Yume Nikki is an all time classic. I first played it in college, and frankly, I wasn't quite sure if I would enjoy it. I was intrigued by the premise, but I thought that perhaps I might get bored at just walking around. Instead, I found myself completely encapsulated, exploring the world for hours.

The game's premise is so elegant, but like everything in this game, leaves room for the player to consider and ponder. Madotsuki is alone in her room, and for whatever reason, refuses to go outside, instead choosing to dream. There's a tragic aspect of this setup that looms over the whole game. You aren't merely exploring the dreams of a random person. Rather, you are reading the dreams of someone specific, and probably not someone who is in the best state of mind. Perhaps that is me reading into things and projecting my own thoughts and feelings onto the game, but that is what Yume Nikki is all about. Its a world filled with visual detail, but the specifics of their meaning is hazy at best, and thus there are gaps to be filled by the observer in a Roland Barthian sense. Everyone fills those gaps in their own way, to the point that their own reading of the game to an extent becomes a reflection of their own self. While this is true of all art, it's especially true when so many of the details are left up to interpretation.

The game's dream worlds are fascinating. The vast majority make me feel lonely, even when they have inhabitants. There's always a certain distance felt between Madotsuki and the strange beings of her dreams, at least in most cases. The worlds themselves are ethereal and bizarre, their dreamlike quality aided by the short music loops that become memetically drilled into your head. Part of the joy of exploration is not knowing what else is out there. There's snow, buildings, abstract voids, and so much more, and I wanted to see it all.

While Yume Nikki could be said to be a game "just" about walking, that would imply that the act of walking is uninteresting. Rather, Yume Nikki is a game about observing, and thinking, acts which aren't mechanical in nature, but take place in the player's head. I loved thinking about the things I was seeing, marveling in their strangeness, vibing to the aura, and experiencing things. The gameplay of Yume Nikki truly lies in the thoughts constructed in your own head.

I have never been particularly fond of Yume Nikki's ending. In a sense, the foreboding atmosphere implied by the game's premise is heightened in a tragic and sad climax. Its an incredibly somber note to end on, and in a sense does ring true to the experience of stewing in negative and depressive thoughts. But, it has always felt sour to me. Its an aspect of this game that, while I'm not huge on it in its original context, has been commented upon by other games responding to Yume Nikki. This scene, for better or worse, became a lasting part of the game's legacy, and in a sense is recontextualized by the media around it. In particular, Yume 2kki and OMORI both have their own twists on this ending that I actually find fascinating, and worthy of their own exploration, that work in the context of those games.

All in all, Yume Nikki is a game that is worth as much time as you want to give to it. If you play it for 20 minutes, or get obsessed and play it for hours on end (like I did), you will find something to appreciate about it. For the time it released, it's incredibly unique. Not much else was like it at the time, and it helped forge a new possibility for what games could be. Its a game that is free and easy to access, that runs on almost any computer made in the past 20 years. There's no reason not to play Yume Nikki. Frankly, I could keep talking as this is only a snippet of my thoughts on the game, but this should suffice for now. Enjoy your dreams!