Yume Nikki Review

I thought to myself that I shouldn't start this "review" (more of an hommage to the work) like this, but here goes anyway; this game has probably saved me from committing suicide. I only needed just a slight push to splatter on the floor if I didn't invest my time into playing this game, and it was in a time where I was at the lowest point of my life (well, probably not that bad compared to other later happenings after all, but bad enough that I genuinely considered offing myself). Playing it for the first time on mobile due to being a poorfag (later on my 3DS and laptop), I loved it from the start, regardless of the medium and regardless of the imperfections of the RPG Maker 2003 engine on Android. It made me reminiscent of my absolute love for Undertale and Earthound back in the day, even though they were nothing like Yume Nikki.

Though I've began playing it very, very late (since I didn't even learn the alphabet yet around the time it got popular in 2007-2010), Yume Nikki presented itself as a timeless relic of the past. The "game" itself had only one (optional) goal, which is to collect all 24 effects while exploring the maps. No dialogue, no plot, nothing else; just the protagonist, Madotsuki, and her internal world of dreams, yet it remains one of the most profoundly influential video games of all time (inspiring things like Undertale, OMORI, etc.). It was more like an interactive painting; the simplicity of its presentation and its ambiguity leaves its purpose and meaning under the domain of speculation, and while only the sole author, Kikiyama, knows about the authorship of Yume Nikki, nobody else knows anything about him (besides the interview on Toby Fox's Secret Base) since he cut his involvement with the game early on...

Why did Madotsuki lock herself up in her room? Does she live alone? Is that room all there is? Did she suffer from a traumatic experience for her to decide to be a hikkikomori? What are the contents of the bookshelf? Who are the few human figures in her dreams? Is Poniko also a shut-in for the same reason? Who the hell is Uboa? What's with the indigenous Peruvian symbolisms in her dreams? What's the story behind the traffic accidents and implicit "sexual" imagery? Why is Mars-san buried in the deepest corner of her subconscious mind? Why did she do that?

The many questions asked around Madotsuki led to the many theories surrounding her, but none are more or less wrong than the others. Yume Nikki appeared right at the end of the last period of history in which there was mystery on the Internet; YouTube wasn't as massive as it is today and there weren't any documentations on the game (like yume.wiki). It was just you and Madotsuki, and maybe some other weirdos on imageboards (like Uboachan) who were, just like you, trying to figure out the mystery of this game.

Madotsuki's Dream World is carefully designed to evoke universal symbols so that all players can relate to at least some part of her dream. The sublime experiences that this game offers (such as when you figure out that you can fly off the Mall's rooftop, or when you reach the Sky Garden the first time after an hour of mindless strolling in the Wilderness) are incomparable to any game I've ever played. It's just so hard explaining it. Mystery empowers humanity to find answers, and this makes Yume Nikki eternal. S-tier.