I played Yume Tagai recently. It's unfinished, and sadly doesn't look like it's being updated anymore, but it has a great atmosphere and does some really unique things.

I've been getting pretty jaded with the direction Yume 2kki has been heading in for a while now, so it was nice to play something short and simple for a change.

It's been a while since I've played the original. As for fangames and stuff, I played Yume 2kki about, uhh... 4 years ago? Something like that.
I really need to be in the right mind for these games and I haven't been in one in a while, my mind has just been racing too much.

>>7340
I've played a decent amount of 2kki through YNO but there's so much in that game so I've only scratched the surface. It's fun to occasionally tag along with randoms but the playerbase is pretty meh/underage/esl. Seems like it would be fun with friends though.

>>7398
>there's so much in that game so I've only scratched the surface
Yeah, it's kind of overwhelming how big 2kki has become. When I started playing it still felt realistic that you could see most of it by yourself but these days I can't even imagine it's possible to find all of the effects without a guide. There are just too many new connections that lead you down super deep rabbit holes away from the original areas.
In a way it can be cool how infinite 2kki feels, but lately I find myself getting kind of fatigued by it. I think one of Nikki's greatest strengths is how focused it is, as weird as that feels to say. There's not really any "filler" in that game.

>>7401
Yeah 2kki is a serious gamble to play
Sometimes you find nothing but garbage and waste your time and sometimes you find something that sticks with you forever

I've been playing some Collective Unconscious lately, an original collaborative game by some of the YNO people, and I have mixed feelings about it!
On one hand, I can't deny it's a very beautiful game. I'm assuming they're making it with a somewhat more modern toolkit than an old RPGMaker version? It has a lot of pretty effects, and the presentation is overall confident and stylish.
But in a way I think it might be too stylish for its own good? I think an underappreciated part of Yume Nikki is that it never really tries to hold your hand through the experience. It presents you with a bunch of abstract dream worlds and asks you to draw your own conclusions. A lot of modern fangames, on the other hand, including Collective Unconscious, feel obsessed with having these long, linear cinematic worlds that culminate in some profound vista, and it makes it hard to really stay immersed knowing that the author is so blatantly trying to manipulate my emotions.
From a gameplay perspective too I also just find it really boring to essentially walk down a corridor, even if it's a very beautiful corridor. I get the impression that a lot of modern Yume Nikki fangame authors are inspired by Wataru's worlds from Yume 2kki, but the thing that made Wataru's worlds stand out was that they were different from the other kinds of worlds people were making at the time. If a game is nothing but Wataru worlds, they kind of lose their charm...
I think there's a lot to like about this game, and at its best it feels very close to understanding what makes Yume Nikki so good, but its level of quality is quite inconsistent... I suppose it's an inevitable part of a big collaborative project like this.
Also: I'm sick as HELL of seeing so many fucking traffic cones and construction signs in these games!!!

>>7583
>I'm sick as HELL of seeing so many fucking traffic cones and construction signs in these games!!!
This is honestly my biggest issue with collective unconscious, I think in planning for connections in the future they seriously stifled exploration in the present, more areas should have had temp connections to make the game flow better

In terms of the spread of worlds I do wonder what the best solution is, I honestly think that most of collective unconsciousness's worlds work perfectly fine in a vacuum but due, ironically, to the standard of quality and each creator wanting to make their mark they make worlds that feel very deliberate and planned rather than worlds that are truly dream like, and this can feel exhausting or played out

I wonder what a yume nikki fan game would be like if it was made exclusively by my favorite creator in 2kki, qxy
I would imagine the results would be pretty good considering the amount of variety in his worlds but would even that get tedious after a while?

>>7589
>I wonder what a yume nikki fan game would be like if it was made exclusively by my favorite creator in 2kki, qxy
I know qxy's worlds are very popular, but I've personally never been as enamoured with them as a lot of people are... Definitely not the really popular ones at least, like the Rainy Apartments route. I think the issue I have with those worlds is that they clash with a lot of my ideas about what I think a 2kki world should be like, I guess since they're more on the "extremely beautiful and cinematic but linear" side rather than being offputting and atmospheric while having lots of branching connections that are fun to get lost in. They're very pleasant but a lot of them feel out of place to me.
Actually, one thing that intensely bothers me about qxy is basically the entirety of Virtual City and how anachronistic it is. Seeing all this super sleek 2020s technology and fashion in a game that started being made in 2007, where you save at a PC with a chunky CRT monitor, kind of drives me insane.
I do love Travel Hotel though even if it dead ends in a traffic cone. And I would probably enjoy a game of nothing but qxy worlds since then there would be no need to have any other expectations.

Finished .flow last Halloween and loved it. Definitely had darker themes, but they never felt excessive or out of place. I also enjoyed Sabitsuki's gradual development, especially when she tried to fight death at the end despite all the hints of it being some kind of terminal illness.
Vastly prefer it to 2kki for >>7401, and to some extent YN for how succinct it was. Makes me wonder how Kikiyama would've tied up loose ends.

Hard to believe it's been already more than 10 years since i've played YN for the first time. I wonder if someone here played during it's heyday.
I tried playing some fangames after finishing YN, they all had much more beautiful sprite work and presentation, but they all lacked that bizarre adventure and i couldn't warm up to their protagonist.
It's not a fangame, but i had a similar good experience with LSD Dream Emulator, despite the video clips and the more volatile interactions.
>>7398
>fun with friends
We could arrange a time to play together, like a sunday night.

I like playing these games when I get sick, it allows me to take my mind off my senses suffering and the single minded nature of the activity allows me to appreciate the game in a different sort of way

>>7681
snooooof

Today is Yume Nikki's 21st anniversary. Happy birthday Mado.

Happy 21st birthday Yume Nikki!
Picture related: my best friends invited me to their party to celebrate!

Happy bday Mado. Now you can finally drink.

21 years... that's ridiculous. Happy Birthday Yume Nikki and her game

Yumi nikki online bday meetup? https://ynoproject.net/yume/

>>7340
>fangames

it's called indie now

She's spinning...!

>>7841
Oh I remember this, I think? It's a pretty neat concept and it's cool to see it on a website.

the corner mascot hiding under the rikas