Has anyone else heard of the game
Yume Nikki (English:
Dream Diary)? It is a freeware title from Japan, and I have to say, one of the strangest games that I've ever played. It has an English translation, so it can easily be played by anyone speaking English or Japan, but there is very little text in the game from what I can tell.
I installed it this morning and haven't been able to make heads-or-tails of the game. The goals are so obscure, and the puzzles are cryptic (at best), but it is still interesting, somehow. In the game, you are a girl living in a small, spartan Apartment. You can't leave the apartment, except to go out on your small balcony. What you can do is go to bed, teleporting yourself to a dream world, where you can then explore all kinds of surreal dreams. In these dreams you can acquire "powers" (and I use the word loosely), but what you can do with these, I don't know.
The graphics are
very similar to Earthbound in theme and execution. The game itself has the atmosphere of a MegaTen or Silent Hill game; everything is just weird and off-putting. I've included a download link below, which I got from 4chan. It's supposed to be the newest version of the English translation, fixing a previous crash bug involving the game's soundtrack. I recommend everyone give it a try, as it is a small download, but don't expect to get anywhere with it (I haven't, yet). Here is an
article about the game.
Yume Nikki - English Translation v3: This has everything you need to play, just unzip and run the installer.
