(Mostly as in, I give you a roughup on what the game is about, but not go into great detail).
So, I just played Yume Nikki for roughly 14 hours. 'Beat' it in one setting.
Never played it before and, well, wow.

In case you haven't heard about it, Yume Nikki is a japanese, indie game made with a older RPGMaker back in '04.
It's kinda popular, even hit 14th most downloaded from some Japanese site in 2010, I think, and it also has a small cult following (Similar to the Mother series).

Yume Nikki is classified as a Psychological Horror, yet I hardly consider it a 'horror'. When you start, you're placed in a bedroom. You cannot leave this bedroom and there are limited things you can actually do in it. The only thing available to use is a bed.
If you lay in the bed, it sends you into her 'dream world'. One of the first rooms is a 'nexus room', with quite a few doors. Each door sends you to different areas. Most areas have (Smaller or larger) sub-areas, and subareas within those subareas. Some areas also intertwine with areas from the different inital doors.
There are various NPCs and other objects for you to find and interact with. Some won't react to you at all, others will.

It's similar to LSD Dream Emulator, the kinda popular Japanese 'dream' game. Although not nearly as random.
There 'is' a main objective to the game, although not obvious at first(Wasn't to me, anyway). Normally though, the main point of it is to explore and find things and...well, that's about it. As you progress you gain new ways of interaction, but the main point is still exploration. Some areas are beautiful and have a serene ambiance to them, while another areas are pretty strange, weird, or downright scary.

It might sound boring at first (Okay, it does, I know), since most games with 'only' exploration do get rather boring after a short amount of time. But it does whatever it does 'really' well. The weird things you see captivate you, capture your interest and keeps you looking for just a little bit more (Via that 'Oh just look into this next room' feeling).

Since you are in the main characters mind, everything you see can be a reflection on the character itself. So it's one of those games you really need to make your own head-canon about. Hardly anything is expressed via words, voice, or any other sort of communication. So the story is roughly whatever you make of it. Though there 'is' something at the 'end' of the game, but I will leave that up to you to find out about(If you look it up I'll stab you with a pointy bullet, it's one of those endings that simply shouldn't be spoiled).


Although it's classified under 'horror', it doesn't have any jumpscares(Okay I lied. There is 'one', but you have to do a specific action in a specific room and it only has a 1/64 chance of happening, so you'd either need to be looking for it, or be very unlucky).
Nearly everything that happens is triggered by you, the player. So you can normally 'prepare' yourself for anything weird(Even then, there are no real screamers or jumpscares, I promise!).
Some areas can get pretty creepy, as the creator pulled off atmospheres 'really' well, but that's about it.

As for music, the games music runs off simple, maybe 5-second long clips of different sounds in different areas or situations. It fits in really well so it doesn't sound 'out of game' at all, in my opinion. Heck, even if it is only small clips on repeat, it's apparently good enough for someone to loop all the sounds to a few minutes and create a unofficial(But officially accepted, I guess?) soundtrack to download.

Anyway, I went into the game thinking it wouldn't entertain me for longer than an hour and here I am, finished the game in one setting instead. If you have the time, I highly suggest you download it and at least give it a 15 minute run. Go though a few areas and see how you feel about the game. I promise, there is more than just walking around if you look!

The game can be found right here.
The very top link should work.
You 'might' need Japanese Locale installed, but I'm not sure if I ever actually installed it or not, myself (And the game worked fine).
If you get any errors installing or running the game (Errors with weird symbles and blocks that are obviously not japanese), you probably need it installed.
However, if you don't have it installed, but 'do' need it, you can try out the .flow version instead, it also has it's own support page on one of the 'Yume Nikki' *chans.
You can also simply install the Japanese locale. If the steps in that link don't work, you might have to go to Control Panel > Programs and Features (Or the uninstall programs menu) > On the top-left click "Turn Windows Features On or Off" and install it from there.
Windows7 might also 'just work' with Japanese stuff. I dunno, you'd have to give it a try.
Obviously if the original installer works for you, just do that. I have no clue how to run .flow files.


Anyway. I'm absolutely in love with the game. It's also inspired me to put another idea on my 'games to make before I die' bucket list(Urrg, why).
If anyone feels like playing it, stream or LP it, I would totally watch.

But yeah, just wanted my fellow Magonians to know of the game if you all haven't already heard of it. It's pretty good and I would suggest it to anyone(Within reason, of course, but still).


If you have played it but wish to yabber about it, please put stuff in spoilers for other people and I'd gladly post about my more in-depth thoughts and ideas.