5
Yume Nikki is not a typical
RPG. Don’t go into it expecting anything of the sort. Yume Nikki is brutally emotional, sometimes frighteningly abstract, and bears little resemblence to the games of today. 99% of the game consists of exploration, and the areas you’ll be wandering around in have no logical arrangement whatsoever. You’ll get lost often and miss things. You’ll find things in places you’d swear you’d crawled over with a fine-toothed comb. You’ll find things you’ll almost wish you hadn’t.
When struggling to explain the horror factor to a friend, the way which felt most right is the idea that your brain can only accept so much surreality before it clamps up. The various monsters or people you encounter (and I must warn you, there’s virtually no dialogue in the entire game), the backgrounds, and the sound for that matter, have nothing in common with sense. After a time, that hideous pink and green mutation in the background will make you shudder simply because you don’t know what it is, will never know what it is, and perhaps don’t want to know what it is.
Installing this game was a headache, unfortunately, due to having to download and enable Japanese non-unicode support in order to get it to run. It was worth the hoop jumping, however, and I’ve played through it a few times. Finding every effect gives you a real feeling of accomplishment, but the ending (and I am a sentimentalist, unfortunately) is liable to leave the average gamer either in tears or making o_o faces.
It’s also unfortunate that there’s no explanation for obtaining the ending, and it’s not something the average person will stumble on except by a very unlikely accident. SPOILER WARNING – - – - To get the ending, you must find every effect, drop them in the room of doors, wake up and go out on the balcony. I only state this because otherwise the odds of finding it on your own are extremely slim, and the ending comprises, I feel, a significant part of the game.
Is Yume Nikki a transforming experience? Odds are, no, it’s not. But it will linger with you, perhaps into your own dreams and nightmares.
5
I personally love this game. Though there’s almost no dialogue, this game is really something. It’s amazing how this game spawned so many theories about why the ending happened and why Madotsuki is the way she is. The game is amazing, because I could almost connect and relate to her. I even have twisted, nightmarish lucid dreams frequently as Mado does. After seeing the ending, I balled tears D; (spoiler, seriously —) It was like spending all of this wonderful time with your best friend, sharing our feelings and such. And all of a sudden she kills herself in front of you. (end spoiler~) This game really leaves people thinking, even about the concept of dreams. I have never found anything like this. The game has less than average graphics, but the scenery can be unsettling. After seeing some of the secrets, they have being haunting me for days. Of course, this game isn’t for people who don’t like to think a lot, find the idea of dreams boring, people who prefer happy themes, etc. I recommend this game to anyone, though.
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this review helpful.
4 A Patchwork Mind
Yume Nikki could be described as something a tormented artist, which has never played an
RPG videogame (or indeed any kind of game) but had it described to him, would make if given a copy of
RPG Maker. The structure of the game would make any designer weep: Useful powerups are scattered in easy to reach areas, while the most complex puzzles lead to dead ends. The worlds loop on themselves and each other, concealing important vignettes into tiny cul-de-sacs of the oft-repeating scenes.
But, of course, the point of Yume Nikki is not the game aspect. You’re here to wander through the collage that is the main character’s dream world, possibly collecting important sections of it to be related in the titular Dream Diary. This task seems to be the totality of Madotsuki’s world; trying to leave her tiny apartment in the real world results in a stubborn or maybe scared head shake of denial.
Once all the “effects” are collected and catalogued, Madotsuki’s task is done, and she leaves the world with nothing but the Diary as a memory of her convoluted mind. When the game itself seems to be a collection of the designer’s ideas and art, the ending becomes worryingly personal.
The art is fairly uneven, recalling the ‘collection’ motif suggested above. Some art is scanned, some seems to have been drawn on Paint, some is beautiful and frightening fractal art, and some is a 8-bit pastiche of Dragon Warrior and Mother. The game’s creepiness comes from the randomness of this art and of the design as a whole – but, more than creepy, Yume Nikki is beautiful because it is fantastic, and because it is sad.
5 Creepy dream exploration proves fun
I found out about this game randomly on a chan board. I was skeptical of playing an indie game for the first time, however, after playing through I’m really glad I came across this little gem. I have never experienced anything quite like this in the video game realm before.
Some people have said Yume Nikki bears a few qualities reminiscent of Earthbound (Mother 2) for SNES and while that holds true to a degree, I would recommend fans of the franchise don’t get their hopes too high. It’s hard to put your finger on it, but the Earthbound kookyness is in there, albeit to the tune of horror rather than comedy. Overall, this is not Mother 2.5.
I get the impression the creator of this game put a lot of effort into making something that you will have a good time getting creeped out by. I gave the game a high review because I didn’t feel like I was wasting my time exploring this pseudo trip into the subconscious. The game is just downright eerie, I feel like its going to stay with me for a while.
Just a minor criticism, walking anywhere seems grudgingly SLOW. I highly recommend you google how to get the Bicycle item as your first objective in game, since you will use this constantly to boost your movement speed. I won’t post any spoilers here, but if you feel the urge to “cheat” there seems to be an abundance of guides online made by the game’s cult following. Even if you’re the kind of player who likes to figure it all out yourself, I still recommend at least doing this first since the maps are sprawling and huffing it on foot can get irksome.
I highly recommend pursing the Easter eggs hidden throughout since they add a lot of flavor to an otherwise completely dialogue free game. If you’re having a good time playing the regular content I think you’re going to want to see some of the “extra creepy” stuff.
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this review helpful.
3 In the Woods
I am outside of time, or something like that. I know I am dreaming, but I am not. The mountains and paths are white – blank, vapor-less, the landscape is parched. Something approaches me. I act without thinking. Blood spills over the ground; my knife-hand trembles. The figure is a shadow on the ground now. Ahead of me the portal spins out of control, and I can feel it drawing me closer. I concentrate and find the animal inside me and rush forward, giving myself to my dreams. The girls behind me scream and give chase. I can feel their breath behind me as I shoot forward into the brightness.
(Read my profile for explanation)
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this review helpful.
1 Nice concept but awful execution
As much as the concept of a little girl on a strange journey in her dreams, acquiring strange powers and using them to solve puzzles sounds great on paper, in reality, Yume Nikki is easily the most horribly executed game I ever played.
“Exploration” is an understatement. 1% of the gameplay of Yume Nikki consists solving puzzles and 99% consists of carefully finecombing ginormous, empty and looping locations in search for special powers or doors leading to more ginormous, empty and looping locations. And it certainly doesn’t help that most of the locations you will have to finecomb will be gigantic, black, repetitive and empty locations, with a handful of landmarks thrown in the mix. Don’t be fooled by the screenshots shown on most review sites, because the locations shown in these screenshots aren’t representative of the whole game at all.
This is what Yume Nikki is in reality. The game doesn’t test your reflex, your management or your puzzle solving skills. What Yume Nikki test is your patience. How much freetime you can afford to waste carefully finecombing all those useless rooms in search for special powers, how much freetime you can afford to waste backtracking your steps and re-finding your way to previously visited locations, and how long you can stand the mediocrity and repetitiveness of the gameplay before you give up playing this game entirely.
IMO, Yume Nikki should have been like Loom. Loom, in case you never heard of it, is a very old point and click adventure game by LucasArts. Unlike the average adventure game, where you pick tons of objects and tediously solve tons of puzzles with them to progress in the story, in Loom all puzzles are solved with only one inventory object, a magical staff which you use to cast spells. Spells are aquired by observing your surrounding. For example, by examining a seagull opening a clam, you would learn a 4 notes melody, which once played, would open whatever object you are looking at (not unlike the melodies in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time). Play the notes backward, and the object would close. As you explore the world, you would learn more spells, from the very basic Opening spell, to more complex and strange spells, like Dye, which allow you to dye in green any white cloth and vice versa, or Straw To Gold, which is rather self explanatory.
This is how Yume Nikki should have been, IMO. A little girl on a journey inside her strange dreams, where you meet strange characters, visit non-repetitive, beautifully drawn but nonetheless abstractly creepy locations, acquire strange powers and use them to solve puzzles and progress forward in the game. The same setting, the same premise but a whole different gameplay. It shouldn’t have been this shallow exercise of repetitive finecombing on steroids.
All in all, unless if you have no problem to use a walkthrough and cheat for the entire game, unless if you want to witness how a great plot idea with a lot of potential can be wasted with a miserable gameplay, or unless if you have a whole lot of freetime with absolutly, but ABSOLUTLY nothing better to do of your freetime, don’t bother with that game.
