NIF NIF from Springfox Games is a colorful and cozy roguelike deckbuilder about saving the forest and your friends. Learn more about it in our NIF NIF review!
NIF NIF from Springfox Games is a colorful and cozy roguelike deckbuilder about saving the forest and your friends. A mysterious goo has turned everyone in the forest into a mucky mess. It’s now up to you to use your cleaning cards to save the day! You’ll be taking control of either the titular Nif NIf or you will use Cat to try and save the day. Each of them will have a different deck for you to use as you take on the procedurally generated maps that will test your skills and abilities. You’ll get a chance to collect seeds along the way, which you can plant so that you can then work on your own power-up potions thanks to the hot soups you can cook. Yes, this is done in a mini-game. Yes, there’s also a gardening mini-game for the seed part of the equation!
This game offers a good jumping point for those who are new to the genre since it pays homage to the games that have popularized roguelike deckbuilders while distilling its elements into a more digestible – and Rated E for Everyone – experience. It gets that rating since there’s no violence in this one! It might be a good option for younger gamers in your life, for people who are new to video games, and even for seasoned fans in the genre who are looking for something a bit different but familiar.
Springfox Games took NIF NIF to Kickstarter last year, seeking a very conservative HK$100,000 in funding to work on the game’s development – that would be around $13,000, depending on how the market is doing. Once the crowdfunding campaign was over, and thanks to the support of over 200 backers, the indie studio ended up with a little over HK$111,000 in funding. This allowed them to work on NIF NIF for a Steam release a few months ago in April, followed by a Nintendo Switch launch a couple of months later.
If you’re new to roguelike deckbuilders, they’re games in which you start your journey, well, back from the start. You’ll usually pick from different characters – or unlock additional ones as you make some progress during each run – that will offer different starting cards or deck types and will need to make the most of what each card can do when in battles. Battles would be a strong word to use for NIF NIF since it features gameplay segments without any violence. Let’s call them encounters, OK? For each encounter in NIF NIF, your goal will be simple: to clean up the different creatures who have been covered by the nasty goo.
You’ll have to pay attention to Nif NIf – or Cat’s – cleanliness bar, which will be shown below your character. If it reaches zero during an encounter, then you’ll have to start over. Above a creature will be a thought bubble. This will clue you in as to what it will do next. Say you notice it’s going to spray some goo your way. You must spend Action Points (AP) to use cards. You could spend a single AP to use the Mud Shower card to protect yourself for 5, which would effectively negate the goo action from that creature. To clean up a creature, you’ll have to bring its dirtiness bar down to zero by using cards that clean up the goo. Tissues can certainly help to get the job done!
As you complete encounters, you’ll be rewarded with new cards, as well as experience points. Once you obtain enough experience points, you’ll get to level up. When this happens, you will get to unlock additional cards that you can bring into encounters to help you succeed. An example of this is the Cherry, which is a single-use item that will double your power. You could add Ninja Wipes to your deck, which has a power of 3 that is applied 3 times in a single go. Another option is a Tissue+ upgrade, which makes your tissue card have a power of 7 instead of a power of 5. You can also get some coins, which you can spend at the shop – more on this below.
You’ll be moving through randomly generated maps as you select which move to move to next based on the path you want to take. These nodes include regular encounters, a campfire where you can do some cooking, burn a card to remove it from your deck, or get some rest to recover your cleanliness, an event node where you will get to learn more about the world of NIF NIF or can end up getting a boost to increase things such as max cleanliness or add some extra resistance, an elite encounter where you’ll go up against a much stronger creature, a shop where you can spend your hard-earned coins to add new cards to your deck or to buy some soups to aid you, as well as a boss node where you’ll be facing the boss creature for that area.
This release features an in-game achievement system so that you can work on completing a series of objectives as you play through the game. Some of the objectives that you’ll need to complete include winning a run with 20 cards or more, cleaning 2,000 goo, winning a run with no upgraded cards in your deck, owning more than 200 coins during a game, cleaning 500 creatures, playing 12 cards in one turn, spending 120 coins in one shop, losing 10 runs, cleaning a boss on the first turn, winning a run with 5 cards or less, and cleaning the rabbit after using a carrot soup.
NIF NIF is a colorful and cozy roguelike deckbuilder about saving the forest and your friends. A mysterious goo has turned everyone in the forest into a mucky mess. It’s now up to you to use your cleaning cards to save the day! You’ll be taking control of either the titular Nif NIf or you will use Cat to try and save the day. Each of them will have a different deck for you to use as you take on the procedurally generated maps that will test your skills and abilities. You’ll get a chance to collect seeds along the way, which you can plant so that you can then work on your own power-up potions thanks to the hot soups you can cook. Yes, this is done in a mini-game. Yes, there’s also a gardening mini-game for the seed part of the equation! NIF NIF is out on Nintendo Switch with a $19.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This NIF NIF review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Springfox Games.