Warning! Spoilers in the 6th and 7th paragraphs. The rest can be read by anyone spoiler free so I hope you enjoy !

One Year ago today, I finished Yume Nikki, one of the most unique experiences with a game I had ever had up to that point, and to this day after experiencing countless amazing pieces of art Yume Nikki still stands tall among them as one of my favorites. Why is that? In this post I’d like to go over what makes Yume Nikki truly stick with me as well as many others, and why it appeals to me in a way few other works can.

The Game

Yume Nikki isn’t like most games. I wouldn’t even say it truly has a story to it. Yume Nikki is an experience. In the words of Kikiyama, the game's creator, “...this game allows you to explore the world inside a dream (thus its setting). There is no particular story or purpose. It simply is an exploring game.” The only instruction you get from the game is on how to save, how to go to sleep (entering the dream world a.k.a. Nexus), and the goal to collect all 24 effects you can find throughout the Nexus. From here, where you go is up to you. You can explore the many doors of the Nexus and all the weird environments and creatures it houses. The effects turn our main character, commonly known as Madotsuki, into different versions of herself or give her specific items such as turning her into a cat, giving her a bike, or making her ride a broom in a witches outfit. Outside of the opening instructions, the title card, and the menus there isn’t any dialogue to be found. All you can really do is explore at your own discretion, the events that occur in your playthrough are entirely yours to decide. It’s a totally alinear experience where you decide when the story begins and ends.

The World

You start the Game alone in Madotsuki’s apartment, which you cannot leave. It’s a lonely place with only a bookshelf, video game console, a diary to record her dreams, and her bed. The balcony isn’t any different, being very dull and dirty as well as fairly high from the ground, creating a greater sense of isolation for Madotsuki. When she heads to sleep she can enter the Nexus, the world of her own dreams. There are 12 doors leading to 12 different zones which all have their own mini zones, creatures, and themes. With the help of the effects you find, you can discover whole new areas as well as new interaction with the world itself. And on top of that, there are many secret events that only have a small chance of happening upon falling asleep, creating even more value to exploring every inch of this world. There are many theories as to what events of experiences led to Madotsuki’s mind becoming the way it has, but I’ll dive further into that in a later slide. I can see why this type of game isn;t appealing to everyone, who wants to sink time into a game that doesn;t answer your burning questions about the world, but I think that approach misses the point of the game entirely, so please give it a shot if you’ve never played the game before.

Madotsuki

Madotsuki isn’t really a common name in Japan. It’s actually the word for Window. Some fans even believe that Madotsuki isn;t even our playable character's name, but more symbolic of what she represents; a window into her dreams. Madotsuki’s shirt also resembles a window, and can even be interpreted as the japanese character 囧, which means “to shine” or “window” reinforcing Madotsuki’s role in the game. The last detail about Madotsuki I’d like to cover is her eyes. Throughout the game Madotsuki’s eyes are never open, the only time being when her Cat effect is active, but many don’t consider those red beady eyes to be her real eyes. Her eyes being closed are heavily interpretable as well, some believing they represent how Madotsuki is closing herself off from the world to live in her own dream world. But again, like everything with Yume Nikki, this is heavily interpretable as well.

Infinite Interpretability.

What I believe to be the strongest aspect of Yume Nikki is how anyone can play this game and put their own pieces together to construct their own narrative with what the game gives you. With the game and its creator not giving you a single answer or confirmation of any detail within the game besides how you play it, no interpretation can be wrong either. Every person's unique experience is, in a sense, canon. Part of why this game has continued to grow on me is that as my values on art, stories, games, etc. change, my own interpretation can change and evolve with it. My first impression of what took place in the game is far different from what it’s evolved into, but every step of the way since then, the way I’ve seen the story continues to be valid. And what’s so powerful about that is because it parallels life so beautifully. Everyone comes to their own conclusion on how they should live their lives, and you can’t truly rule out someone's own idea of what life means to them. And that idea can change and evolve as we all grow as people. Yume Nikki truly is one of the most perfect reflections of life that I've ever seen within art, which is kind of ironic for a game that feels so avant garde and strange in its world.

Spoiler Warning for the ending of Yume Nikki. If you want to go in blind for what the 24 effects do once you finish the game(which I highly, highly, HIGHLY recommend you do), please don’t read these next 2 slides.

My Own Interpretations on Yume Nikki - 1

For the sake of example, I’d like to share how I saw Yume Nikki a year ago, and how I see it now. I believed that us, the player, acted as the subconscious within Madotsuki. Just like in a dream where we have no control of the direction it goes, Madotsuki isn’t in control when entering the Nexus, we are. We are the spirit in Madotsuki’s heart that helps her confront the trauma she’s experienced so she can take back her life from the grips of despair. In a sense, we are her human spirit to keep on living in a world that keeps pushing her down. My thoughts weren’t fully formed with this idea though, I couldn’t explain the ending, why she takes her own life after collecting the 24 effects and placing them as eggs in the center of the Nexus. I knew there were holes in my theory, but i didn;t see that as a bad thing, because in the end I still believed in the idea that everybody's own unique takeaway can coexist since again, there isn’t a single piece of evidence that can truly disprove anybody’s theory on the events of Yume Nikki. Even reading back on this theory, I can fill in those holes now and come up with a new thought process just as valid as my current one, or anyone’s current one.

My Own Interpretations on Yume Nikki - 2

My current interpretation on the other hand goes like this. Madotsuki is a troubled Hikkikomori. She’s been through countless traumatic events, to what extent we won’t ever truly know, but that’s not the point. I believe that Madotsuki finding all 24 effects and exploring the Mandala that is her own mind is her facing her trauma head on and internalizing it, and when she uses them it’s her learning to overcome those fears related to them. Her placing them all down as eggs is her finally coming to terms with everything that’s happened, and that gives her the power to move on. She finally found her true self and now has the power to finally wake up. When she wakes up and Leaps off her balcony, I believe this is also within her dream, since in the credits, we see inhabitants of the dream world dancing around the bloodstain on the ground. Not Madotsuki’s corpse, just a stain, which mirrors an area you can find in the Nexus. This symbolic death is the catalyst for her new life and the true journey ahead of her. I also believe in an opposing theory, one that’s the total opposite of what I’ve just laid out. Madotsuki collecting the effects burdens her, she can’t take all these memories of her trauma and dream manifestations of her worst moments. Her laying all the effects down overwhelms her into waking up and jumping. This Madotsuki is a cautionary tale. She wasn;t able to come to terms with her own life and ended it. The dream world creatures we see in the credits show that she’s returned to an eternal dream world never to wake up.

In Conclusion

These two interpretations are seemingly opposites, but the nature of Yume Nikki lets them both exist, along with many, many, many others. There are even countless fan games in the same format where people have put their own experiences and feelings into a game, such as Lisa the First, Yume 2kki, .flow, and probably hundreds of more with their own dedicated fan bases and own fan games. The powerful nature of Yume Nikki is how it brings out our own feelings. We can piece together stories that we like, that inspire us, that make us miserable, or that make us see life more clearly. Yume Nikki is a phenomenon like very few other works of art. It puts a mirror up to our own lives and experiences and if you put the thought into it like I have, it can truly be a life changing experience that I won’t soon forget, which is quite impressive for a game I’ve only spent maybe 10 hours in total playing. If you’ve made it this far into the post, please consider playing the game, it’s free on steam, it can run on any computer or even a phone I’m sure, and with an open mind it can be a beautiful time.