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The girl who leapt through time... in a frilly dress.
Shining Nikki is the fourth installment of the dress-up game franchise NikkiUP2U, sequel to Love Nikki - Dress Up Queen, developed by Paper Games. It was released in Taiwan in April 2019 and mainland China four months later, with a global server released in July 5, 2021. A Korean server was released by the end of October 2020, but then scheduled for closure in December of the same year due to controversynote .
The game follows Nikki and Momo as they travel back in time in an attempt to avoid the catastrophic event that destroyed Miraland. With the help of a structure named the Ark, Nikki returns 680 years in Miraland's past to solve the riddle left by the legendary designer Leonid, a riddle that might contain the key to the world's salvation. And the first person she meets in this journey is... The player, whose consciousness is merged into Nikki's mind in the Ark.
Upon arriving in past Miraland, Nikki meets Helz, the owner of a small clothing store in Apple Federation, who promptly explains to her about the Designer Reflections, a legendary power only the strongest stylists in Miraland can even hope to wield, and that Nikki seems capable of using. But after revealing such power while battling an angry boy over a dress the word was out, calling the attention of several people hungry for Nikki's power and the secrets she may be carrying with her.
Shining Nikki follows roughly the same mechanics of its predecessors, where the player dresses Nikki up according to a specific context, the main differences lying on the Designer Reflections - pieces of designer memories Nikki can summon forth to aid her in battle and that cover the previous game's skills - and the "Shining Moment", a connect-the-dots puzzle that grants a score bonus midway through the battle. That said, the most noted difference between Shining Nikki and its predecessors (and, in fact, most of the mobile dress-up segment) is its 3D graphics, which makes the already realistic clothes that are a staple of the franchise look nearly life-like.
Shining Nikki contains examples of:
- Action Fashionista: Every designer capable of wielding the power of the Designer Reflections qualifies as such (the best examples being Qinyi, Mercury, Nikki and Joy), with said power granting its users abilities ranging from summoning actual shadows to mass mind control.
- All There in the Manual: The Designer Reflections, being pieces of memories of said designers, each contain different data on them, the characters' views on some subjects, and the story behind said memory, which usually contains information that seldom if ever appears during the main stages. Moments posts also give a little insight on the characters' daily routines when they are not trying to save - or destroy/take over - the world.
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: Naturally, it's a dress-up game we're talking about after all.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- The "sweep x times" feature, which allows a player to quickplay the same stage a certain amount of times at once - something the player is certain to do while farming for a certain crafting recipe - will stop autoplaying once the item requirement is met to prevent unnecessary stamina expense.
- Back in Love Nikki, scrolling all the way across a wardrobe filled with thousands of different pieces to find a specific one that happens to be the highest-scoring for that stage soon became unmanageable even using scoring guides as support. In Shining Nikki, every stage has the top scoring pieces as first in their categories' lists.
- Related to that, the game brings the "recommended" button, which auto-dresses Nikki with the highest-scoring combinations of parts, covering the early-game frustration of scouring back and forth through the accessories categories trying to find the top 5 accessories available.
- Attractiveness Discrimination: The principle driving Starheaven town's society, in which "beautiful" people are legally granted all sorts of advantages while people seen as ugly are lucky when ignored.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: The true nature of styling battles involving designer reflections; true styling is said to be able to change a person's mindscape.
- Beauty Is Bad: It's the conclusion Ashley comes to by the end of her story in chapter 2:Ashley: If evil is beauty, why don't I become the devil?
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Many characters fall victim of it throughout the story: Summer Sue and the Mayor in chapter 3, Joy in chapter 4 and Nikki during the first half of chapter 7. Chapters 8 and 9 reveal that Joy was this all along, courtesy of her own father.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Occasionally the arena bots will show up with an awakened reflection at lvl 25 - the minimum level to awaken a low rarity reflection is 40. Despite this, the bots are still extremely easy to defeat.
- Changing Clothes Is a Free Action: Being a dress-up game, it's a given that Nikki's adversaries won't have to wait too long for her to get dressed for battle.
- Chekhov's Gun: Leonid's Manuscript, the artifact Nikki spends most of the first dozen chapters trying to recover and that supposedly contains the key to save Miraland, is used by Nightbane to summon the Goddess of Desire.
- Clothes Make the Superman: Some outfits in the game - specifically those with a designer's reflection associated with them - are said to give the user the styling power of the memory imbued in the outfit.
- Crapsaccharine World: While Miraland itself is this to some extent, Starheaven town takes the cake: it's a cutesy city with the fairy-tale aesthetic characteristic of Ninir Kingdom where everyone you can see in the streets is gorgeous. Although it might have something to do with its people actively favouring "beautiful" people towards money and political power while casting "ugly" people into isolation in the lower classes of Starheaven society... It's no wonder why Ashley burned down its theater during the Starheaven Swan tournament.
- Several other material reveal the mindset isn't exclusive to Starheaven, but it applies to Ninir as a whole to a lesser extent.
- Darker and Edgier: While Love Nikki addresses themes a bit more mature than expected of a dress-up game, with a main character dying near the end of the first volume, Shining Nikki has the protagonist deal with a decent amount of violence straight from chapter 2.
- The Taiwanese server had the very first chapter start with Nikki waking up in jail; with mainland China server's opening, this was retconned to Nikki waking up in a hospital.
- Fictional Social Network: Moments is the most used social network in Miraland, where characters post about their routines every now and then (usually upon important game updates, events or certain story milestones). Thanks to Ruin technology, it's advanced enough to be a virtual world physically accessible by its users as well.
- Gorgeous Garment Generation: Nearly every trailer for a big event has Nikki materializing said event clothes on her; Star Sea even warrants a magical girl-like transformation.
- Living Memory: The designer reflections are pieces of a designer's memories imbued on certain clothes of their design. They usually manifest themselves inside mirrors in the Ark, but remarkably strong reflections are able to leave their mirrors and walk freely around the Ark or even the real world.
- Mass Hypnosis: Both Mercury, Qinyi and Black Vulture are capable of and use their (or Mercury's in the latter's case) styling powers to keep large crowds under their control for various purposes.
- Mineral MacGuffin: The Origin Crystal, housed beneath the Light Cathedral in the Pigeon capital, is the main source of energy for the light elves. It is stolen by Nightbane as the "unlimited power" part of the process for summoning Desire.
- More than Mind Control: The end of chapter 6 has Nikki fall victim of it by the hands of Mercury, who spent the second half of said chapter toying with her mind through his designer reflection. The following chapter deals with her attempt to break free of Mercury's grasp; even then, by the time of chapter 8 she's still in doubt whether she was indeed being controlled or it was herself acting on her own repressed desires.
- Multiple-Choice Future: Unlike Leonid, Nikki doesn't believe the future is written on the stars; this is the reason he accepts to send her back in time to try and prove him wrong.
- Non-Indicative Name: Despite the name, the R (rare) rarity clothes are the most common drops.
- Our Time Machine Is Different: The Ark is an ensemble of surrealistic structures floating on the Ocean of Memories - a collection of the memories of every person in existence - somehow capable of physical travel between timelines.
- Palette Swap: A majority of the suits ingame have one that can be obtained by upgrading its corresponding Designer reflection (provided that you own the original-colored version first, of course). A portion of them also have additional recolors obtainable by playing the Memory Stairway game mode. And that's not getting into all the common gacha and stage drops that only differ in color scheme...
- Place Beyond Time: The Ocean of Memories and, by proxy, the Ark. As such, anyone in there can travel to the past, present or future of any civilization.
- Planet of Hats: Nearly everyone in Miraland appears to either be a fashion designer or have a job related to fashion, with very little exceptions - mostly nameless NPCs.
- Power Equals Rarity: Clothes and reflections can fall into one of four different raritiesnote , each one giving more points (and naturally, being harder to obtain and/or upgrade) than the next: R (purple), SR (bronze), SSR (silver), and UR (gold).
- Power Up Full Color Change: As in Love Nikki, some pieces of clothing have their recolors. In Shining Nikki, the recolored parts of the outfits associated with designer reflections are always more powerful (higher score) than their original versions; the Idea Lab recolors even more so.
- Robosexual: Caprico's Surreal Night of Dazzling Music reflection tells the story of a Raymond, a guitarist who fell in love with Accel, one of Caprico's humanoid robots.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The reason why Nikki travels to the past is so that she can stop the Ocean of Memories from submerging Miraland in Love Nikki's timeline.
- Swans A-Swimming: Swans are a recurring motif in Ninir as a whole, with its coat of arms consisting of a crowned swan with a ribbon under it.
- Special mention goes to Starheaven; the lakeside town's entire culture circles around the myth of the Starheaven swan, a mythical swan with feathers sparkling like shooting stars that names the town's famous beauty tournament.
- Ninir queen Lilith has the swan as her personal symbol, with swan feathers spread on her default dress. Her arena outfit Abyss of Stars has a swan theme all over it, with the waterfowl's feathers adorning the dress, hat, gloves and shoes and swan-shaped earrings - even the thumbnail arts for its make-up parts keep the motif, with swans and feathers decorating the packages.
- In the memories of Modric's Journey of Memory, Joy's dark memories materialize as a swan feather.
- Although not Ninir, Loen's outfit Glittering Date has a discrete swan motif in its parts, with crystal swans on the necklace and tiara.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Jax (tomboy), a punk rock goth girl who wears studded leather and rides a motorcycle, is in a relationship with Yuka (girly girl), a shy girl with glasses who works as a waitress, wears a sweater and gentle, lightly-colored traditionally feminine clothing. The two of them have a close, imtimate friendship.
- Unlimited Wardrobe: While not unlimited per se, the game has a few thousand pieces of clothing available between event suits, stage drops, gacha drops and crafted items; how Nikki manages to carry all of them around Miraland is anyone's guess.
- Virtual Paper Doll: A 3D paper doll, no less.
