Game: Nif Nif
Genre: Deckbuilder, Roguelike, Strategy
System: Steam (Windows)
Developers | Publishers: Springfox Games
Controller Support: Yes
Price: US $16.99 | UK £14.23 | EU € 16,57
Release Date: April 1st, 2025
A review code was provided, and thanks to JFGames PR.
Slay the Spire is a genre-defining game. While video games had offered deckbuilding play before with titles like Culdcept and Hearthstone, Slay the Spire added roguelike features that created a genre meant to be quick to play but took long investment to master. It was accessible but difficult, creating a watershed game that a lot of people wanted to love even more than they do. The problem is that this new genre tends towards that innate difficulty rogue fans love, and it can leave new players daunted.
Enter Nif Nif, a carefully deliberate entry-level roguelike deck builder that’s all sorts of fun on its own but can also leave a player ready and able to tackle the more merciless — but fantastic — games that pepper the genre. We took it on a positive demo impressions spin a few months ago, but the game is now ready for its close-up, Mr DeMille, and I can say it’s as charming, polished, and easily accessible as I’d hoped. Let’s dig some truffles.
Getting Clean with Nif Nif
Nif Nif features a bright but gentle palette of colors, all rendered in a cozy chalk-like style that makes it appealing to look at while you figure the basics of the game out. Designed to appeal to the creator’s own autistic child, the game stays perky while you play and never overstimulates. A little on the spectrum myself, it definitely helps make the game calming, in defiance of the genre’s more common grim tones and abrupt difficulty spikes.
The tone of the game’s story is just as gentle. Nif Nif is a sweet little pig of the Babe, and Charlotte’s Web varieties, and all they want to do is help their buddies wash up from the mud that’s got them all in grumpy moods. That’s a great choice that helps us understand that the stakes here are pretty low, and it’s all about friendship. Your moves are themed around taking showers and using wet wipes to help out, with consumable healthy snacks and soups to keep your stats strong.
Traveling the Farms and Forests
Nif Nif offers a branching game much like its peers, where resolving each conflict lets you choose where you go next. You can use this to plan ahead, to an extent, keeping an eye out for tougher fights with a rest spot either before or after, look for shops where you can buy more cards and upgrades, or even engage with randomized mystery scenes that’ll offer various benefits.
It’s the scenes I love the most. Some are just wholesome, like a mother wolf with her cubs, but many of them offer geeky little references for teenage and adult players to enjoy. From Doctor Who to The Matrix, there’s lots to smile about as you press on towards the final boss. And if you whiff it? No tears; Nif Nif will simply run off, you’ll get some rewards, and you can try again without feeling too frustrated. And that’s it; each run is just the one march towards a boss. There are no ultra-harder bosses hiding around the corner to wear you down.
Win that battle, though, and you get even more reward points, all of which unlock more options for starting a new game with Nif Nif and their buddy, the Cat, via silly hats that add variables to your play and new cards to collect. Yes, like Slay the Spire, there’s another playable character you’ll quickly unlock, and it’s an adorably grumpy — yet still cleaning-focused — cat with their own spin on the story ahead. Come on. You know you want to play cards with a cat wearing a Viking helmet.
Techs, Specs, and Hopes for More
Nif Nif is perfectly optimized for play on a Steam Deck, and its simple controls suggest it’ll do just fine on the Nintendo Switch as well. In a cozy pinch, there’s no issue with using a touch screen to swipe cards around, if that’s what you’d prefer. It’s not a demanding game, so I have to imagine any basic computer set-up will handle this light treat just fine, but it just feels built to relax with a handheld, so bear that in mind.
It’s a game designed for entry-level hands, from children just getting into gaming to those of us who are older and just want something nice to play instead of a variety of games that feel like, and this is a made-up title, Grimdark Cards 3000: the Goblinator Storm. Many of those kinds of games are great! But I don’t want to lay in bed and get mad all the time, you know? Nif Nif is a welcome antidote.
If I have one most minor quibble, it’s that it is committed to the quality of its slimmed-down style, and Nif Nif — who’s coded as your usual all-around card protagonist — and the Cat — who’s the fast and furious rogue type — are your only two characters. I would’ve loved to see what they could do with a third to round out the roster, but there’s always the future, and that personal desire of mine doesn’t sour the game in the least.
Conclusion
Nif Nif is precisely the entry-level rogue-like deck builder the genre’s been needing to usher in new players and offer a cozy change-up for long-timers. Its aesthetic is consistent and adorable, its tone is light and cheeky, with dorky in-jokes that bring smiles, and it’s quick and easy to play. It’s easy to assume that means the game isn’t ambitious — and really, it isn’t — but what it does, it does with a simple charm that’ll keep you coming back.
Until my partner passed over the giant brick of a fantasy novel we both wanted to read, and he’d finally finished, I was making this my just-before-bed game. It was a great choice, leaving me perfectly happy to roll over and go to bed, whether I’d won or not, and still feeling I was learning new things about deck builder tactics. Just a super little game, honestly, and I hope you’ll love it, too.
Final Verdict: Two Thumbs Up
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