In case your social media hasn’t already been infected by the pink apocalypse that is Infinity Nikki, then I’ll try and break down as easily as I can. Long story short, it’s an open world adventure game with a heavy emphasis on dress-up. It’s not a challenging game to describe, but when you’re trying to explain what makes it good to someone who’s never even heard of it, making it sound like a game worth playing rather than something you quickly load up on your browser during a lunch break is hard.

It markets itself as the coziest open world game, and after putting at least 20 hours into it over the last week I definitely agree with this. But, it’s also the kind of game that if I had played around 10 years ago, you wouldn’t have caught me admitting to enjoying it. It’s so stereotypically girly that childhood me would’ve been embarrassed even knowing about it, let alone pouring time (and eventually money—damn you gacha) into it. However, when trying to understand why games like this were so embarrassing to me growing up, I find it hard to believe that my personal preferences are exclusively to blame.

I guess this is growing up

When I started getting invested in gaming as a hobby, I had a Nintendo DS and a family PC which struggled to load Hotmail on a good day. It was hard to know where to look for new games to play since none of my friends were into it, which is when I started to turn to YouTube. Let’s Play videos made up a huge part of my childhood, but the vast majority of these were games like Halo, Garry’s Mod and GTA. I wasn’t playing any of these games myself—I didn’t have the facilities, so I relied on these videos to feel involved in the hobby I so desperately wanted to be—and they felt pretty jarring next to my hours spent in Animal Crossing: Wild World.

As a result, I started to feel like there wasn’t a space for the games I liked playing, and I even started to feel fake for the games I enjoyed. If I wanted to be a gamer, I had to like everything dark, gory and gritty. I couldn’t like the cutesy and frilly games that were aimed to appeal to people just like me. So, from the comfort of my pastel-coloured Hello Kitty-themed bedroom, I decided that I was no longer a fan of all things adorable. Instead, I was going to try and like the games I’d usually ignore just to fit in with the gamers, because I was convinced they simply wouldn’t let me in otherwise. Now, over a decade and a half later, Infinity Nikki has come along and started to sew back together these parts of me I threw away.

It ticks every box for what we would now refer to as a cozy game, which childhood me would quickly label cringe. Simple combat, an easy storyline that revolves around saving, rescuing, or restoring something, and an animal companion. The world is bursting with flora and fauna and adorable critters to pet and play with, but the main appeal is the outfits. Everything is so glittery and cute—no matter which outfits I’ve been stringing together they still look great. It makes me want to re-do my entire wardrobe to look like a Barbie who has just been sick everywhere. Which is saying a lot, given I dress like an emo teenage boy most of the time.

I’m gonna take a pic

What I love most is everyone’s willingness to share their creations too. The in-game snapshot function lets you drop a picture you’ve taken anywhere around the map for other players to interact with and take their own photos with. From these hourglasses, you get to see what fellow Nikkis are wearing, and I’ve had too much fun bringing people’s snapshot holograms to life and taking inspiration from their outfits to improve my own.

Without any sort of communication needed, Infinity Nikki has created a self-contained community of players who are ecstatic to share their ensembles. There’s no sense of toxicity, mostly because no one has the ability to chat and create any negative space, and frankly, it’s nice to feel like I finally have a space where I don’t feel ashamed to want to join in. It’s not limited to in-game either, as my social media feeds have been flooded with outfit inspiration or people asking for help with certain random quests or item locations.

I don’t know if I’ve just been lucky enough to trick my algorithm into showing me the 100% pleasant side of the Infinity Nikki fanbase, or if we are genuinely at a point where no one is ashamed to share what they’re playing. But either way, my inner child is sobbing at the fact there’s a place where I can go and feel no shame in loving a game like this. Sure, it’s taken more time than it probably should’ve for me to feel like I’m as deserving of a space in the gaming community as anyone else is, but I’m glad I’m finally there and don’t have to pretend to like FPS games anymore.