I originally said that Infinity Nikki was like a dress-up Genshin Impact, but after entirely too many hours of playtime over the weekend I'm becoming convinced it's more like a dress-up Dark Souls. Nothing has solidified that theory for me more than discovering that players have been using the Snapshot function—essentially the only form of multiplayer Infinity Nikki has right now—to drop hints to puzzles and quests in a manner reminiscent of FromSoftware's messages.
Infinity Nikki's Snapshot function is currently working like a picture-based version of Dark Soul's orange soapstone messages—when folks take a picture with the in-game camera, they can slap a caption on it and turn it into an hourglass, which drops in the location the photo was snapped. That hourglass can then appear in other players' worlds, which is mostly intended to be a way to let them take photos with you, or add you as a friend.
It's taken absolutely no time at all, however, for players to use it as a communication tool to help others solve puzzles, or have the correct quiz answers for side quests. There are some downright gnarly hidden object brainteasers, some of which have left me practically forehead-to-monitor as I've tried to scour every pixel to see where the hell this tiny cave painting of a star is lurking.
The creative use of Snapshots is starting to save me a lot of eye strain, as well as other folks on Reddit, who've been sharing their run-ins with these photographic helpers—mainly revolving around one dastardly towel-based hidden star. I've also seen it being used to give people quiz answers for the Aventura observation side quests, with the caption letting people know the correct option to complete the quest and reap the rewards.
The whole thing is far less vague than FromSoftware's piecing together of random words to get classics like "try finger but hole" or "weak enemy ahead", usually put right in front of a foe that is definitely going to clobber you to death. I do think it would be funny if Infinity Nikki's captions worked in the same way, taking some of the more direct puzzle solutions and making them more abstract, but I think it's neat how fast people have latched onto Snapshots as a means of helping their fellow fashionistas.
It's, admittedly, something I hadn't even considered until I started seeing other folk doing it, but I've now found myself leaving my own scattering of hidden star solutions around Miraland in the hopes it'll help other stylists figure out some of the real headscratchers. With no way to jump into other people's worlds and co-op together yet, it's a neat way to stay connected and lend a helping hand, even if from a distance.
