Twisted Mind - Yume Nikki

One reasons of there are some end to end spectrum topics I talk about or what most people would call it rant about is what I keep telling myself I got some twisted mind. So in having a twisted mind I read / play twisted stuff. Currently I have 3 in mind I want to review. 2 of it are mangas one of it is a doujinshi freeware video game. 2 the mangas are Franken Frank and Mirai Nikki. the doujinshi game (doujinshi usually refers to self-published or indie for short for all Japanese indie products). Note that there will be spoilers in this as it is difficult to talk about the game without spoiling it.

I would first review Yume Nikki which stands for Dream Diary in Japanese. Why is this game twisted and the reason it attracts my twisted mind a lot. I would say the visuals would be the first thing that hits me. Its totally bizarre. At one point you be walking through the forest then you go through a cave you appear into this desert like area which then you enter in a field that is only in black and white. If that is not bizarre I dunno what is.

Also the idea of the whole game is totally twisted, You are a girl called Madotsuki which you figure out from the game Menu screen. You notice that in the real world you are in a room locked in. You can go to balcony and that's about it for the real world. For me that begged a few questions, why is she locked in? Did she lock herself up? Why is she writing a dream diary? Is she even sane?

As you play the game you notice the dream world is insanely huge and also totally random. It is a far cry of the real world she is in and like I said earlier the dream world is filled with bizarre stuff. The dream world is also very random. There will be things you will encounter one time at a place but never be able to. I would say the game is very chaotic dude to the nature of so called dreams (actually the producer did say there are lot of random variables he programmed it in to give it the chaotic effect)

For the music is is usually silent, some with weird noises or even serene music. Coupled with the visuals it produces some really scary moods to it.

At the end of her whole adventure which ends in the real world. She kills herself. Again a few questions came to mind. Did she kill herself because she couldn't tell what's real or not. Is it because she was really locked up and could not stand it anymore? Probably she wants to dream forever after all we call death eternal slumber?

Whatever is it the outcome feels really heavy after playing it. I makes you wonder about certain things in life when you have no control over them.

If you are looking for a similar game like Yume Nikki, there is one on the Playstation 1 called LSD. No not the drug LSD though I'm quite sure if you play the game you probably think the producers of the game took it. LSD stands for Lovely Sweet dreams in short. I probably try to cover it if I can a copy of the game because the game is insanely hard to find and very limited copies.

For both games you can search in youtube for the videos. Yume Nikki for well yume nikki and "LSD game" for Lovely sweet dreams cause searching with LSD has different results. Enjoy having your brains twisted like mine.

Some more links to read up on this game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yume_Nikki
http://www.honestgamers.com/reviews/7913/Yume-Nikki.html
http://www.indiegames.com/blog/2008/04/freeware_game_pick_yume_nikki.html
http://yumenikki.wikia.com/wiki/Yume_Nikki_Wiki - this is more or less the game guide on the whole game