The Sony State of Play 'open-world dress-up adventure' game and the RPG where you carry a child on your back are both headed for PC
I'll be honest, yesterday's Sony State of Play has already turned to a blur in my memory. All I recall is a now-familiar absence of Bloodborne and someone, at some point, saying "The path of a stylist is never easy" with a gravitas you usually reserve for warning your headstrong young apprentice off a quest to avenge his father or telling people the stock market has crashed.
The game that line came from, it turns out, was Infinity Nikki, the full-fat console follow-up to the Nikki series of dress-up games you can find on mobile. With the absolutely irresistible tagline of "It's glam time any time!"—which is also the maxim by which I live my life—Infinity Nikki promises an open-world fashion adventure that takes the stylist (and stylish) Nikki through multiple nations "each with a unique culture and history." And presumably outfits, which all have their own strange effects and powers.
It's the kind of thing that is no doubt wildly popular, and profoundly mundane to its legions of fans, but which seems to my jaded eyes like an artefact from an alien planet. Honestly? I kind of want to see what the hell it's all about, so I suppose it's good news that the game will also come to PC alongside its PS4 and PS5 debut, although no specific release date has been announced. Will I finally become the pretty, peerless stylist I've always yearned to be in my heart? My friends, there's not a power on Earth that can stop me.
Anyway, Nikki isn't the only Sony State of Play game quietly crossing the border to PC. We also got a look at Ballad of Antara yesterday, a new action RPG where you'll play as multiple characters with their own classes, abilities, and stories. At least one of those characters will spend their time hauling around a child on their back, a young girl whose quest is to "undo the devastation done to this desolate world."
That desolate world is really quite pretty, by the by. All dolled up in Unreal Engine 5, it's a Souls-y setting with all the requisite mournful, quiet dignity and large, angry creatures. It seems worth keeping an eye on if, like me, you are a sicko for RPGs, melancholy beauty, or armed combat on the school run, and the devs say they're working toward a 2025 release.
All in all, not a bad PC haul for a Sony event, which is less and less surprising as the PlayStation maker continues to bet heavily on our platform of choice. Alongside Nikki and Antara, we also got news that God of War Ragnarök will get its PC release in September, and that Sony's next multiplayer shooter, Concord, will hit god's own platform in August. I don't think you can channel magical powers through the cut of a dress in either of those, though, so I forgive you if you tuned the news out.
