Although yume nikki has stuck with me for what seems like will be my whole life. I'd rather play this than the former. Why? The creativity and general lack of direction feel more like a dream. Keep in mind, it is far less personal and lacks a story which you can sort of make out. Not for worse or better, but there are moments in which it tries to create unneeded "myths" about itself (as some games do to gain notoriety), creepy or not. FYI I'm a born hater. It's free, play it (there's an easier to play online version).

I think, above all else, what makes Yume 2kki stand out as unique in not just RPG Maker games, or even just video games, but media in general, is how it still manages to impress years after its release. For all that I appreciate about my other favorite games, including those that so obviously inspired 2kki, none have managed to continuously leave me speechless so long after I initially played it like this free indie game has. If games are art, Yume 2kki is a canvas the size of the Louvre.

The fact that 2kki advertises itself as a mere fan sequel to Yume Nikki is an ultimate understatement. To be clear, Yume Nikki is fantastic, it's a 10/10 classic, and it’s an arguably equal game to 2kki. That said, it’s still a cute little hour-long experience that’s fun to drop into from time to time in order to immerse yourself in its vibrancy and its melancholy. 2kki is a monster. Yume Nikki fans can easily count all of its worlds; I’m not sure if anyone has ever experienced all of 2kkis worlds. Yet Yume 2kki, even with its massive amount of locations, would be considered like any other fan game if it just stopped there, but what makes the game stand out is that it just keeps going. Yume Nikki games stop when the player obtains all of the effects, but in this one, that’s when the game really gets started. Collecting wallpapers and menu themes, and digging as deep as possible for the most obscure worlds and events is what really turns this game from a fantastic tribute to something all of its own, completely enjoyable as its own experience and even more impressive as a tribute to Yume Nikki and its community.

It's no secret that this game’s range of quality varies wildly from world to world. That’s naturally going to be the case with this type of game. Some moments will feature some of the best pixel art and dark ambient music you’ll ever hear, the next world will look like a 10 year old’s MS Paint portfolio, but I can’t help but feel that even these utterly mediocre worlds serve as a bonus to the overall experience. Despite a lack of artistic ability in some of these areas, they’ll often simultaneously feature a lot of great ideas (see the Dream Park), and help further establish Yume 2kki as a passion project of passion projects.

Even if these stylistically lesser worlds bother you, that shouldn’t take away from the best this game has to offer, which goes far above and beyond what any other Yume Nikki game, dream simulator, or “walking simulator” has to offer. Any vein of worlds made by qxy or wataru fit nicely within this category. It’s so easy to jump to my favorite section of this game, the path to Lavender Waters, which provides such bittersweetness yet bliss as the player goes deeper and deeper into its worlds. It feels like it’s own game entirely, yet it, and qxy’s other worlds perfectly showcase 2kki’s mix of emotions. Traveling through the Cotton Candy World, the player can continue into the surreal loveliness that world has to offer, but they may find themselves drifting into the horrors beyond the surface. I’ve never been outright terrified playing Yume 2kki, but the ways that horror works itself into areas one wouldn’t expect made those few horrific moments stand out (see the Infinite Library and Static Noise Hell for my favorite examples of this).

Most importantly though, these sudden moments of horror call back to 2kki’s crowning achievement: no other game quite recreates dreams and nightmares in the way that this game has. Most dream simulators are limited in the sense that they often simulate the dreams of its small team of developers, maybe even just one person. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that 2kki’s state of being as a free, international, community-led project has led to a far wider, more realistic portrayal of dreams. The only other game that comes even close is the relatively new B3313, fittingly another community led, free project. Even that game only goes so far though. Yume 2kki really takes RPG Maker to its limits. The engine itself has often been viewed as an outlet for the independent developer, writer, musician, or artist, and in that sense, 2kki is an even more accessible outlet, by already giving developers the game’s defined mechanics and just letting them explore.

To be fair though, so many dream simulators don’t even really try to accurately simulate the average dream. Take the original Yume Nikki, for example. That experience serves less as a simulator of dreams, and more of an open window into a tortured mind. Yume Nikki tells a story, and that makes it a different beast entirely from Yume 2kki, which has no greater story to tell (realistically, most Yume Nikki fangames come with a clear story to decipher). To call 2kki’s symbolism and exploration meaningless would be a flawed perspective, though. Again, Yume 2kki is a canvas for the surrealist, and ultimately, these developers have their own story to tell. It’s as if a character and a world were presented to a room of writers, and every one of them then crafted their own wildly different, yet similar stories out of them.

Still though, 2kki doesn’t really have a main plot, and much like Yume Nikki, all of the endings are very short. A short ending isn’t too big of a deal in a short game, but after spending maybe 30 to 40 hours getting 95% of the wallpapers for 2kki’s final ending, only for it to be a 30 second abstract scene, might hit players the wrong way. The same might be the case regarding how obtuse the exploration can be sometimes. Realistically, the 2kki wiki is a requirement to complete the game, and it’s a great wiki. I find exploring the website to be akin to some kind of treasure map, especially when there’s a menu theme or a cool wallpaper attached at the end, but some might find a constant referral back to the wiki to take them out of the immersion. Neither of these issues bother me too much, what my main issue tends to be is that some worlds are just a bit too convoluted for their own good. Sometimes, great art can get in the way and make worlds actively harder to navigate through, and other worlds just boil down to massive mazes that are easy to get frustrated by without, again, a constant referral back to the wiki. Far from a dealbreaker for me, obviously, though it does turn some potentially fantastic locations toward mediocrity.

For more or less two and a half years, Yume 2kki has been my go-to video game. It stands out so clearly among a sea of open world games where areas are virtually indistinguishable from each other. There’s still so much to discover, too, and many of my favorite discoveries only came in the form of updates from the last year or so. It may seem like I talked about a few worlds, but I didn’t even talk about the perspective shifting areas, if you know you know. You can’t really go wrong with at least trying out Yume 2kki. Knowledge of Japanese isn’t really needed at all in order to play, and there are so many different methods of playing through the game, whether you view it as a collectathon, or just something to blindly fire up once in a while and wander around. I’ve never stopped loving RPG Maker games, but over the last month, I’ve been looking at some RPG Maker horror games I never played before, reaffirming my love for this niche of gaming. That said, nothing I’ve played comes even close to Yume 2kki (or Yume Nikki). It’s a joy coming back to these games and realizing there’s so much more to discover, though it’s a bit melancholic all the same knowing that there’s likely no game in this field that will reach the level of ambition, community support, or raw artistry of Yume 2kki.

tldr: good.

A lovely and deeply-expansive Yume Nikki fangame that can probably boast having the largest explore-able world of any out there, due to its collaborative nature; "completion" of the game (regarding getting all effects and seeing an ending locked behind it) is made far less enjoyable than other fangames as a consequence of this, and I needed to look up the locations of two or three of them. Regardless, if you can find joy in the heavy variety of styles and locales, you may very well enjoy this one; it's considered one of the greats for a good reason, I'd say.
Certain links to different areas/events requiring certain effects is particularly frustrating due to the combination massive open world and sometimes-esoteric effect hiding spots though, so keep that in mind if it takes you a while to find certain keys you need to progress, like being able to tear down wooden barricades over doorways.

If you like Yume Nikki, you might not like this as it can end up feeling convoluted and messy at times, but playing this on the YNOnline site is a chill time, as they have a map that makes exploring the insane amount of worlds a whole lot more user friendly.
Due to its gimmick of it being communally updated since 2007, it can give you the most stunning beautiful worlds, with the most serene music or the most eye-melting mess with the most ear-melting track for company.

Overall I think that it's great, just not for the same reasons as Yume Nikki, as the novelty of having hundreds of dream worlds made by a bunch of different people over the course of the last 15 years is enough to carry it alone.

Esse jogo é simplesmente brilhante. Não só por conseguir captar bem a essência do Terror e surrealismo, como também consegue criar laços com o jogador e tem os segredos muito melhores que o 1 jogo e as músicas que são uma das melhores coisas que já vi na minha vida musical, os design dos monstros tem uns simbolismos meio pesados e os mundos também, som muito bem feito e quem joga esse jogo até hoje merece um lugar especial no céu e sim estou até hoje convencendo minha namorada a jogar e ter esse clique que tive.