Infinity Nikki needs a dress to impress

Since playing the Infinity Nikki closed beta together in October, my colleagues and I have been sending each other screenshots of our most stylish outfits. I've been struggling to suppress the desire to play gacha games for a long time (despite my best friend's constant insistence that Genshin Impact would be right up my alley) because it's just like Pringles: as soon as I get out, I really I can't stop, so it's best if I just don't start.

But since the daily gacha sweaters have fantastic new fits and there are enough free ones to get you started, I dutifully signed up to see what cute new clothes I could snag that day.

A screenshot of Nikki catching a Whimsy Butterfly to get a Whimsy Star.

Infinity Nikki's Whimstars are the new iconic collectible

With so many ways to find them, collecting Whimstars is even better than collecting clothes.

I've already talked about wanting a more legitimate multiplayer mode in Infinity Nikki that's more than just taking cute photos next to other players' poses in Miraland. It's fun to immerse yourself in beautiful, picturesque shots of players who are much more serious than me, with my Nikki appearing, depending on the pose, as if she's rubbing their chin or poking them in the face. – I have seen many funny ones, but it is not enough

Walk the Mira Crown Runway with Nikkis

In conversation with Infinity Mirror about the styling challenges.

I'm not particularly style conscious in real life or in gaming, but the portions of the fashion-focused games I've played seem to get everything right. Over the summer I learned about Roblox's various fashion-focused game modes – IRL designer brand Coach launched a collaboration with the digital dress-up games and brought me and a few other journalists to New York City to try out these game modes before their official launch.

After their products were added to both Fashion Famous 2 and Fashion Klosette, I settled in at one of the stations they'd put together amidst shelves of designer goods, excited and unsure of what I was getting myself into.

What followed was a half-hour head-to-head fashion battle with the other participants. The game set us loose in a mall, with a few minutes of gameplay and a general theme that we tried to connect with our fashion show. We ran our avatars through all sorts of digital storefronts to put together the best outfit possible, before strolling down an extremely stylish runway one by one to model our look. Winners are chosen based on contestants' votes, but in the end we voted for the outfit that made us laugh the most, rather than who summed up the theme. This introduced me deeper into Roblox and the Dress To Impress mode – which is basically the same but has no connection to Coach.

Nikki shows off her style in a style challenge in Infinity Nikki.

Infinity Nikki has already laid the groundwork for the addition of a similar feature. Not only is the game inherently fashionable, but the Mira Crown Tournament – a strictly judged fashion challenge for Nikki to take on, in which a lush mirror on the wall gives her a theme to dress to – comes in handy the same thing, just without the multiplayer. Complicating these challenges is the fact that you can (and may need to) upgrade the stats of your outfits to meet higher point requirements. Your clothes will become fresher, cuter, cooler, sexier and more elegant as you spend in-game currencies to upgrade them after you reach the required player level. This means you have even more opportunities to show off your friends in your runway look.

Stylist battles, but against your friends

Additionally, Nikki must continually prove her stylish self in a series of fashion battles against other stylists around Miraland. In each area, she meets a new clothing-based gang whose respect she must first earn before she can challenge their leader in the ultimate style competition – all in exchange for new outfits and currency that she can earn elsewhere in the game can use.

They will reward them with new outfit pieces and knowledge pieces that expand the world and allow us to select outfit pieces to model for these established fashionistas so they can decide our fashion worthiness. Sure, fighting our friends wouldn't reveal the game's strangely dark story or introduce us to the mythical fashion queens of Sovereign, but it would be pretty fun to see the intricate looks my friends would put together on the same theme.

In Infinity Nikki, Nikki wins a fashion battle using pieces from several different outfits that don't match but add up to the right score.

The game ranks clothes based on the highest score in the menu, so it's just a matter of having the “best” clothes (which usually means they're upgraded in the game) and not the most daring or stylish fashion choice. A “Dress to Impress” mode based entirely on audience preferences would make taste a factor for the first time. If the decision is made based on scoring, the scoring would have to find a way to more accurately take into account each individual part's coordination with the rest of the ensemble, but if the winner is based on group voting à la Roblox games, the problem would be overall mitigated.

Everything Infinity Nikki needs to give us Roblox-like fashion battles is already built into the game: we've got the clothes, the tournaments, prizes for wins, head-to-head battles, and tons of ways to customize everything in an outfit before we take it to the runway. Maybe there's a bit more to come, but until I can challenge my friends directly, I'll have to settle for photobombing their stunning screenshots in photo mode.