Menzi
2004
I have struggled for quite some time now to articulate my feelings for this game.
It is a very simple game to describe literally - there’s no dialogue, no direct story, and no stated objective besides “explore and collect effects.” The worlds are very often abstract and mostly barren, only containing a few choice landmarks that you have to navigate around to find new landmarks, with many maps looping around on themselves, and backgrounds that scroll across the screen. The length of the song accompanying the world you’re in is, on average, less than 10 seconds. Despite- and dare I say because of this odd atmosphere, I was totally immersed. On an aesthetic level, I would describe Yume Nikki as being less of an attempt to recreate any specific dreams and more like a game about exploring the abstract idea of dream worlds which are not bound by conventional logic and exist as a pure stream of unconscious thought; the places you explore simply “are” and do not try to justify or explain their existence. Yume Nikki on a gameplay level was enjoyable because I was able to just toss away my preconceived notions of what to expect out of a game and simply explore an interconnected world towards “nowhere in particular” to see what happens with total freedom, using effects I collected purely for fun.
A lot of the qualities that make the game great to me feel at odds with its status as an indie darling. One of the reasons why is because it is often misplaced on a very similar pedestal to much more conventional indie games despite being very little like them. Either that, or it is compared to “walking simulators” and dismissed as pretentious or simply boring - I definitely assumed it was in the latter group, and have been aware of the game for many years before finally becoming interested in playing it.
Another issue is that because the game is so well-documented, players now have an incentive to just turn to the internet to look up things to do when they get stuck; should you play this game, I suggest you hold off from doing this as long as you can bear to. Once you start using walkthroughs, this game’s nonlinear quality starts to become lost. The one I ended up using only shows you what door an effect lies behind, but even this somewhat turned this game into a much more linear experience for me. I would go as far as to say that I kind of wish there wasn’t an ending, because it creates incentive to “complete” the game, rather than just letting the player decide they want to stop exploring on their own terms.
On the other side of the Yume Nikki being popular, its status has led to the creation of a vast amount of works that I have found myself either passively or actively influenced by. Notable fan works that are big reasons I finally checked this game out are “Yume 2kki Online” a much larger MMO dream exploration game that is comprised entirely of community-made maps, effects, music, etc., and “Yume Nikki: Between The Lines” which is a fan album remixing many of the game’s tracks in a way that I find pretty fitting to the loopy feeling of the original songs, or occasionally making larger divergences from the original track that feel like musical tributes to Yume Nikki as a whole. After having engaged with these for a few months, as well as having been a fan of some of the numerous games that cite YN as an inspiration, it feels great to have finally experienced the source of these inspirations.
It is honestly quite impressive that a game this slow paced and simplistic kept me hooked for so many hours while playing and thinking about it for so many hours both before and after playing it, when I have been bored to death by much more stimulating games. Despite its popularity, though, I do not think this game is for everybody - in fact it is rather niche, and I wouldn’t pass judgement onto people who didn’t care for it. There is basically no commitment to trying it other than your time though, so I may as well say it’s worth taking a look at even if you don’t stick around with it for very long.
It is a very simple game to describe literally - there’s no dialogue, no direct story, and no stated objective besides “explore and collect effects.” The worlds are very often abstract and mostly barren, only containing a few choice landmarks that you have to navigate around to find new landmarks, with many maps looping around on themselves, and backgrounds that scroll across the screen. The length of the song accompanying the world you’re in is, on average, less than 10 seconds. Despite- and dare I say because of this odd atmosphere, I was totally immersed. On an aesthetic level, I would describe Yume Nikki as being less of an attempt to recreate any specific dreams and more like a game about exploring the abstract idea of dream worlds which are not bound by conventional logic and exist as a pure stream of unconscious thought; the places you explore simply “are” and do not try to justify or explain their existence. Yume Nikki on a gameplay level was enjoyable because I was able to just toss away my preconceived notions of what to expect out of a game and simply explore an interconnected world towards “nowhere in particular” to see what happens with total freedom, using effects I collected purely for fun.
A lot of the qualities that make the game great to me feel at odds with its status as an indie darling. One of the reasons why is because it is often misplaced on a very similar pedestal to much more conventional indie games despite being very little like them. Either that, or it is compared to “walking simulators” and dismissed as pretentious or simply boring - I definitely assumed it was in the latter group, and have been aware of the game for many years before finally becoming interested in playing it.
Another issue is that because the game is so well-documented, players now have an incentive to just turn to the internet to look up things to do when they get stuck; should you play this game, I suggest you hold off from doing this as long as you can bear to. Once you start using walkthroughs, this game’s nonlinear quality starts to become lost. The one I ended up using only shows you what door an effect lies behind, but even this somewhat turned this game into a much more linear experience for me. I would go as far as to say that I kind of wish there wasn’t an ending, because it creates incentive to “complete” the game, rather than just letting the player decide they want to stop exploring on their own terms.
On the other side of the Yume Nikki being popular, its status has led to the creation of a vast amount of works that I have found myself either passively or actively influenced by. Notable fan works that are big reasons I finally checked this game out are “Yume 2kki Online” a much larger MMO dream exploration game that is comprised entirely of community-made maps, effects, music, etc., and “Yume Nikki: Between The Lines” which is a fan album remixing many of the game’s tracks in a way that I find pretty fitting to the loopy feeling of the original songs, or occasionally making larger divergences from the original track that feel like musical tributes to Yume Nikki as a whole. After having engaged with these for a few months, as well as having been a fan of some of the numerous games that cite YN as an inspiration, it feels great to have finally experienced the source of these inspirations.
It is honestly quite impressive that a game this slow paced and simplistic kept me hooked for so many hours while playing and thinking about it for so many hours both before and after playing it, when I have been bored to death by much more stimulating games. Despite its popularity, though, I do not think this game is for everybody - in fact it is rather niche, and I wouldn’t pass judgement onto people who didn’t care for it. There is basically no commitment to trying it other than your time though, so I may as well say it’s worth taking a look at even if you don’t stick around with it for very long.
I do not personally think this is the best 2D Mario game. I do, however, consider it a massive step above anything the New Super Mario Bros series was up to. NSMB feels like store brand Mario; the core concept of a Mario game's identity abstracted away to a generic representation of it - "Fruity Pebbles" becomes "Fruit Flakes." I would not say the same of this game.
Super Mario Bros Wonder... is incredibly silly. It is silly in a way I cannot say I was always vibing with, but always found endearing. It doesn't feel like "Mario for challenge-seeking epic gamer adults" and I don't mind personally, and didn't expect it to be. The characters look and move much more cartoonishly than in other games. There's a lot more visual flair and effects going on when something happens in the game - powerup pickups play unique animations, enemies do a gesture of comradery when they bump into one another, flashing comic-like action shapes appear when stuff gets hit. There's stupid ass flowers that say the corniest shit when you walk by them, and I love it (I heard a lot of fears of them being very "that just happened" and yes they do lampshade like that sometimes. Usually they are fine and occasionally they are funny).
Levels stand out a lot more by being given a title and sub-title, alongside having much more defining central gimmicks. Aesthetically the worlds levels reside in feel like much more distinct locations than the worlds in NSMB, though admittedly they do still end up having the same abstract world-theme archetypes. Each world has a sort of macro-gimmick with how levels are laid out: the desert has many hidden levels, the magma swamp has many layers and stages scattered about, the petal isles is the access point for the other worlds in the game and you come back to it often to play a few of its stages between each world. To compare, I played NSMB Wii about a few months before this and cannot recall any particular details about the average stage within it.
One of the major mechanics introduced to this game is the badge system. In concept, this is a cool system that gives a ton of playstyle variance. In practice, most of the badges are too intrusive to normal gameplay and I only ended up using the spin jump badge with the dolphin kick badge as a backup for water levels. There are other badges for things like powerup spawn restriction and collectable locators - I basically never touched these nor felt they were worthwhile. The game has about 2 dedicated stages for each of the movement-altering badges which locks you to that badge. These stages are pretty fun and are designed pretty neatly around the badges, but honestly they were so short they left me aching for more of the main levels to just require and be designed around the usage of a particular badge in the same vein as these challenges.
Ok so, the difficulty. This is a kid's game; it's easy. Mind you, I found this pretty engaging despite the levels never requiring too much of me skill-wise. But, still, it is just a little TOO easy. I wouldn't care about the main game being easy if the special world provided a substantial challenge, but it feels like even that world is a cake walk in comparison to other "special world"s I've played. The levels in world special are VERY short, so even when they are actually difficult there is not too much friction to see them through to the end and get all of the collectables. I beat "The Final Test" in two tries, and that's not supposed to be a flex. I'm not bragging - I am genuinely under the impression that this level's difficulty was very undercooked. Maybe I just fluked and performed exceptionally well and the level is actually pretty difficult. But for a "gauntlet" it felt awfully short as well!
After this I checked to see if there was a super-secret final level, and there was indeed... but I would have to replay most of the game to pick up the random one-off goalpost tops and/or big purple coins I missed.. I almost decided to just pick up another game sitting in my backlog, but stuck out the grind out of curiosity. Oh man, it was worth it. The payoff is a marathon of my favorite level archetype: the badge challenges. And this one was actually hard! It even got me starting to worry that my first Mario Wonder Game Over was approaching! I definitely would have run out of lives if not for the checkpoints. It is somewhat unfortunate that the only serious challenge the game had to offer was at the absolute ending, and even then felt way less harsh than its contemporary 99.9%-completion challenge levels from other Mario games. That being said, though, I was enthralled to play it and it was a big high note for me to finish the game on.
I consider Mario Wonder to be a pretty solid game through-and-through. There were never any serious lows despite the lack of extreme highs I have gotten from other platforming games. I would recommend this game if someone was telling me they were already interested in playing it, but I wouldn't recommend it out of the blue, if that makes sense.
Super Mario Bros Wonder... is incredibly silly. It is silly in a way I cannot say I was always vibing with, but always found endearing. It doesn't feel like "Mario for challenge-seeking epic gamer adults" and I don't mind personally, and didn't expect it to be. The characters look and move much more cartoonishly than in other games. There's a lot more visual flair and effects going on when something happens in the game - powerup pickups play unique animations, enemies do a gesture of comradery when they bump into one another, flashing comic-like action shapes appear when stuff gets hit. There's stupid ass flowers that say the corniest shit when you walk by them, and I love it (I heard a lot of fears of them being very "that just happened" and yes they do lampshade like that sometimes. Usually they are fine and occasionally they are funny).
Levels stand out a lot more by being given a title and sub-title, alongside having much more defining central gimmicks. Aesthetically the worlds levels reside in feel like much more distinct locations than the worlds in NSMB, though admittedly they do still end up having the same abstract world-theme archetypes. Each world has a sort of macro-gimmick with how levels are laid out: the desert has many hidden levels, the magma swamp has many layers and stages scattered about, the petal isles is the access point for the other worlds in the game and you come back to it often to play a few of its stages between each world. To compare, I played NSMB Wii about a few months before this and cannot recall any particular details about the average stage within it.
One of the major mechanics introduced to this game is the badge system. In concept, this is a cool system that gives a ton of playstyle variance. In practice, most of the badges are too intrusive to normal gameplay and I only ended up using the spin jump badge with the dolphin kick badge as a backup for water levels. There are other badges for things like powerup spawn restriction and collectable locators - I basically never touched these nor felt they were worthwhile. The game has about 2 dedicated stages for each of the movement-altering badges which locks you to that badge. These stages are pretty fun and are designed pretty neatly around the badges, but honestly they were so short they left me aching for more of the main levels to just require and be designed around the usage of a particular badge in the same vein as these challenges.
Ok so, the difficulty. This is a kid's game; it's easy. Mind you, I found this pretty engaging despite the levels never requiring too much of me skill-wise. But, still, it is just a little TOO easy. I wouldn't care about the main game being easy if the special world provided a substantial challenge, but it feels like even that world is a cake walk in comparison to other "special world"s I've played. The levels in world special are VERY short, so even when they are actually difficult there is not too much friction to see them through to the end and get all of the collectables. I beat "The Final Test" in two tries, and that's not supposed to be a flex. I'm not bragging - I am genuinely under the impression that this level's difficulty was very undercooked. Maybe I just fluked and performed exceptionally well and the level is actually pretty difficult. But for a "gauntlet" it felt awfully short as well!
After this I checked to see if there was a super-secret final level, and there was indeed... but I would have to replay most of the game to pick up the random one-off goalpost tops and/or big purple coins I missed.. I almost decided to just pick up another game sitting in my backlog, but stuck out the grind out of curiosity. Oh man, it was worth it. The payoff is a marathon of my favorite level archetype: the badge challenges. And this one was actually hard! It even got me starting to worry that my first Mario Wonder Game Over was approaching! I definitely would have run out of lives if not for the checkpoints. It is somewhat unfortunate that the only serious challenge the game had to offer was at the absolute ending, and even then felt way less harsh than its contemporary 99.9%-completion challenge levels from other Mario games. That being said, though, I was enthralled to play it and it was a big high note for me to finish the game on.
I consider Mario Wonder to be a pretty solid game through-and-through. There were never any serious lows despite the lack of extreme highs I have gotten from other platforming games. I would recommend this game if someone was telling me they were already interested in playing it, but I wouldn't recommend it out of the blue, if that makes sense.
Very solid 3D platformer with impressively decent controls considering it was made in just a week! The retro graphics are cute but the lack of shade does make it harder to judge depth, and wall-grabbing feels janky sometimes. The Celeste mechanics that were brought in were adapted in neat ways, and the map is designed pretty well in that it's somewhat of a loop that lets you go around a few times to scout for strawberries you may have missed. It's short and free, you should just play it if you haven't already.
2014
I just had to leave an obligatory review of the 3DS version of this game because HOLY CRAP it's so broken in ways that make it genuinely kind of novel. The three most prominent are as follows: One, off-road slowdown is not programmed in to any of the terrain, making the intended roads merely a suggestion. Second, your turbo from drifts is insanely strong, and picking a loadout that maxes said turbo stat makes you a demon. Third, the AI is dumb as bricks.
This all leads to a game that is, for all intents and purposes, blatantly unfinished. But it's so fun to have had the experience of playing such dog-water.
This all leads to a game that is, for all intents and purposes, blatantly unfinished. But it's so fun to have had the experience of playing such dog-water.
It claims to be free, but the real cost is sitting through a boring stealth game
(Review taken from my Steam account, posted December 13 2021)
(Review taken from my Steam account, posted December 13 2021)
This game doesn't really do anything wrong, it's just that its premise wasn't executed particularly well. There's no real purpose behind the game's main mechanic of going to the dark world when you run out of lives. For one, it doesn't really incentivize you to try and go back to the light world because it is not significantly more difficult than the light world. Another thing is that realistically, and especially as this game is short, the average player is just going to want to play all of the levels anyways.
The levels themselves are fine and I don't feel like this game was a waste of my time or anything, but this doesn't really feel like a game that excels at anything.
The levels themselves are fine and I don't feel like this game was a waste of my time or anything, but this doesn't really feel like a game that excels at anything.
2009
And Yet it Moves is a game I played the demo of a ton on the Wii, and eventually bought sometime later on Steam when I realized it existed on PC in the first place.
It's primary gimmick is that you can rotate the world around you in 90 degree or 180 degree increments. This concept alone, I think, could have led to a game that's even more innovative than the acclaimed "jumping-inverses-gravity" VVVVVV. Rotating the world does not just affect your character, but also a great number of things. Loose objects can become hazards, resources get redirected around the level, stuff rotates, swings around, etc. This game offers some extra challenge modes for when you beat the game - the only one worth mentioning, as it is unique to this game's gimmick, is the "least rotations" mode which I enjoyed trying out.
Where this game's shortcomings lie is mainly in its lack of polish. There's no indicator of when your character has reached a fatal velocity, making certain jumps seem very ambiguous for reasons I believe they should not be. Your character moves pretty slow and jumps pretty low, which is in part due to the fact that gravity can be shifted to build momentum, but that is not very reliable for the previously mentioned reason. There's a set of bonus levels that I believe were designed for the Wii version (which has any-angle rotation) but backported to the PC version anyways, and are made pretty unfair as a result. "The Chase" still haunts me even though it's been years since I last played this game. If they at least let you use any-degree rotation for the final levels I would be fine with them.
The PC version has also become pretty buggy due to lack of support, unfortunately. Just to play the game after running it you have to do some key combo nonsense, and a lot of the achievements are broken, which makes me feel like I can't recommend this game to anyone else despite it being pretty interesting.
It's primary gimmick is that you can rotate the world around you in 90 degree or 180 degree increments. This concept alone, I think, could have led to a game that's even more innovative than the acclaimed "jumping-inverses-gravity" VVVVVV. Rotating the world does not just affect your character, but also a great number of things. Loose objects can become hazards, resources get redirected around the level, stuff rotates, swings around, etc. This game offers some extra challenge modes for when you beat the game - the only one worth mentioning, as it is unique to this game's gimmick, is the "least rotations" mode which I enjoyed trying out.
Where this game's shortcomings lie is mainly in its lack of polish. There's no indicator of when your character has reached a fatal velocity, making certain jumps seem very ambiguous for reasons I believe they should not be. Your character moves pretty slow and jumps pretty low, which is in part due to the fact that gravity can be shifted to build momentum, but that is not very reliable for the previously mentioned reason. There's a set of bonus levels that I believe were designed for the Wii version (which has any-angle rotation) but backported to the PC version anyways, and are made pretty unfair as a result. "The Chase" still haunts me even though it's been years since I last played this game. If they at least let you use any-degree rotation for the final levels I would be fine with them.
The PC version has also become pretty buggy due to lack of support, unfortunately. Just to play the game after running it you have to do some key combo nonsense, and a lot of the achievements are broken, which makes me feel like I can't recommend this game to anyone else despite it being pretty interesting.