Free Play is a place where we write about interesting, entertaining or enlightening free games you can play right now.
Iāve started playing this (and reading up on everything surrounding it) and I find it fascinating and inexplicably compelling. It brings me back particularly to when I first played Anodyne, a game that is highly influenced by Yume Nikki (and that I strongly recommend to anyone into these eerily āhaunted nostalgicā sort of games). Where Anodyne had a story propelling you through its ambiguous environments, Yume is just a headfirst dive into absurdity and strangeness.
Iām deeply curious about this follow-up as well.
I just love exploring strange, abstract, mysterious spaces in games. This gameās definitely scratching a certain itch that hasnāt been scratched since The Beginners Guide or FEZ before that, in terms of just experiencing surreal environments of one personās creation.
Was super obsessed with this for a breif period of my high school life. I even did my final peice for my Art GCSE themed around it. A giant image of Uboa on a white background, where the black was made up of hundreds of different words related to the game, each in a different font. It was ace, I was alright then. Got me an A.
I also never got it back, even though I was supposed to. I got a photocopy of it with one of the words circled in red marker. Which is to say, they hadnāt drawn on the photocopy, it looked like theyād drawn on the original and photocopied it. Everyone else got their original back. Nobody could tell me what had happened. Very odd.
But yeah, kickass game, anything thatās openly inspired by it is pretty much instantly My Jam even now.
oh man, Iāve been trying to figure out how to play this ever since I was briefly obsessed with this video:
also a link to the original since I donāt know if that youtube video was uploaded by them:
https://sobass.deviantart.com/art/Yume-Nikki-Secret-Theater-571104464
I feel like thereās some kind of really unsettling Lovecraftian-high-school short story in this 
I remember giving this a shot years ago but then quitting when I got to the section with creatures who chase after you. I think they only send you back to the starting area and thereās not a jump scare or anything, but as soon as the game presented me with something akin to danger I couldnāt handle it. I will probably give it a try again now, as it has been a few years (probably half a decade at least).
You might really dig LSD: Dream Simulator on the PS1 for how it handles having conflict/danger. It was a companion game to a dream journal by Hiroko Nishikawa and you can see plenty of footage of it online. Though itās kind of frustrating that itās often presented in a context of āWOW look how weird and bizarre Japan is they made this barely a game gameā when it was pretty ahead of its time. I think it and Yume Nikki are really the only games of their kind.
I like it because the closest thing to an antagonist is this man in a grey suit and hat that appears now and then. Sometimes upon sighting him he just vanishes if you go near him, but sometimes he shoots you. But because of the way the game is built being thrown from area to area and re-starting the dream regularly is part of the game. So like technically heās ādangerousā but in a way that keeps the game going and dream developing in different directions.
Anyway itās a cool game I think anyone who likes Yume Nikki should check out. Itās unfortunately pretty rare and only got released in Japan, so one would probably have to emulate it. Though if one has a PS3 itās on the Japanese PSN for like $6, absolutely worth it, the selection of PS1 games on there is pretty insane and they have some rare GOAT level stuff like Kowloonās Gate too.
Iāve seen footage (it was used in an Alt-J video I believe) and it definitely looked very hypnagogic (both in the dreamlike sense and the vapourwave kind of sense)
Just completed the campaign (I use the word campaign solely because it struck me as really funny to do so, I simply mean I collected all the effects and saw the ending). Iāll admit I used a guide for the last few, partly because Iād reached a point where - on my own - I was really struggling to find anything new (I feel kind of bad for rushing these last few days, but I might go back and explore more deeply when I feel like I have more justifiably free time). Iāve really enjoyed playing this game, though: itās reminded me of House of Leaves in how itās both deeply enigmatic and (at times) deeply frustrating (albeit in a way that enhances the enigma enough to just about justify it).
Iāve been listening to Lewis Denbyās āDream Diaryā podcast, too. Really looking forward to finding out whatās at the end of that countdown / generally reading up on the game a bit more.
Iām gonna play this now.
