So, I started my October gaming late. A big part of that is I was trying to get Tomb Raider working and then I was like "well I should put off on doing any games I'll want to write about so I can fill in my backlog of drafts". I have so many drafts, y'all, And then I spent a while playing Fluidity, which is a game some of you may know for being one of the premiere WiiWare games and those of you who do know will probably know how awful that game gets. So my plan to do a bunch of spooky games in October didn't pan out this year. I need better planning, clearly, and also to not play a game like Fluidity which is, y'know. Special.
I figured I'd catalog my Halloween games in one blog post, I think that's the thing that makes the most sense here. Maybe (probably) I'll regret not writing about some of these games individually and maybe that will encourage me to write more in-depth pieces about some of them, I don't know. I already know the first game on this list is something I think I'd like to write about in more detail down the line but who knows! I just thought it'd be fun to have them all collected together like this since it's something of a "Halloween games marathon" of sorts. Here we go!
Game 1: DREDGE
Starting off this Halloween season REAL strong, we have Dredge. An incredibly unique little spooky game, Dredge is one of the best Lovecraft-inspired games of all time. While Dredge is scary at times, I think the thing it really nails about the tone it's going for is how unsettling Eldritch horror typically is. There's just this constant subtle wrongness to the world in Dredge, even as nothing is really happening, as you're just sailing around the islands of this dark sea you're hit with the weirdness. You'll encounter strangers who want you to fish for them so they can consume the organs of the fish raw or fish up an abomination that is mutated in a way that makes it upsetting or unnerving.
Dredge is a fishing RPG that takes place primarily out on the open sea. You play as a fisherman who has recently crashed into a mysterious little island in the sea. The island, named Greater Marrow, has a small New England-esque town situated on it (also selling the Eldritch vibes) and has offered to take you in and give you a new boat to replace your crashed vessel. In exchange, you will replace their local fisherman, a guy who has very recently disappeared under unknown circumstances leaving the town without food or income. It becomes quickly apparent though that not everything is as it seems. At night a mysterious fog rolls in, blanketing the entire sea. A fog so thick, so intense, that normal light does little to peak through it. Furthermore, this fog preys on your anxiety, on your fears. As you get more stressed, more isolated, more sleep deprived, the fog causes supernatural occurrences to begin.
Eventually you will meet a mysterious Collector with a book, a Collector who tasks you with scouring across the ocean to find lost treasures of unknown significance. This will bring the Fisherman to many different locations across the ocean, solving many people's issues. Along the way the Fisherman will battle unknowable monsters from the deep, gaining powers and upgrading his ship to better survive the horrors lurking in the depths. And slowly he will piece together the central mysteries of the dark ocean he sails: what has happened to anger the ocean so? Who is the mysterious Collector? Why does he desire these artifacts that were scattered across the ocean? The answers to these questions are actually amazing, like, I can't and don't at this time want to talk about the twist in Dredge because this is supposed to be a quick and easy casual little review but the story is great and the twist is so well done.
A thing I adore about Dredge is how it handles its horror. Dredge, as I've mentioned, goes more for unnerving than trying to scare you. It's a very atmospheric horror, one that treats the horror as existing just over the horizon, waiting for you to go just insane enough before it attacks. One of my favorite things it does is early on when you're not out on the open ocean, rocks will just appear out of the fog that do not exist in the day time. It took me a long time to even realize that this is what it was doing and it's such a cool mechanic, the idea that you're so stressed and sleep deprived that the sea itself seems different. Around the Marrow islands in the center of the map too there is a sea monster that roams about, but it's never clear if it's even really there. It, and a lot of the sea monsters in this game actually, appear to immediately disappear after they've attacked the ship. I swear, I even saw another ship, turn into one of the monsters.
It's also just a perfect love letter to old sailing stories because of this. It fully invokes the tall tales you'll hear sailors tell, tales of islands that aren't there, storms that appear and disappear in a blink of an eye, and monsters that seem to vanish immediately. Very literally the sea, angry for some unknown reason, is playing tricks on you, trying to make you feel unwelcome, and one of its tactics is to drive you crazy. And the way it combines these classical sea monsters, these absurd nightmare creatures from the depths, with a Lovecraftian flair is just wonderful. It's an incredibly effective way to do a fishing horror game, I'm a huge fan of its atmosphere and its tone.
I also love the world in Dredge. Dredge takes place across multiple island chains in this vast patch of ocean, each of which contains one of the treasures that the collector is seeking, and each area is entirely different. And I don't mean in the way that most video game areas are different, I mean that they do not feel like they belong together. They all seem to exist within their own time periods, their own universes almost, feeling sometimes as if they're separated by centuries if not millennia. Like the sea itself is pulling them all here, forcing them to converge at this specific point in time, imprisoning them all here for their transgressions against it. I know this isn't literally what's happening, but it just feels so strongly like all these pieces in this sea are wrong somehow. It adds so well to the unsettling tone. God, I loved this game, maybe I should write about it more in depth. 9.2/10
Game 2: Shovel Knight: Specter of Torment
I'm surprised I've kept up with Shovel Knight like this, to be honest. I like Shovel Knight, mind, I think it's a fine video game, but I don't love it. I have found myself kind of gravitating away from "retro revival" stuff as I've gotten older, what once seemed like a fun way to revive old styles of video gaming now seems exhausting to me. It feels like the indie space, once so rife with creativity, is now oversaturated with people who only want to make games to relive their own nostalgia. And I've grown critical and very cynical of retro gaming as a result. It also doesn't help that I myself have no nostalgia for NES games and most of my love for NES games comes from other people's nostalgia so I kind of associate games like Shovel Knight with "trying to relive other people's nostalgia" for me. But I have kept at it, I liked Shovel Knight and I liked Plague of Shadows more, I think they're both very solid video games and I figured, since I own all the DLC anyways as I purchased Shovel Knight forever ago, why not just keep the ball rolling. Man am I glad I did, because, no joke, Specter of Torment is one of the best sidescrollers I've ever played.
Specter of Torment serves as a prequel to the events of Shovel Knight. You, as Specter Knight, are tasked by the Enchantress, the main villain of Shovel Knight, to recruit her an army for her plans of global domination. This requires you to go kick down the doors of the 7 other main Knights from the best game of Shovel Knight and force them to join the Enchantress' army through, you guessed it, physical violence. Along the way you will uncover the backstory of Specter Knight, a surprisingly touching and tragic story of brotherhood and the damning force of arrogance wrapped up in the trappings of Shovel Knight. I was actually very impressed by the story in this game, not because it's like one of the greatest in gaming but because it's such a different place to take Shovel Knight which still fits within the universe. It's way more dark and macabre, fitting nicely with the character in question.
I want to first highlight the soundtrack of Specter of Torment because it has the most extensive work done to it. The other Shovel Knight campaigns all have their own unique soundtracks to them, don't get me wrong, but in the other instances it feels more like "remixes", like you're taking the base sounds and just changing them up a bit to fit the new character's journey. Specter Knight gets entirely new compositions, often times setting new tones and giving new context to the levels. I really enjoy in particular how, contrasting Specter Knight's darkness, the themes seem somewhat brighter and happier across the board. Whereas in the other campaigns, the Knights of the Order of No Quarter were were the beasts that the heroic Shovel Knight or the duplicitous Plague Knight were slaying. But the music in Specter of Torment really sells this idea that you are the thing that's wrong here, that these people are just living their lives normally and you, the phantom lapdog of the dark sorcerer, are invading these people's lives to corrupt them.
The music is not the only thing that has changed in Specter of Torment, however. Yacht Club Games has done just an insane amount of work on Specter of Torment, tbh, it's insane they initially released this as a free DLC. It feels like an entirely new game. At least half the bosses have entirely new stage designs and those that don't have very reinterpreted stages. This is, partially, due to the vast different in Specter Knight's movement but it again sells this sort of theme permeating the game. This idea that the world was different, more natural, and you are this corrupting influence on it. The phantom that haunts this world and turns it dark. It's really funny how much weight and pathos they've given Specter Knight, the second boss in the game.
Specter Knight's movement is also incredible. It's such a unique gameplay style, I've never played a game that functions quite like Specter of Torment. Specter Knight is very aerial, his kit is much stronger in the air than it is one the ground, and a giant part of this is his very unique aerial attack. When he's in the air, he immediately targets enemies and interactable objects close to him and will slice through that targeted thing at an angle. This is the primary platforming challenge in this game, you will have extended sequences of objects you will have to slice through at specific angles to progress and/or obtain hidden treasures. Furthermore, he has a wall run and wall jump, allowing ol' Specty a lot of interesting potential for obstacles. This movement, this incredibly unique gameplay, is by far the reason why Specter of Torment fully clicked for me as much as it did. I love how satisfying this feels to play, it's so good. 8.7/10
Game 3: Night in the Woods
Three absolute bangers in a row, you love to see it. Night in the Woods is a game I've seen before, several years ago I saw at least a couple stream playthroughs of it, but it's been on my "to-play" list for like half a decade now myself. It's like one of THE indie games, it's honestly surprising to me that it doesn't make it on more "greatest games of all time" lists given how beloved it is. It's definitely one of the best examples of the narrative driven indie adventure game genre, a genre that is admittedly oversaturated but Night in the Woods stands out. It's also such a perfect October game, it's not only literally about October but it has the perfect vibes for the season too. Let's jump into it.
Night in the Woods exists in a world filled with anthropomorphic animals instead of people. You play as Mae Borowski, a 20 year old woman who has returned to her hometown of Possum Springs after very recently dropping out of college. Mae is deeply depressed and retreats whenever anyone asks her personal details about this decision. Very quickly she reignites her friendships with her two childhood best friends; Gregg, a jovial queer man who is in the process of saving up to leave town with his boyfriend Angus, and Bea, a cynical young woman who has had to take up responsibility for her family's livelihood after the death of her mother and her father having a mental breakdown. Mae, at first, spends most of her days exploring around town, talking to random strangers, forming friendships with locals and choosing to hang out with either Gregg or Bea. But not too long into her return, she discovers that all is not as it seems in Possum Springs. A series of bizarre dreams and mysterious headaches consume her, she feels like she is being called to by some entity from beyond the mortal plane, and as it goes on, she must get down to the bottom of the conspiracy that is at the center of Possum Springs.
I want to first highlight how well Night in the Woods captures the small town in Autumn feel. Possum Springs is the kind of town that especially exists in the Applachia region (which I believe is where Possum Springs is actually located). It was once a booming mining town but then the mine shut down and it's now slowly becoming a ghost town as more and more citizens vacate it. The town toes that line of being both beautiful and dead, the ground is covered in leaves, animals roam freely, it feels as though people are more and more fighting with nature instead of coexisting with it, the town is being reclaimed. Beautiful autumnal scenery surrounds boarded up storefronts and decrepit apartment buildings, it's an all-too-familiar sight for people who grew up in small towns. It's such a specific but meaningful vibe, I adore it. Like the world is as beautiful as it is cruel.
Small town decay is like the central theme of this game as well. I don't want to go into it too much, I might write about Night in the Woods separately (kinda regret not doing a gaming diary about it, alas), but everything in the game is about this town dying. How Mae interacts with her friends, her family, the people who live in the town, it's all related to a town trying very hard to not die in the face of an impending death. People often repeat a lot of similar statements, how it used to be that getting a job was supposed to provide for your family but now you can have two people working full time and still be in danger of losing the house. It's depressing. Even the horror of this game is tied back to small town decay, it's a truly well executed theme and it's the primary reason why I want to write an individual thing about Night in the Woods. Stay tuned for that, maybe.
I also really like how well this game captures the culture shock you have returning to your hometown and trying to just pick up where your life left off. Mae was only gone a year but the town she returns to is wildly different from the one she left. Places that she loved have closed or are closing, people have skipped town, those who stay are those who are stuck here. It feels like she's entering a new universe entirely. And it's especially a problem as Mae tries to just pick up where she left off with friends who have changed. Mae is honestly kind of the bad guy in her friends' stories at points, they are trying very hard to be adults and Mae comes back in and they begin behaving like children. It's like that thing where like, you can be the most confident person out in your life but as soon as you go home you're still how you were under your parents' roof. Mae being back causes her friends to fall back into old patterns and habits and gah. It's so good. Definitely need to write about this.
There's so much more I would like to talk about with it but I do kind of just want to write a full thing maybe and I don't want this blurb to be too long so I'll leave it here. I do have my problems with Night in the Woods mind, there are sequences that I have trouble relating to because I'm not in my early 20s and depressed (I'm in my early 30s and depressed instead). These characters wax philosophical about existentialism a lot and I'm just like "you're still a child, stop acting like you know things". And I would be lying if I said the gameplay was particularly interesting, the narrative clearly came first here and the gameplay is like fine, it's just some light platforming to serve the narrative in various places. But I did really enjoy this game, it is just barely being kept off my top ten list and I would love to come back to it someday to explore the other routes available in it. 8.9/10
Game 4: Until Dawn
Would you look at that, an actual horror game for October. I guess Dredge was a horror game too but like, this is more designed to be "scary" than "unnerving" or "atmospheric". Low key, I wanted to get more of these kinds of games this year but I spent half the month playing Fluidity before I decided I wanted to do a spooky games marathon. I had like Alien: Isolation and Resident Evil: Code Veronica queued up on my to-do list and now it doesn't look like I'll have time to get to either them, depressing. There is always next year though! Anyways, unless I find more time, Until Dawn looks like it's going to be THE horror game for this year. Let's get into it.
Until Dawn takes place in a isolated mansion deep in the Canadian Rockies. The game starts with a prologue where you are at an annual party in this mansion and a prank goes very wrong, causing two of the girls to wander out into the forest and disappear. One year later, the group reunites on the anniversary of the girls' disappearance, trying to keep on with their annual tradition for the sake of the girls' brother who clearly needs this. However, almost immediately strange happenings start occurring. The power is blown out in the mansion. The group finds themselves stalked by a psycho who knows just a bit too much about them. And strange sounds echo throughout the forest, sounds that resemble a woman's screams. The group will have to keep their wits about them and stay as safe as they can until the storm can break and they will be rescued. They must survive... until dawn.
Until Dawn plays like a super big budget version of a TellTale game. You switch between the eight members of the group throughout the game, viewing each members' perspective of certain events and having small areas you can explore while you're playing as them. Throughout the game you will have to make decisions, some of them split second, to progress the game. Until Dawn calls this the "Butterfly Effect" system, each choice you make will inevitably impact events far down the line. It can be as obvious as "assaulting a guy causes the group to be more cagey around you later on" or it can be as obtuse as "not throwing a snowball at a bird later causes a character not to be caught when they're hiding from a psychopath". It's a really interesting way to handle a horror game, building it so readily on player choice.
That being said, Until Dawn is definitely a little clumsy in this regard as well. An unfortunate truth of basically any game that relies on player choices is that, if not done with a lot of consideration, it starts to become really obvious. Like your outcomes matter, don't get me wrong, it's just that the game is maybe a bit more obvious about what characters are non-essential and can die early than others. Emily, a character who has the option to die in the late game if the player is not careful, spends basically the rest of the game not saying or really doing anything, awkwardly standing in the background of cutscenes. Matt and Jessica are two characters who can die VERY early on and because of this fact, they're just like. Fully absent from the game from before the halfway point to literally the end game where they have one sequence together if you saved both of them and then the game goes "they both survived, I guess". Like, it's just very uncanny that you just have characters who are either absent for long stretches for seemingly no reason or just standing in the background of shots saying nothing and not interacting with anyone.
Also speaking of uncanny, the motion capture is like. Fine. Sometimes it's very wonky, but for the most part these characters are perfect renders of the actors who play them. The biggest issue is honestly Mike (played by Brett Dalton), who sometimes, no joke, looks like he has the chin from the Justice League reshoots where they have to CG Henry Cavill's lower face because he had a mustache he wasn't allowed to shave. But the thing that makes them feel kind of iffy to me at least is actually the voicework. The cast don't do bad jobs (except for Rami Malek, his performance is very bad, he's like a wooden board), but it is the common story of a live action actor having to voice act and not getting proper direction so they come across as little flat. Like, all these actors have done other work and I know they're good, it just genuinely feels like a direction problem.
As a horror experience I also feel like Until Dawn is very touch and go. It starts out really strong, while it relies very heavily on jump scares, it also does a decent job of building a nice atmosphere. You're isolated, something is stalking you in the woods, a psycho is in control of the manor, etc. It's all very spooky. But as it goes on and we get more and more revelations and closer to dawn, it starts feeling a bit too actiony? It doesn't do a great job of upkeeping its tone in the final act, it gets very fast paced very quickly once the big reveal of what's actually happening here happens. It also feels like it takes itself too seriously, to be honest? This entire setup is very much "fun campy slasher movie" but it feels like it wants to be more of a serious horror project. I've seen people play the spiritual successor to this game, the Quarry, and that one honestly seems to more understand what it is.
Despite all my criticisms with Until Dawn, though, I did enjoy it well enough. I think it's perfectly fine, a totally middle of the road video game. There are some characters I really enjoyed, some really fun worldbuilding, some decent scares. Peter Stromare's Dr. Hill is just fantastic, what a great mad scientist character, I can see why they wanted him specifically back for the film adaptation even if they totally reworked everything about his character. I'm glad I played it but I'm not super passionate about it. I guess they can't all be bangers, this Halloween marathon had so many strong games already one of them was bound to just be okay. 6.8/10
Game 5: Castlevania
This is possibly the biggest blindspot from my retro gaming era: I have only played one Castlevania. And it was the Sega Genesis' Castlevania: Bloodlines, the way more actiony beat 'em up-esque Castlevania. I was really into the retro gaming sphere for a while because, honestly, I'm just old enough and have been online for long enough to where that's all the YouTube gaming sphere was at one point. A confluence of NES/SNES nostalgia, the difficulties obtaining capture cards and the ease at which emulation was becoming available to people caused a lot of early internet gaming to be based in classic video games. Couple that with the rise of the Angry Video Game Nerd, and retro gaming was far bigger than it probably should've been given, in hindsight, it was mostly a bunch of 30 year olds waxing poetic about how games they played when they were 8 were so much better. And with the AVGN being so popular, Castlevania would probably be the first introduction I had to older games.
Castlevania has one of the most brilliant classic gaming setups. A near perfect basic plot structure that can be molded to a million stories. You play as Simon Belmont, the most recent member of a long line of monster hunters called the Belmont clan. The Belmont clan has a sacred duty to uphold: every 100 years, Dracula, the famed fictional vampire, will arise again within his massive castle in Transylvania. Their job is to storm the castle, overcoming Dracula's forces, and defeat the man himself, putting him down for another 100 years. It's such a good storyline, it can be told 100 times in a bunch of different ways and the Castlevania series has used it to great effect over the years in both the game series and in adaptation (the Castlevania Netflix series is a good adaptation, fight me).
Unfortunately there's just also not a lot to say about Castlevania. This is a true blue NES game, it does a very specific thing. You just walk through stages, you have an attack, you have items that use ammo, you have a stiff jump than you find annoying but grow accustomed to quickly. It's totally fine, you know, it's an NES game. It's one of the greatest games of all time but no one who didn't grow up in the 80s will be able to click with it easy. A story as old as the end of the NES era. I don't think I liked Castlevania that much but I do want to play more Castlevania games? Like from where I'm at, in 2025, firmly out of my era of being obsessed with retro games, I find how basic Castlevania is somewhat endearing but mostly frustrating. But it's also such a strong core that I imagine I'll really like the subsequent Castlevanias? As it stands though, I just think it's fine. 6.3/10
Game 6: Year Walk
I never expected to play this game. So, for those who don't know, the way I tend to select video games to play is that I build a curated list of games from my backlog and then use the random selection tool on Backloggery to decide what I want to play off that list. This list is made up of a combination of important, influential, or particularly great games, games I've heard other people talk very positively on, or just games I've always wanted to play and/or have started to play and now wish to beat. It's a list that includes both Persona 5 and Reel Fishing: Road Trip Adventure. Year Walk did not initially fit into any of these categories. I've never heard anyone talk about it as a particularly important or influential game, I had no idea what it really was myself, and while I have friends who have played Year Walk, it's not like a game that regularly comes up. It's one of many games where I bought it in a Humble Bundle and just kind of forgot about it. That is until I found out who made it. Year Walk was an early game by Swedish game developer Simogo, who worked in the mobile space for a long time and would go on to create both one of the greatest rhythm games of all time, Sayonara Wild Hearts, and one of the greatest puzzle games of all time, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Understandably, Year Walk shot up on my list after that information.
Year Walk is loosely based on an ancient Swedish tradition titled "Arsgang", a divination ritual where, as the year turns over into the next (normally Christmas Eve or New Years', hence the translation of "Year Walk"), you walk among the trees following specific instructions and encountering all manner of supernatural beings. In this particular instance we take control of Daniel Svensson, a young Swede who is about to undertake the year walk. He is in love with a young woman named Stina who tells him that, once the new year comes, she will no longer be able to see him as a man has offered to propose. Daniel opts to continue his plan to take the year walk despite her insistence not to as he now, more than ever, wants to discover his future. He leaves Stina and returns home to rest, awakening to a version of their town cloaked in darkness, the lines between the natural and the supernatural fully blurred. Now haunted by various entities from Swedish folklore, Daniel must endure the horrors of this wood to complete the ritual, find his future, and return home.
Year Walk has fantastic atmosphere. It really uses its very minimalistic art style to great effect to sell the spookiness of the folk horror. The game feels very isolating, the majority of the color palette being just white. I don't know about y'all but like, winter environments are such a cheat code for horror for me because it's so easy to sell the isolation needed to build an atmosphere. And because the color palette and art style is so similar looking, it immediately draws attention to any wrongness present in the world if/when it arises. There's especially one moment in the game where you have to hunt down ghosts by freeing them from the places they died, and you do so by finding and following blood trails. Just that little bit of red added to the monochrome of this game does a whole lot, it's very simple but very effective. The creatures from Swedish mythology featured are also just nightmares, the way the game chooses to depict them is deeply unsettling.
This being a Simogo game, you know it has to be very clever in its design. If you've ever seen a playthrough of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, you know what I mean, this studio are like the kings of incredibly clever puzzle design which pushes the boundaries of what can be done in a game. They are the masters of the puzzle box game design and Year Walk really shows how early that arose. Every single bit of this game is a piece to the grander puzzle of the walk. There's a lot of great puzzles in this game, mind, but I want to draw attention to what I think is probably the best one I could talk about without spoiling the big twist in the story since these mini-reviews are supposed to be spoiler free. I won't reveal the full puzzle or the solution either but there is one puzzle that breaks the fourth wall by having a necessary part be found within the reference book the player has access to for cross-referencing the folklore present in the game.
I'm also just very happy that I got to play the WiiU version of Year Walk. I don't know how exactly the mobile and PC versions of Year Walk play, but I think the WiiU version is probably the most clever of the three. Bizarrely, Year Walk is one of the best uses of the Gamepad I've ever experienced. This like less than two hour horror game manages to utilize the Gamepad to be not just a map, but a notepad so you can take notes on puzzle solutions, and a reference book to the game's lore, AND an always available hint system. Not only that, bur from what I can gather they pretty drastically changed the penultimate puzzle to better take advantage of the WiiU Gamepad. There's a puzzle that requires you to delve deep into the WiiU's infrastructure itself. I'd be sad if that puzzle just doesn't exist anymore because of the WiiU eshop shutting down because it's easily the best puzzle in the game.
Year Walk is great. It's one of those games where the primary problem with it is that it's short. Like it has all the makings of a masterpiece, it has a good atmosphere, a good story, great puzzles, clever gameplay, it's kind of a full package. Except for that fact that it's like two hours long and is kind of hampered by that fact. It manages to pack a lot in, of course, and a game being exceptionally short doesn't immediately mean it's worse than a longer game. But I do think that I would just love Year Walk more if there was more to Year Walk to love. Thankfully, that sort of happens because a lot of this game is definitely in Simogo's later masterpiece, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. As it stands though, very good game, glad I got to play it, 8.3/10.
Game 7: Yume Nikki
And so we end off with the last spooky game for 2025. What a game to end it off on, huh? Once upon a time, "indie gaming" was way less of a genuine chunk of the games industry and way more of a grassroots thing. People throwing up freeware games online that they made as a passion project, or designing an entirely new, fully original NES game. These are games with legendary presences, many know about them but few have ever played them. And if any game has left a lasting impact, an early indie game that truly shaped the gaming industry and who persists in the discussion to this day of "the greatest indie game of all time", it's Cave Story, of course. But second only to Cave Story is the original RPG Maker horror game and one of the most influential games on the walking simulator genre, Yume Nikki.
To try and quantify what Yume Nikki is "about" is frankly insufficient. Yume Nikki isn't really about anything. There is an ending to the game, one which gives the entire thing a very sad tone and, mayhaps, can contextualize a lot of the weird imagery within Yume Nikki. But this game is really more about what the player feels about it, what they experience. Yume Nikki is an abstract series of images that the player experiences at their own pace and in their own way. There are collectibles to collect, some of which can apply special effects that help you progress in other areas, the vaguest structure that gives Yume Nikki a distinctly gamelike quality. But to focus too much on it as a game, as a literal series of objectives, is, put plainly, reductive. Yume Nikki is a vibe, a world for the player to explore, to feel an infinite space of surrealism that is both disjointed and infinitely connected. It's been widely regarded as a masterpiece and, frankly, I agree. I guess spoilers for my final score, but I love Yume Nikki a whole lot.
Yume Nikki is a master class in abstract, surrealist imagery. The world of Yume Nikki exists within the dreams of the main character, the name of the game literally means "Dream Diary", and it really effectively conveys the idea of a Dream World. The world is mixed between order and chaos, sometimes there are recognizable structures, bits of geography that give you just enough to ground you, to give you landmarks to track your location. But it's also just totally off the rails. The world endlessly repeats with seemingly random geography, all the while some truly bizarre imagery appears either in the world or in the background. I love all the weirdos in Yume Nikki, they have this like old Doodle vibe but with a hint of Japanese mythology thrown in too. And I also love that the majority of them are not interactable. They just don't do anything but be weird because like, this is a dream. Why would they follow any sort of logic? It's a very visually provocative game, wild it was made in an old version of RPG Maker.
Talking about Yume Nikki is, inevitably, going to result in what you feel while you are playing it. Admittedly, I feel kind of insufficient to talk about this. I love discussing video games as a medium of art, mind, I've done a few posts on this blog about video games as art by now. But I will admit I find that easier to do with the games I've covered up until now as they are instances of how the gameplay of something creates a narrative work that could not be replicated in other mediums. Because a lot of how I was trained on media analysis comes from narrative mediums, film, television, and books. So I tend to focus very hard on games as narrative art. More traditional mediums, painting, sculpture, even music to some extent are lost on me. They're more abstract mediums, there are less rules to latch onto, less to analyze in concrete terms. You more feel a piece. And feeling over thinking is definitely something I struggle with. And so Yume Nikki already kind of feels like it's laying bare a weakness of mine, a place where I'm insufficient.
I also just feel a profound sense of sadness about Yume Nikki. Not just because of the game evoking that emotion in me through its finale and what it could mean. Yume Nikki almost represents a place where I cannot walk anymore. This game is primarily famous as a sandbox, a place to explore, find things at your own pace and in your own, experience its world and find meaning yourself. I just lack the time for this kind of game anymore. There are too many games I want to play, too many experiences I want to have, for me to spend the time trying to play Yume Nikki as it was played back in 2004. It's very sad, Yume Nikki is a beautiful work of art, one I do adore to death, but... I can't adore it like it needs to be. It's depressing to me. A tragedy of irony. I want to experience so many great works of art that I can't truly experience a great work of art.
That being said, I do think there is some manner of thematic logic to Yume Nikki. Knowing where this game goes, you almost start to piece together all these dreams. A lot of the main character's dreams are, if not outright nightmares, very scary still in a more surreal way. But they're also primarily about isolation. Either in familiar or unfamiliar settings, the main character is alone, wandering endlessly through a world that only seems to acknowledge she exists to try and contain her. It's very poignant, there are many indie games that tackle themes of depression and isolation but a lot of them are about communicating that fact, it has weight to some sort of narrative, it's a trial for them to understand or overcome. Yume Nikki is more about just how it feels, what the experience of having these thoughts and feelings is like, how the world looks and feels to you while you're going through this. It holds up surprisingly well in this way.
Yume Nikki also just like makes me want to create, I can't really explain why. Like I've had the desire to write a proper piece of narrative fiction for a long time, I have a whole doc of concepts and stories I've thought about but haven't ever wanted to delve into out of just being like "I don't know if I'm able to do this". But in the past 24 hours, since I finished this game, I've been like actually wanting to start writing some of these. I don't know how to start yet but Yume Nikki is really giving me some fire, hopefully I don't let it burn out like I kind of always do.
Yume Nikki is one of the best games I've played in my life. It makes me deeply sad that I don't have the time to meet it like it wants to be met, see it like it wants to be seen. It's a truly wonderful experience, a masterpiece in games as art. I'm so glad I didn't let myself be intimidated by its freeform nature. If you've never played Yume Nikki, please do, I guarantee you that one or more of your favorite games of all time owes a lot to it, just actually one of the most important video games of all time. Even if we may not be destined to remain together, I will think about Yume Nikki for the rest of my life. 9.7/10
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Thank everyone for reading. Hopefully next year's Halloween marathon, should there be one, brings us more spooks, more vibes, and more great games. I really enjoyed doing a bit of a Halloween-a-thon, actually, it felt super fulfilling to finish so many games in a set period of time and give more brief reviews of them. Far cry from my gaming diary stuff. Here's to hopefully many more years of this blog and many more years of the Halloween-a-thon.
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