will it be bad? UPDATE: it's bad

[Cocyx The Gay Skeleton]

UPDATE: the game turned out to be a bad INSIDE (the marketting literally says "inspired by recent indie game juggernauts" and INSIDE is the only one that fits the bill) with references to yume nikki haphazardly thrown around in nonsensical fashion to appeal to the yume nikki fans, who a large subset apparently thinks is good enough. it was developed by AGM & directed by Sergio Matta, who has made some questionable games in the past and allegedly buys positive reviews via craigslist. the game was rushed in 8 months (compare that to INSIDE's 6+ years) and allegedly "supervised" by kikiyama, although there is no proof of how involved he was in the project. the game has tons of bugs due to shoddy programming, and is using the UNITY engine, one of the cheapest engines available.

in summation: the game is the result of a corporation using minimum viable product strategies in order to capitalize on the brand loyalty of devoted yume nikki fans. it is comparable to silent hill: homecoming where they completely miss the point of the franchise and just put references to the older games without much of an understanding of why the original games work.

if you have never played INSIDE, they're pretty much the same price. go play that instead.

addendum: if you enjoyed the game, that is your prerogative. this does not make it a good game though, and saying "well i liked it!!" doesn't hold up to scrutiny. i'm not telling you that you shouldn't enjoy it, you can like anything you want—but you shouldn't call it a good game or imply that a derivative unity game with an 8 month long development cycle is somehow on par with INSIDE, an actual good game.




OLD PRE-RELEASE POST:

a couple things scare me about the descriptions of this game


- "In its original form, RPG Maker darling YUME NIKKI was a divisively controversial work among fans. By contrast, YUMENIKKI -DREAM DIARY- is a collaborative show of the utmost respect for auteur Kikiyama’s seminal release."

this means it's just a remake and meant to replace the original which is deemed too controversial and outdated, and this new version is more easily digestible (which is a bad thing). they probably got rid of the concept of getting lost entirely.


- "This diverging follow-up combines influences from the original game and other recent indie juggernauts to create something wholly unique."

they're taking cues from other recent indie games (like INSIDE probably) which means they're creatively bankrupt and derivative. it's probably no longer an exploration game and just a linear game set in yume nikki with a lot of "hey remember this part?".


- YUMENIKKI -DREAM DIARY- was created under supervision and with the full cooperation from the original creator, Kikiyama themselves.

who knows what that "supervision" actually entails. kikiyama probably just sold the license and lets them do whatever they want, and they're using this as a marketting spin to make it seem more genuine.


that all being said, i really hope it's good. but it's a kadokawa game. so there's probably a 1/64 chance it'll be actually good. do not kneejerk purchase this until you see actual gameplay.

[Steyr]

This is almost guaranteed to be bad. We're talking Yume Nikki manga levels of bad. There is no way they WON'T screw up everything that made Yume Nikki so good.

[Cocyx The Gay Skeleton]

Originally posted by pissbender:

This is almost guaranteed to be bad. We're talking Yume Nikki manga levels of bad. There is no way they WON'T screw up everything that made Yume Nikki so good.

yah the more i see of it the more my gut tells me that this is going to miss the point of the original. i'd love to be proven wrong though

[Steyr]

I sincerely hope this will be good too, but that's how i felt about the manga, and we all saw how that turned out. I can't blame Kikiyama for selling the license to anyone who wants it, dude needs to make a living, but every other licensed Yume Nikki thing has been pretty disappointing, so i have very little confidence.

[Cocyx The Gay Skeleton]

Originally posted by pissbender:

I sincerely hope this will be good too, but that's how i felt about the manga, and we all saw how that turned out. I can't blame Kikiyama for selling the license to anyone who wants it, dude needs to make a living, but every other licensed Yume Nikki thing has been pretty disappointing, so i have very little confidence.

the thing that gives me a little more hope than stuff like the manga is that A) it's an actual video game and B) this time they're not saying that the "vision is different from kikiyama's" like the manga claims. but that could mean ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tbh lol

[Cocyx The Gay Skeleton]

what im actually terrified of is that it's going to be terrible AND people are going to somehow love it, and it'll divide the fanbase and create weird rifts where the concept of yume nikki gets distorted over social media. kind of like how no one thinks of silent hill 2 now when you mention silent hill

[Steyr]

Originally posted by Cocyx The Gay Skeleton:

what im actually terrified of is that it's going to be terrible AND people are going to somehow love it, and it'll divide the fanbase and create weird rifts where the concept of yume nikki gets distorted over social media. kind of like how no one thinks of silent hill 2 now when you mention silent hill

Yeah, this is what worries me, too. The things that make Yume Nikki so memorable are the same things that make it really hard to get into for a lot of people - the aimlessness, how easy it is to get lost, etc. If they try to streamline the game to make it more approachable for casuals (for lack of a better term), they could very easily ruin the elements that made it good, while turning into it a shallow meme game like FNAF or something.

[Cocyx The Gay Skeleton]

good news: the latest episode of dream diary[dreamdiarypodcast.com] (a podcast about yume nikki) has interviews with the devs and apparently they are huge fans of yume nikki, and everyone was required to replay yume nikki before working on the project. also kikiyama was definitely heavily involved and everything was ran by him before it was added to the game.

that being said, it might still be a crap nostalgia-based game instead of anything actually innovative (the line about them taking inspiration from "indie game juggernauts" still terrifies the ♥♥♥♥ out of me), but it gives me faith that it'll be more genuine than a random cash-in.

[Steyr]

If they're taking inspirations from Indie Game Juggernauts then it's going to be doomed. Yume Nikki is an extremely unique game, and starting to mix in inspiration from games that most likely released several years AFTER Yume Nikki originally came out means that it has a good chance of turning into a hot mess

[Cocyx The Gay Skeleton]

Originally posted by pissbender:

If they're taking inspirations from Indie Game Juggernauts then it's going to be doomed. Yume Nikki is an extremely unique game, and starting to mix in inspiration from games that most likely released several years AFTER Yume Nikki originally came out means that it has a good chance of turning into a hot mess

yeah it's also probably going to be like. an hour long.

according to the podcast they only took eight months (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) to make the entire game. in comparison, INSIDE took 6 years to make...

[Steyr]

To be fair, if they end up staying somewhat faithful to the original game, then eight months doesn't sound too bad, since a lot of worlds in YN is huge, barren areas with a lot of re-used assets. And judging by the screenshots, the graphics look kinda... cheap?

Either way, i'm staying hopeful, but i'm definitely not buying this until i start hearing reviews from other fans of the original game. Maybe i'll give it a chance if they end up dumping a review copy on me, i guess.

[シーワンちゃん]

Waiting for a review/gameplay video, then buying it (Or don't... i hope no second choice:'b)...

[Zeebrax the Astral Lifejacket]

Ooo boy . . . I hate to sound like a hipster D-bag, but this looks like an *interactive commemorative special* ABOUT 2004's Yume Nikki, not the 16-bit spiritual sequel I was after. As a new fan who first played the original on Steam, color me disappointed. Blech.

[Space Detective]

I prefer to take a "remain cautiously optimistic until we have gameplay footage/more info" approach. That said, I admit to being worried that the promotional material seems to be playing up a "horror" element.

[Ragingsword]

I heard someone else say they were afraid that the new game might be worse than the manga, I'm a little curious to see how bad the manga really is.

[Space Detective]

Originally posted by Ragingsword:

I heard someone else say they were afraid that the new game might be worse than the manga, I'm a little curious to see how bad the manga really is.

From my understanding, it tries to tell a traditional story, even though Yume Nikki is known for being a storylight atmospheric experience. That could be done well on paper, but from what I heard... Yeah, it wasn't done well.
Also, Madotsuki talks in it apparently. I don't think I need to add anything to that.