They are minimalistic in their array of audibles, but what they have, they often use quite effectively, and I definitely think that is the case here. There isn’t much to bring mention of aside from that, as these horror games are often very subtle on variety, and certainly aren’t known for their head bopping tunes (with one huge exception in the desert level which I found pretty funny). And one cannot go without mentioning the euphoric soft tune of the Pink Sea, a world that took a temporary sudden departure from the game’s overall dark themes, and put you in more of a candyfloss fairytale setting. Nothing it has to offer will make you look over your shoulder when you play in the middle of the night with headphones on, like the original most certainly did, but it does accomplish setting a dreary mood that fits each dreamscape – especially the haunted school. Where the original Yume Nikki had a creepy as heck creepypasta like soundtrack, Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- goes for more of an unsettling modern tone. Or I may just have a thing for lighthouses in general.Īlso, like the two above mentioned titles, you technically can’t die in this game, rather, if you are caught by a hostile enemy or fall into a bottomless pit, you will merely restart close to where you died, which I appreciate. I especially liked the Inside gameplay style at the lighthouse, where you sneek along on a bridge, trying to avoid its lights, while you make your way to the nearby forest. That said, if you wanna borrow from something else, at least do it well, is what I always say, and while Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- does have some kinks to iron out, I feel these sequences are well carried out. It works, but I would have prefered the game just sticking to one control style or the other, and then letting me adjust to the obstacles ahead. I am tempted to say that Kadokawa has taken some inspiration from Limbo and especially Inside from Playdead, as, in some locations, your free movement will be replaced with a linear ”move left or right” control scheme. You can thus freely traverse to that world through the sewers, without having to painstakingly wake up and go back to bed, which you can, by the way, do by simply holding down, to have Madotsuki pinch her cheek, which I found really clever. In some worlds, your progress will be halted by the need of an Effect or Collectable (this game’s Items) which can only be found in another. I am gonna go back a bit on something I said earlier, about it being a bit silly that your have a door for each world, when they are all interconnected anyway, as this does in fact serve a purpose. Yume Nikki -Dream Diary- is still fairly vague in its puzzles at times, but it has a much heavier emphasis on these and they are often fairly easy to solve, though not so much that you feel the game holds your hand. Perhaps that was the intention, as I will admit, the visuals and creepy sound effects in that game alone made my hair stand on end, but aside from that factor, I got bored from having nothing to do, or rather, not knowing what to do. Speaking of gameplay, and I am sorry if I tread on thin ice here, but there really was hardly any in Yume Nikki, it felt more like an experimental proof of concept trying to creep the player out as much as possible with one disturbing scenery after another, than an actual game. As you venture further and deeper into each dream, you will find yourself in all new areas you didn’t have access to before. These can all be tackled in any order though, and they are all to some extend connected, which I found a bit silly. Each door leads to a different dream world, and each must be solved in order to unlock the game’s final dream world. You then find yourself in a dark and ominous version of your room, and when you try to leave through the only door, which Madotsuki will refuse in the waken world, she finds herself in a small circular hub room consisting of a series of doors. True to its name ”Dream Diary”, the entire game takes place within Madotsuki’s dreams, so as soon as you interact with your bed, you are whiskered away to slumberland. It is getting late anyway, so we might as well go off to bed, and it is here the fun begins. Aside from that though, there really isn’t much to do here. Seeing this room faithfully re-created in 3D immediately brought a smile to my face, even more so seeing that the playable mini-game on the Famicom (also playable here), along with two extra secret videogames for you to find. Like I said before, you play as a lonesome girl, confined to her apartment, with naught but a bed, a bookshelf, and a Famicom to call her own.
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