Yume Nikki

What can I say, that hasn't already been said? Beautiful surreal game.

Whilst I can acknowledge the influence and impact that this game had on the RPGMaker community - and on gaming as a whole - this is a walking simulator. You'll know if it's for you or not after about 15 minutes of playing. Usually, walking sims aren't my style, but I stuck around as Yume Nikki is more of a sensory experience for me than anything else. The creatures and structures that inhabit Madotsuki's mind are strange, often creepy, and wonderful, spanning a large spectrum, from humanoids, to animals, and then to the floyag - uterine beings that linger in the sky and just watch. I like these guys. I found myself becoming attached to the cast of little door beings quickly. They really illustrate these small but living worlds, flourishing (and some not...) in the crevices of her mind. Some are more appealing than others. I loathe the Forest World due to the effect hunting you have to do there, and the beautifully simple looping tracks dedicated to each door, really seemed lacklustre for this one specifically, amping up the aforementioned weakness I felt in it already. It felt like a chore to get through. Meanwhile, standout areas for me are the Barracks and the Snow World. I haven't much else to say on these. They're just lonely where it counts. I think Yume Nikki is an important experience if you've ever been in a similar state of mind as Madotsuki, and I think that it's what draws most people to this game. When you have nothing else, sleep will always be there for you. As is any form of escapism. I drowned myself in music, books or games, and much like our protagonist, sleep also. It teleported me back to a very bleak time in my life. It was also the time where RPGMaker games were there for me the most. I could never bring myself to dislike Yume Nikki, even though I feel as if it's a real 6/10 in my heart. I have too much sentimental value to it to ever let it go.

this game changed my life, made me believe in myself and made me confident and awesome and cool. this game is really the goat of all games and i really love yume nikki and i want to make yume nickles like madotsuki and be rich and have money like madotsuki. play this game and it will change your life trust me #real #swag #iloveyumenikki

Jugué 10 horas, terminé el juego, y nunca supe que había que hacer. 10/10, 100% recomendado

Edit: Oh right. I forgot that I wanted to mention how many effects I found while playing the game without looking up anything: 16. Most of them were found through genuine tedious exploration and mapping out spaces that were designed to confuse you. --- To give this game a downvote feels like something that only the people would do that havent played the game more than 1 hour or the people who do not understand what games like this are about. And so I wont do that. But at the same time, I do not really think that Yume Nikki as a GAME really deserves an upvote either. And not because it is bad or terrible or tedious, the latter honestly rings more true than any other label that I could apply. But instead because the game treats its mystery like a case of "Find it out or dont lol. I dont care." There are games made in such a style, hell even a project I am working on myself, that do this but then also give the player access to ways to basically say "Ok Ima find it out. And I will do it by digging into the deeper end and see where this goes". But instead of the game handing you this type of control, which feels arguably silly not to and I will explain why, it just sits there and doesnt tell you a single thing about how to approach itself and why. Yume Nikki requires no handholding. And yet it also requires at very least a tiniest nod in... SOME direction in order to get you going with something. Most regions in the game will leave you wandering for eternity before you find something. I kid you not, you will literally go into a region and just loop endlessly and nudge yourself left or right ever so slightly every loop just so you can find what comes down to being a random mcguffin that overall has little to no real gameplay tied to it. There are some. Some effects that actually do something. That make it worth finding them. The problem is that the game never explains to you that any of the items can be used in the first place. It expects you to experiment. Which is fine. Until its not. Because at some point, a point which I havent reached yet myself, you will end up on a forum and ask other players or worse yet, look it up online. Something I also heavily refuse to do cause I want to play this game and actually give it the respect it deserves. But as for the game itself? It feels like it doesnt respect me at all. And should it? I dont know. At this point in time the game shows itself as a game that lets you explore the dreams of Madotsuki as a lucid dreamer. Lucid dreaming is defined by the dreamer effectively having total control over what they want to do in a dream. This does include the use of effects of course to alter your appearance and what you can do. Sure. It also means you can wake up whenever you like with a trigger. What it also means is that... you should be able to just do whatever you want to do. A lucid dream is defined by the dreamer effectively turning into a god. The dream says "fight me" and you look and laugh. The dream, your subconscious really wants this to happen and gets super angry when it cannot get it done. This is a psychological phenomenon that has been recorded from various different dreamers... myself included. I had a dream in which I stepped into a dark room. A grand wooden table infront of me. Shadowlike humans sitting and conversing. I simply asked one question in this first and arguably last lucid dream I ever had. I asked "Is this a dream". All humans looked at me with their eyes as white as stars and I got instantly kicked out. The subconscious HATES when the dreamer is aware of the dream. Which the game actually shows off when the player gets to specific parts of the game. But only specific parts of it. Not every part of it. As in... every part that has NPCs. Only specific sections. And that straight up doesnt make sense in dream logic. --- The community is in a high debate over wether or not the author dreamt this stuff themself or if its dreams of other people. At this point I dont really believe that there is a dreamer behind these dreams. Any of them that is. I think that a lot of the surreal spaces you can find are taken as inspiration from what people dream about. The problem with such a case is that if its taken without understanding the meaning behind the dream, you will end up with an image that fails to make coherent sense. There is a layer in the game aptly called "Hell". The layer is red. Blazing red. And inside wander 2 entites that if they come in contact with you end up shooting you out of a dream. THIS is a very clear sign for Trauma. Why is this a very clear sign for trauma? Cause the space you end up in is actually something I ended up dubbing the "Halls of the mind". A space so confusing that no matter what turn you take, unless you have a map you are now just trapped endlessly wandering in a space that you barely know as to how you even got into it. The problem however with this is this... You can access Hell not at random but by finding doorways to it. ... You dont find Hell. Hell finds you. You cant just... traverse it at will. It makes sense from a gameplay perspective. But if this game actually had a dreamer who dictate the dreams and their ideas... Hell wouldnt be accessible. Nor hidden and accessible. It would just be hidden. A case of "Random chance" for you to reach it. And the game makes you feel like it is random chance. Until you realize that you can just... replay the same section again and again and again and again to reach the other spaces. To reach Hell. To reach all the effects. --- I dont know how to really feel about the game. I love dream psychology a whole damn lot. And after almost 12 hours of me playing this game (4 hours were not recorded via steam cause the game hates being played in Admin mode) on stream, I feel less satisfied with what I see from a dream perspective. The game itself? Its fun. I am enjoying it greatly. But when it comes to the subject matter? It is Esoteric and mystical at best and requires you to think around the bush so hard that it becomes a pillar or makes you question why the fricking curtains were actually blue to begin with or if your teacher was just full of ♥♥♥♥. --- Dont misunderstand me. I think its a good game. But if you told me that I am actually exploring someones dream, after 12 hours of playing, (with even the author of the game saying nothing about wether or not these are actual dreams or otherwise) I would be more than just skeptical at this stage. This game feels more like someone who wanted to make art of dreams rather than making a dream into art. Maybe my opinion will change if I should ever get to the end. For now? Thats what I think.

no

This game is a lot of fun to play. Like, a LOT of fun. I suggest playing it.