Among the pantheon of inspirational indie titles, Yume Nikki stands a tier above the rest in terms of sheer widespread influence and also, paradoxically, the depth of interpretation it allows through its simplistic ambiguity. Today, I want to talk a little about what that means to me, and why I think it’s endured for so long.
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CHAPTER LIST:
00:00 – INTRO
03:53 – LAYER 1: PART OF YOUR DREAM
08:32 – LAYER 2: DECODING A NEXUS
34:41 – LAYER 3: HAVE YOU SEEN THESE DOORS?
43:21 – LAYER 4: FOR THOSE WHO DON’T GO LOOKING
52:42 – FINALE: AT THE END OF YOUR DREAM
55:01 – OUTRO
#NezumiVA #YumeNikki #RPGMaker
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39 Comments
Aaand here's a comment question for you: What game has made you feel the most seen?
very good anime
47:16 Here's the fun bit of trivia about that concept art: it's not even Kikiyama's.
From one of the many reviews of "Yume Nikki: Dream Diary" it was discovered that the concept art shown in game is simply art created for the game itself by it's art lead or at least the same person who was responsible for the rest of the concept art.
Meaning that even that perceived involvement of Kikiyama did not happen.
I really enjoyed watching this. I’ve heard a lot about Yume Nikki and seen snippets of it, but you did a great job in discussing the impact of it. It helps that I have a love/fascination for abstract or surrealist fiction like this.
Literally played this game last year (so rn not very long ago) and finally got a video about it recomended to me! 😀
What a great video! Your willingness to be open on such vulnerable subjects makes every video of yours a meaningful watch. I hope you keep doing what you love in 2023 and take a couple breaks to recoup from these projects!
i'm so happy you covered this game ^^ i loved to hear your opinion on it and a lot of what you said really resonated with me. also you're just so eloquent and have such a way with words that it's crazy <3 i wish i was as smart as u lol
>pixelated MC
>OMG UNDERTALE RIPOFF
kids these days smh
I played this game before going to bed just after it had turned to the new year to have a hatsuyume
we have similar yume nikki stories it seems. i got really into it at a time i was struggling, and a good portion of that was after i lost my first job and wasn't going to school at the time. and on top of it i'd lost my mother the prior year and became isolated and as such loss and aimlessness were integral in my reading of the game. i'd been around fans of the game on tumblr and -chan boards before so i knew of it and all the videos of people just going to find the spooky shit before. but those two factors combined into how easy it was to get into it. i still carry this NEET era with me even today where i'm much happier, less isolated, and am working again.
the pandemic was 3 years after that so i'd been back in college but classes going all online and things being shut down for a bit certainly some of those vibes were brought back. a mini-renaissance of that time, perhaps. and i always get really contemplative the last few days of the old year and first few of the new one. so its as good a time as any to revisitthe memories i do clearly have. and lament the specifics i no longer hold.
I've been binging all your videos and while I've already seen a separate video on this a couple months ago. I'm watching this to hear you talk about it because I feel like you articulate stuff really well 😀
yume nikki is such a brilliant piece of art and i will be forever grateful that it inspired .flow. .flow is one of my most memorable gaming experiences to date and will always take up a large piece of my heart. the addition of new areas that are extremely loaded with imagery suggesting (unwanted) sexual connotations add an entirely new layer to the story for me and really connected with me as a player. interestingly, the idea of a mercy kill as you mentioned in the video was never something that i even considered as a part of the ending. really goes to show you that even a more narratively driven yume nikki fangame can still be vague enough to inspire many, many different theories as to how everything played out.
yume nikki
I had hoped the 3D game was just that, 3D graphics
even if it was like only ten worlds even if it added barely anything
just like you, when I saw the Pink Sea it was perfect! I had always imagened that if the orginal was just horizontal (even with the same spites) that it'd work so much better IMO
because I love this game and it's content and want the get lost in it but I do not enjoy it like this, just scanning the gaintass place diagonally to find something, anything!
but seeing something vague in the distance??? yes I can discover SOMETHING, I can just approach the thing and already start analysing what it is and then admire it (even if it's noting special)
so the Pink see was so amazing, even when simple and empty I could just see that it's little islands and I can follow it and discover the balloons and then OH IT FLOATS?? NOT TELEPORT?
that's so neat, it's like the best thing too because in pixelart is was more magical to have the teleport but the gentle float away in 3D helped because you could see how high (maybe a tad to slow)
and then the biggest favourite thing of me was the faceless ghost they added, like sure now Nopperabou Ghost wasn't unique, but I love that npc and they look SO COOL circling the pink mountains
like "oh they added birds? why…. OH NO IT'S NOPPERABOUS!!!" and I was in awe, it was so cool they were just out there and it's like the original one is even more of a loner in the sewers
not only are they haunting an odd place they're as far as possible from fellow ghosts, literally oppesite! from a light pink sky abover a serene sea to a dark green underground sewer sytem
it just had such a connection to me, the presitation was a new side to the original vibes, the ghost has no face no id yet it still was so unique oppesit to the other faceless ones/Folloney and Fleebie that I have my own ideas on through their vibes, I love them so much the npcs can tell such a story in a non-common way and should stay like that if you're depicting this all in a game
but yeah, the other npcs are quite boringly handled the grabbers weird the chasers done wrong the levels are just some random horror platformers whatever things I couldn't be bother to remember I like forgot everything but the Pink Sea because I couldn't be bothered to rewatch this game that's just not Yume Nikki
going to comment before I watch the video, yume nikki means a lot to me and I love that one of my favorite YouTubers is doing such an in depth retrospective on it. it’s crazy how seen yume nikki makes so many people feel.
thank u for pronouncing madotsuki properly I cannot stand hearing their name with a hard DOT sound 🫶💖
I love chill videos I can just sit down and listen to like these ones, they’re the same kind of videos years ago that exposed me to the fandom and introduced me to this beautiful game. They’re very informative and nostalgic to me!
This was an incredibly emotional video to watch, thank you so much for making it! I can't wait to see more from you.
This kind of series will always still matter. :p
A dream that I still vividly remember since about early 2020(ish? is being in at one of my old schools and talking with someone I used to have a crush on, and she told me that she didn't like me the same way I did (she was attracted to girls, and I am a boy), but we could at the very least be friends. To this day it's still something I think about.
All I really want is a friend at school, but being as shy and antisocial as I am outside, I've never really had any friends, so having that internal thought manifest like that felt interesting.
Nowadays I've been failing to keep grades afloat because of things nearly outside of my control, and any attempts to make friends (let alone trying to find someone who I'd think would be nice) hasn't gone well.
I bring all of this up not only because of how surreal yet introspective my dreams felt, but also the hikikomori like way I feel, especially on winter break and over the summer.
I see my self in characters like Madosuki, or in another games case, like Sunny from OMORI.
I love yume nikki it’s so underrated 🙁
Your videos always force me to do some introspection, i love that. Theres something comforting and yet emotionally devastating about the topics you touch upon. after each video im always deep in thought, sometimes i actually have to pause the video to decompress a bit and filter through my emotions on said topics. Im honestly thankful for that though, i don't have many reliable sources that force me to think about my current state in life and im kinda figuring some shit out. It always helps when i can just think about life society and the many shituations it throws at us all.
I'm starting to ramble on, but i hope it makes at least a little sense XD
There was a time when I lived an extremely remote town barely anyone had computers and our town was at least 10 years behind in technology from rest of the world and my buddy at school had a computer and showed me this game and oh man.. it was something else beating it was such an accomplishment to us.
After I beat it I bought some blank CDs and went to our library which was basically only place with Internet and found yume 2kki and had to go back for every update until we eventually finished that too which took wayyyy longer.
There is a fun fangame called Yume Nikki Gensou: Memories of Replica, that was pretty good. It's a castlevania style game with a lot of exploration.
This has to be one of the only Yume Nikki videoessays in the recent years that is more than "This game was so weird and surreal… It has a jumpscare… And the story is unclear!!!"
I can tell you put your whole heart into it and FINALLY someone says it's not a horror game. Dang it, it couldn't be that hard. People really saw Uboa and said "yup, horror RPG Maker game thingy".
On the Dream Diary part… I did like it not as a reimagining (That thing was disappointing to say the least), but as fanservice. The "We worked with kikiyama" stunt made me buy it the second it was released and I remember rushing my way home from class once the day was over to install it and play it. My disappointment was huge. When I saw the green guy in the woods part I was very confused and very sure this was gonna suck. But by the time I was finishing it I was glad something "official" from Yume Nikki was released after so many years. Nothing will be close to the original and I still have faith that Kikiyama will somehow reappear and update it one more time (even if it is a small update), but Dream Diary was like receiving a letter from someone you had lost contact with a long time ago. A "Hey, I'm still alive" message. And I appreciated it, to be fair. Will I consider it official content and a continuation to YN (Cause It does start where YN ends)? No. But it is fanservice and I think some of us needed it?
Whatever this video slaps tysm for making it <3
Why this game still matter? Cause gobou is still making pixel art for it!
21:24 NOOOO DONT BE MEAN TO MARS SAN 🙏💖
you becoming incredibly emotional while talking about the game is so intensely relatable to me. when you said the trauma, memories, and emotion you project on the game are almost inseparable, I really felt that. It’s as if while I was playing it, I was madotsuki, and everything I saw I interpreted as a stressor or important moment in my life. The “story” of the game becomes one so personal and interpreted, and I think it’s that way for everyone playing the game.
I have had mental illness a lot in my life. It was a big part of my youth. when viewing certain part of the game, i interpreted certain scenes as certain parts of my life. This created an anxiety so intense I would have to take breaks from playing sometimes. But it also helped me process the things I had experienced and feel less alone.
I ADORE dot flow’s more narrative focus. I felt connected to sabitsuki, but it definitely was less personal than madotsuki. I loved the gender/sexism imagery as well
Halfway through the video, enjoying it a lot so far.
I don't even remember why I played Yume Nikki. I just remember I did, and when I talked about it to a more online friend of mine (4chan type, though in 2010 it wasn't what it is now) they asked if I'd seen "uboa-chan."
I admitted I didn't know, and they told me about how it was a secret room that happens at a super low chance when flicking the light switch.
"oh yeah," I replied, "I had no idea, that event triggered after four clicks…"
Flute player song is still able to make me cry almost immediately for no traceable reason
For me, Night in the Woods is the game that has made me feel the most seen, with surreal relatable situations, it reaches out and touches many in the same situation. Yume Nikki is such a surprising game to accomplish the same, but is done as well and if not more well than the example I've given. (Great video btw)
I don't really understand whats so special about the uboa screamer that it got so famous… its not replayable, you see it once and you are no longer ever scared – it's not repeatedly terrifying
yeah, it was unexpected and is a rare occurrence but it got overrated. Uboa is cool, hype around uboa event – overrated
Honestly to this day my whole take of "if you have a meaning that up to interpretation you have no meaning" is not a popular take and i won't say it's a fair one either, cause it's really not. Plus doing readings that are clearly wrong as fuck just to go down the line of it is fun as hell, but at the same time there becomes a point where vagueness just loses me. I think this partly cause i am so tired of games feeling like the are baiting game theory videos and bullshit like in FNAF where it clearly has a story and acts like it but just refuses to tell you half of it. Like, it's the same reason i can't get into Monty Python. When it came out it was cool but now that everyone has referenced it and taken from it without the same appeal or doing it as well it just all feels terrible through no felt of it's own. Again, I feel bad for that being my take on the game cause it's not the games fault. And a lot of the games inspired by Yumi Nikki are great(Ib, Undertale, OFF, Lenin the Lion and Omori are all so good), it's more youtubers than games but there isn't any other thing i have left after so long. Again it's like trying to find Python and the Grail funny when the internet already showed you every joke in the movie. I genuinely wish i could enjoy the game more, and part of me does. But man I am so tired of indies games with 4th wall breaking and multiple timelines and arg type stuff, ad Yumi Nikkii arguebly didn't do any of those, and defo didn't do anything ARG related.
24:30 is pretty much how I feel about a lot of the more popular/common theories about the game and what I bring to it as a player in my readings as well. Thank you for articulating it better & more thoughtfully than the "not THIS again" reaction that they usually garner from me.
Dang… Guess I found a new favorite channel
Me watching this video: Oh boy another hour long Yume Nikki video!
Me at the end of the intro: AH! A FURRY!
Me listening to the No More Heroes themed chapter reference: Hmmm… Okay. You can stay.
Yume Nikki and its fangames have always been my comfort games. They've gotten me through lots of tough times. It's pure escapism for me. Even the OST puts me in a blissful trance, and a lot of it is repetitive looping ambient tracks, but I like that stuff a lot. The games aesthetic has impacted me artistically and even somewhat mentally
Present day.
Present time!