Deck building games have become more and more popular since the success of Slay the Spire, but it still remains a pretty intimidating genre to jump into. Card games in general have steep learning curves that put off newcomers, so when you add the extra nuances of deck building and roguelike elements it’s hard to convince outsiders to give the genre a try. That’s the main appeal of Nif Nif, because it’s hard to be intimidated by an adorable cartoon pig. It’s also very much babies first deck builder, but that might just come at the cost of losing some appeal to veterans.
In Nif Nif you play (most of the time at least) as the titular pig. In the forest where our porky pal lives there’s a mysterious goo that’s turning animals violent. The only one who can stop it spreading is Nif Nif, by engaging in card combat that’s all themed around cleaning as opposed to attacking. It’s a pretty adorable way of presenting battles, and makes the whole game feel more wholesome and welcoming.
The way battles work is pretty much identical to Slay the Spire, albeit with much less complexity. You have attack cards that clean an enemy by a certain amount, defence cards which cover you in mud to resist attacks, and you can see what the next action of an enemy is so you can prepare accordingly. You have a set amount of energy to spend on cards in your hand on a turn, and hopefully you’ll use it to fully clean a few foes. Making sure you guard enough to block all damage feels as wonderful as ever, but not as good as crafting the perfect deck.
You’ll start your run of Nif Nif with a pretty basic deck, consisting of four boring attack cards, four boring defence cards, and a special card of choice. You’ll get either a new card or a card upgrade each time you win a fight, and you can buy new cards at the shop. Based on what you’re offered you’ll likely work out the best way to build your deck, with all sorts of strategies on offer.
My most used strategy involved a fruit card that let me keep my guard between turns, and then using a bucket attack to deal massive damage based on my hefty defence. When that wasn’t an option though I was happy to use raw power to beat down the gooey foes, or build a deck that took advantage of using as many free cards as possible to deal death by a thousand scrubs.
Like all good deck builders, Nif Nif uses that tried and true method of progressing by letting you pick from a branching path through the forest. You can focus on battles, random events that might give you some sort of permanent stat buff or a bonus card, or campsites that let you heal or burn cards you don’t need anymore. With such small decks it’s almost always best to trim the fat of less important cards to make all your plays matter, and because of this I was very much a campfire regular.
Now after grabbing a few new cards, upgrades and buffs I arrived at the first boss. I lost a little health but otherwise managed to clean up and beat it easily enough. And then that was it, the run ended in a win. It felt like I barely started, and my run time was eleven minutes total. That actually is all there is to Nif Nif, and in fact later I managed to complete one run in eight minutes. There are is a lot to unlock though, so let’s talk about those.
Every time you complete a run of Nif Nif you’ll level up, and unlock some new stuff. Sometimes these will be new cards, sometimes they’ll be hats that make the game easier, and at least one time you’ll unlock a playable cat character with very slightly different cards to play with. The real kicker though is that no matter what (at least in my experience) nothing will ever be more challenging than your first run, and you’ll likely manage that fine. This means that when replaying over and over you can just focus on the same strategy if you want, never lose, then eventually just sort of get a bit bored.
There are a few extra systems I haven’t mentioned yet, like the garden where you can grow plants between runs to gain extra soup to take with you, but again all these mechanics just continue to make replaying the game less exciting. It’s a shame because as a starting point Nif Nif is fantastic, but even if you’re new to the genre you’ll eventually want something new to take on.
Nif Nif is a great way to introduce someone to the deck building Roguelike genre, but ultimately after a few runs they’ll have gotten everything they need to out of the game. As a charming educational tool it’s absolutely worth playing, but don’t expect this card game to get its hooks into you like its peers.
