‘Nif Nif’ is a terrace builder who is involved in cleaning wild animals

Not Not draws inspiration from Defeat the spirebut creates a more kid-friendly, fun, and healthy deck building game about cleaning up after dirty animals.

There are a few playable animals to choose from, but Not Not‘s art revolves around a cute piggy. Each of the different animals has their own decks, cards to unlock, and ways to play, depending on your preference.

The game itself is pretty simple at a glance. There is a map that shows you a few areas that you can go to. In most of these levels an animal will appear that is covered in filthy gunk. This gunk has made them hostile and they will attack you even if you try to help them. You have to use your cards to clean these animals and keep yourself clean despite all the gunk that flies around from attacks.

Playing cards often takes energy (although there are a handful that don’t) and each card has its own ability. Some have you clean the other animal, some have you increase your shield by cleaning yourself, and some are food-related cards that let you increase your power or draw more cards to see if you can use them. Successfully cleaning an animal often lets you pick a card to add to your deck. There are ways to remove cards (soon you’ll have more cards than you need), but this is done by going to mysterious encounters or choosing the ‘burn’ option at camps. The balance between trying to keep the cards you want but not making your deck too big is a big part of the game, as it’s easy to just get a lot of cards.

There are several encounters, including talking to other characters about the goo in the forest, which can result in more cards. Your health itself does not regenerate at the end of levels, but you can get soup and make soup at campfires, which can increase your health. Not Not is a game that revolves around running, so you have to make sure you keep your energy levels up to last the entire run.

Not Not feels like a really fun game where you just try to clean up animals. I got to play the demo at Gamescom this year and I really fell in love with the characters. There are also different hats and skins you can unlock for further bonuses, lots of different characters and levels, and a lot of heart has clearly been put into this game.



Nif Nif is currently in development, but in the meantime you can support its development via Kickstarter or add it to your Steam wishlist.

About the author

Jupiter Hadley

Jupiter is a prolific indie games journalist, writing for Metro UK, Big Boss Battle, AlphaBetaGamer and many more, all with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, giving each game a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all the game jams happening around the world, and judges many jams and events. Jupiter is also the Adept Games Wizard at Armor Games.