It's Halloween night, so of course I wanted to take the chance to get into the mood, and while games like Zombie Panic Source and Dead Space are perfect choices, along with any classic survival horror game like Silent Hill or Alone in the Dark, I wanted something a little different, something that would truly just fuck with you mind (although Silent Hill is VERY good at doing that too, only I am unfortunately separated from my ps2 and all my ps1 games at the moment). That's where this game comes in, Yume Nikki.

You start out as a girl in her room. There are three things you can do, play the vidya (press z on the console), save your game at the desk, or go to sleep. Doesn't sound like much does it? So here's where the game is, when you go to sleep your transported into the dream world, things look the same in your dream room for the most part, until you step outside. When you leave your room you will enter a dark room with designs that look like Mayan art floating on the floor, and a bunch of doors in a circle. This is the door room, it acts as the hub for all the other rooms. The game is open after this, your goal is to find the 25 abilities (ranging from the useful, like a bicycle, to increase your speed, to the ooooooh cool, like becoming a faceless ghost with the ability to flip your head around) scattered around the dream world and just explore everything in general. You can't die in the game, but you can get lost or stuck, very easily if your not careful. The dream world is massive, and very easy to get lost in due to the chaos found in every room (picture the craziest, most out there, combination of images you can think of. Ya that's not this game, it's a hundred times crazier, mixed with LSD, and put into SNES style graphics).

Ok so it's a pretty weird game, sure weird fits in with Halloween but we want some fear mixed in with our Halloween games! Don't worry there's a little of that too. Much like Silent Hill, this game will freak you out without anything ever happening. A lot of the rooms are designed in a way to put you on edge. You'll find barren, dark rooms, with very little in them, except for maybe a series of paintings, or eyeballs sticking out from the ground, maybe some sort of creature just pacing the center. You'll never know what any of these things actually do until you walk up to them. The background music (or lack of it, when the music stops, it's time to shit bricks) is thrown into the mix, creating a layer of anticipation and dread over the gameplay (you NEVER hear music like that unless something is about to happen, something bad, very bad). This is not a survival horror game, you can't die, there is no fighting, no one is going to jump out and yell “BOO!”, and there is no gore, but it will manage to put you on edge.

I'll just leave you with some screen shots I grabbed while playing through it, but trust me, pictures may be worth a thousand words but you really have to play this game to get a feel for it.






I spent forever in this room, static popping up at random moments (one of them happened to be this screen shot) and invisible walls. Got so close to the ladder but never could reach it, I'm convinced you can't really get to it and the game's just fucking with me. I can see the ladder right there, just one block in front of me, with its glowing light saying "Hey you, ya you, don't you wish you could climb me? Ya it's totally awesome in the room up there, come on climb me, your so close!" No fuck you ladder I'm onto your little game!


Coming out of a sewer system with crude sketches scrawled on the walls into a Final Fantasy style overworld has got to be one of the oddest transitions ever.


There is no possible explanation for this image. And on that note, have a happy Halloween, I need to go play this game some more.