They give you images suggestive of, but not explicitly showcasing, both. In the Making Of Silent Hill 2, director Takayoshi Sato lays out why his game and all good psychological horrors are so unsettling they invoke the two very primal human preoccupations of sex and death. Likewise, the imagery may not be autobiographical at all, and there may not even be any intended story connecting each set of images. The fact that this game prompts you to ask questions, come up with theories and interpret vaguely disturbing imagery is what makes it a psychological horror. The majority of the experience, ironically, happens in your own head and not in Madotsuki’s. Unlike the original Silent Hill series (1 to 4: The Room) were there most definitely is a solid backstory obscured by the nightmarish events of each game, Yume Nikki is completely left to interpretation. However, I and anybody who isn’t the sole developer of this game has any authority to lay down canon and Kikiyama is awfully silent about the whole thing.įrankly, what is and isn’t “canon” with Yume Nikki doesn’t matter and, if anything, it’s better for it. Like many others, the phallic design of the some of the scarier NPCs, Madotsuki’s apparent agoraphobia, and the warped vision of dark, secluded corners of urban life (service ducts, alleyways, sewers, backroads outside the city), and the bullying bird-like enemies who will chase you through certain maps led me to conclude that she was the victim of some sort of sexual assault. Is this game more autobiographical than it appears? I started to ask myself questions like “why are the NPCs designed that way? Why is the music all distorted and foreboding? What’s the significance of this strange, alien-type creature? Why won’t Madotsuki leave her room?” Revisiting some areas, trying to get deeper under the layers of the main character’s dreams led me to wander Madotsuki’s dreams, pondering on what it all meant. I found about half of the Effects before the game really got under my skin. Giving it another chance, I allowed myself to cheat and use a guide if I got lost or frustrated. The simplistic graphics and gameplay combined with the lack of direction of the objective caused me to put it down after a few days, only collecting a handful of Effects. When I played for the first time, I didn’t have the same experience. It managed to capture the attention and resonate with the subconscious of most who played it, producing biblical amounts of amazing fan art, theories and spin-off games or spiritual successors. Rather than being a horror about psychology or the mind, Yume Nikki is a true psychological horror. The art style is simplistic and cutesy, there’s no real challenge, and even though there’s an ending, it doesn’t explain away anything you may have seen in the hours you spent wandering around sometimes zany, sometimes disturbing environments. There is no direct narrative and the dreams follow a fittingly surreal, unpredictable logic. The lack of a fail-state and the obtuse nature of the game places it somewhere between “arthouse” and “psychological horror”. With a devoted cult-following, Yume Nikki is a window into a recluse girl’s mind were players are invited to explore her dreams with little objective beyond finding 24 collectable “Effects” items that change the main character, Madotsuki’s appearance and sometimes give her new abilities. Yume Nikki is a 2D, top-down game from 2004 created by a single Japanese developer known as Kikiyama.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |