Meaning is an inherently limiting concept. There's only so much you can do when you're limited to just blunt concepts - ones that you need words to explain, linear ideas proselytized to people. Art with meaning is fantastic, but art without meaning can be beautiful. Yume Nikki is a profound example of that.

There's not much to say about Yume Nikki that hasn't already been said, which pains me a bit. Yume Nikki is an ethereal set of listless atmospheres, ones you traverse with no particular aims in mind. You explore the dreams of a young girl and experience the sights and sounds. To concern yourself with their meaning is to miss the point. Yume Nikki is a game that is simply about the act of seeing these things, of existing in this world.

Sure, there are cases to be made for things in the text being important focuses. I mean, a version of Madotsuki is literally shown hiding in a closet at one point, which is ripe for queer reading. There's also the game's fixation on car accidents, with an entire character becoming mangled when you show her a stop light. I think that the very act of applying meaning, though, misses the point of what makes this so special.

This is not a game that is to be understood, it is a game that rejects the premise of understanding entirely. It is a game of exploring these landscapes, and taking them in and acknowledging them, but not ruminating on them for very long. To do so removes them of the mystique that they gave us in the first place.

The dream diary eludes understanding.

Reviewed on Aug 06, 2022


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