to-play game, and I have the usual unanswered questions about currencies and gacha, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for the minute, because I have not spent nearly enough of my life considering the tactical applications of ballgowns. Here's that trailer.

Some plot gleaned from a recent Ian Games preview: princess or princess-adjacent heroine Nikki is rifling through her wardrobe for an outfit when she discovers an enchanted dress. The dress promptly abducts her, yanking her through a portal into the sparkling Narnified Hyrule that is Miraland. Here she meets a cursed goddess, Ena, who tasks her with saving the world from evil using the power of the lost Miracle Outfits.

Along the way, she'll snatch up a bazillion other fresh looks that bestow various powers and skills - fishing, stealthy movement, mastery of electronics, bug-catching, shrinking yourself so you can ride around on your pet Moogle cat's head. It's the costume-based verbing of Final Fantasy X-2, applied to open worlding. Do not despair of the absence of expressly warlike elements, for war is but fear cloaked in taffeta, and the hem is mightier than the sword.

There is combat, aka monster purification, but it's played light. Enemies have names like Bouldy and sometimes literally consist of materials for posh frocks. The land appears to be populated chiefly by tailors and stylists, rather than the usual brooding blacksmiths and arms dealers. Zeldary touches abound: you get a Pear-Pal tablet akin to Breath Of The Wild's Sheikah Slate, which is used principally for photoshoots, and one of the dresses lets you glide. There are also dungeons of a sort with platforming sequences: one of them consists of a Dream Warehouse full of paper cranes that represent wishes. Complete it, and you'll get to fly away on one. Some other things you can ride on: magic trains, bicycles, minecarts in wine cellars, and a bloody great bird that follows a fixed route around the map.

I'm fairly charmed? I am firmly expecting the so-far-unspecified monetisation elements to be as savage as the visuals are saccharine - this feels like it's aimed squarely at magpie children with unregulated access to their parent's bank cards. But I dig the idea of an open world explicitly built around gladragging, inasmuch as playing dress-up is secretly the best part of many games - including games which ostensibly frown upon such frivolous distractions because Look Here, I Am A Serious Artform or Dress-Up Is For Girls. Put it this way: Dark Souls has a fashion scene. Anyway, you can read more of Nikki and her doings on the Epic Game Store.

For more of the latest news and previews from Gamescom 2024, head to our Gamescom 2024 hub.