Save the woodlands by cleaning up a mysterious goo and the creatures that it has afflicted in Nif Nif, a deck-building, run-based game designed with approachability in mind.
Nif Nif, if you haven’t already gathered from the imagery, is a game designed with children in mind. That’s not to say that it’s unplayable by adults — I’d argue that, on the contrary, it’s incredibly playable for all ages — it’s just that it’s deliberately designed to be approachable. By that I mean that those bright, cheery colours and cartoon-style character designs aren’t the only considerations, the theme and mechanics are also concentrated into an easy to follow and understand format.
I fondly remember a few years back when both the Slay The Spire and Monster Train‘s Xbox ports found their way into my evenings. Jupiter and I burned through both of them, quickly getting to grip with them and their requirements of careful forethought and resource (in this case cards) management. I loved them for their math, the logic, and the ability to control the randomness of your decks. I also remember the kids showing a slight interest in them when they were around to see them. Maths, I thought, a nice collateral, educational bonus for the kids. Sadly, the setting didn’t click and — ultimately — neither game was designed with younger audiences in mind; their UIs were great, but there was too much going on, and too much reliance on established game logic, for it to instantly click for them.
That’s exactly where Nif Nif comes in. It still has the run-based map-crawl that snakes through events, enemies, bosses and more; It still has the combat modifiers that stack under the characters; And, it still has the deck-building, upgrading and tweaking elements. However, everything has been pared down for readability and ease of play.
It all follows the titular pig as they set out to explore the woodlands and stop the strange entity that is polluting the land. Rather than hitting enemies with bites, blades or blasts you’ll clean them with tissues, showers, squeegees and sprays of water; Rather than shielding yourself magically you’ll clean and coat yourself with mud to make sure you don’t get dirtied by the strange gunk and litter that’s affected the woodland flora and fauna. The setting, and the way that the ‘woodland is being dirtied’ message is tied into the who thing is both absolute and really well done.
It’s roguelite in nature, with perma-unlocks in the form of hats, other characters, new cards and more that come as you keep taking runs at Nif Nif. On her first run my eight year old unlocked two new cards, and had a little explore through the menu and found that she could equip a shower hat which meant that Nif Nif recovered two HP after each battle — she instantly dived back in after that and managed to beat the demo boss.
Nif Nif’s demo is available to play now over on the developer’s Kickstarter page. At time of writing it’s raised a little over £6,600 of its £9,678 goal. Pledges that include a copy of the game start from £15 (HK $150).
