09.Jul.2010 Yume Nikki and Solipsistic Escapism

Yume Nikki is a game about a young girl, named Madotsuki, and her escape from reality. It’s a game that has the potential to be long, or very short, depending on if you play it with a strategy guide or not. I played it initially without a guide, and then later on using a guide to get the ending. I recommend not using a guide during your first attempt at finishing, as using a strategy guide ruins some elements of the game, particularly the excitement of any exploration. The game is a great deal of fun if you enjoy cryptic exploration games with very artsy presentation (it’s similar to the game “LSD” on Playstation). I’m going to try to give very little info on the actual content of the dream worlds and effects in this review/analysis, simply because it would totally shatter the discovery and explorative element of the game, especially with regard to the hidden dream worlds. This will limit my analysis to non-specifics about the game, rather than what specifically X effect could mean, or Y dream world, or Z character. I highly recommend, in addition to playing without a strategy guide, playing in the dark, with no one around, after having been in your room/home alone for at least an entire day. Try to be a social recluse to play this game.

All that aside, the main “plot” of the game is that you play a girl named Madotsuki, a social recluse who lives in her apartment/home, and you must sleep in your bed, travel to a dreamland, and collect “effects”. The dream worlds are each distinct little areas of various themes and abstract styles, and contain different effects scattered about their landscapes. The effects in Yume Nikki are toggle-able effects on the character, for example, having longer hair, or a bicycle, or a little winter hat. The effects all have a specific use or interaction with the different dream worlds, usually in a dream world other than the one the effect was discovered in. Madotsuki can leave her dream worlds at any time by simply waking up, where she reappears in the real-world. The only other way to  be removed from the dream worlds is to run into the bird people. The bird people are strange female-looking bird humans that chase Madotsuki around in her dreams, and upon contact, return her to the waking world. I took them to be representative of the adults and social figures of the waking world that push Madotsuki to “get a life”.

The flow of the game starts very strong, with the very open-ended, looping dream worlds that are initially presented to the player to explore. It’s easy to find a few effects in the beginning, though the player is likely to be overwhelmed with the size and complete lack of linearity of Yume Nikki. The flow drops a significant amount when the player has explored all the initial dream worlds, if the player has not found any hidden ones. This is where I would suggest using a guide, as it doesn’t ruin the game, but the player should explore a lot to get the most out of each area. Most of the thrill of Yume Nikki is experimenting the effects, finding hidden dream worlds, and the discovery element of the uniqueness of each dream world. There’s very little challenge in this game, aside from dodging the bird people, and requires more patience than skill from a player. There is certainly a sort of skill in puzzle-solving, as the effects are mechanically puzzle-solving, and puzzle-introducing, devices.

The effects are symbolic of various things of importance or meaning to Madotsuki, buried away in her consciousness. I do not think they are necessarily things she likes, as there are effects that are somewhat morbid, like the knife. The effects are things that structured who she is as a person, and their interaction with the dream worlds reflect their importance. If the dream worlds can be seen as her unconscious, hidden mind, then the effects are forgotten, buried, hidden interactions that have structured her, and the dream worlds themselves. What is the first toy you ever received from a parent? Can you remember what it was, or would you have to dig around in your mind a bit to find it? They are often esoteric and strange to the player. How could we hope to fully understand something so utterly personal?

The dream worlds are headspaces that can be accessed in Madotsuki’s mind, through dreams, and some of which can only be accessed through various effects that were collected in the initial dream worlds. So, there are a group of dream worlds which are given to the player as immediately enterable, and some which are hidden. The given dream worlds are conscious, they are the headspaces that Madotsuki is used to entering in her dreams, and possibly the most prevalent ones in her mind. The hidden dream worlds are unconscious headspaces, the places that Madotsuki’s psychology has buried or tucked away because of their traumatic or symbolic meaning being too much to enter immediately upon dreaming. They are the place of nightmares and deepest fantasy. Thus, the dream worlds, and to a good extend the effects themselves, provide indirect characterization of Madotsuki, who can be described as a social recluse, and someone who spends a lot of time trying to escape from the social situation.

That is likely the main theme this game has to offer: the theme of solipsistic escapism. Yume Nikki is a very personal, very introverted game, and it wants us to feel both Madotsuki’s isolationism, and her escapism from the world entirely. Her dream worlds are more interesting than the waking world, but are unfortunately melancholy and toned with sadness at the reality that they are based on the waking world. The ending (warning: the only spoiler in the review is following) signifies this solipsistic escapism in the most absolute way possible. Madotsuki, upon gathering all of the effects of her dream worlds, has essentially gathered all that of importance to her, found all in her mind that was buried away, all that composes her (current) state as a  person. “People don’t matter, the outside world doesn’t matter, it’s all a hostile game that humans play with each other, and no one understands me”. This is the kind of thing Madotsuki would say, if she talked at all, but the game has no need for her to speak. Her suicide signifies the full-cycle of this solipsism, and the final act of escapism, the escapism from both life and the game (they are the same in this context) entirely. The escape of one state (life) and another state (the game, that is the same, again) into death, the end of cycles and states. She has no more dream worlds or effects in them, discovery being mortification. This is the kind of person that society doesn’t destroy by hostility or by any sort of direct attack, but more subtly, by simply leaving behind. Of course, maybe she left herself behind, it’s unclear in that regard, but it certainly saddened her.