Rainy Day's Books, Video Games and Other Writings

In what I hope to be my first and only post, Failed Impressions are going to be video game posts about games I attempted to play only to quit. I’ll have quit playing a game due to lack of interest, holes in storyline, and even rage quit.

So for my first Failed Impressions post, I give you Yume Nikki. Yume Nikki is a surrealistic adventure game that was developed by Kikiyama in 2004. The game centers around a young girl named Madotsuki as she enters this dream world where she collects Effects, objects that provide Madotsuki with special abilities. The object of Yume Nikki is to collect all twenty-four effects.

There are many reasons why I couldn’t get into playing Yume Nikki. When I first started playing, I was interested in giving this game a shot. I had seen so many things on the Internet about this game and thought it would appeal to me.

However, that’s not what happened. I immediately found myself frustrated with the game when I was in Madotsuki’s room. In her room, there is an opportunity for the player to play a mini game called NASU. In NASU, the objective is to catch a falling eggplant in the character’s mouth. I found the mini game itself to be interesting and intriguing, but quickly became frustrated when I discovered that I couldn’t exit out of it.

I tried furiously pressing every key on my laptop known to mankind to exit out of this mini game, but it refused to let me go. Even the ESC button didn’t work.  So I’d have to reload Yume Nikki every time I tried to play NASU. And that frustrated me because it showed that the controls didn’t always work.

Another reason Yume Nikki didn’t appeal to me as a gamer is because of the lack of a storyline. When I play video games, I play for the purpose of being introduced to a whole new world where I can explore the mechanics of the game along with seeing an intriguing and interesting storyline and character development as I progress. In this game, the player is introduced to Madotsuki, a young girl who lives alone in her apartment.

But there’s no real story here. There’s Madotsuki and her dreams and that’s it. And while that can be interesting to some players, I want to know more about what’s going on and what I’m supposed to be doing in these dreams. Because while the environment Madotsuki was in was intriguing and interesting to explore, I was frustrated that there was no real story that I could sink my teeth into.

I also didn’t enjoy Yume Nikki because of getting lost in this game. While I don’t mind playing games where you can explore the environment around you, I found that the dreams going to other dreams to be more of a nuisance. None of the dreams connected together in a way that made sense to me as a player. And while I don’t mind getting lost in video games, not being able to find my way out without having to wake Madotsuki up really frustrated me. It meant that I would have to go back into the same dreams again just to make sure that I collected all of the effects before moving on to the next door.

I really tried getting into Yume Nikki. I really did. But because of the amount of problems I had while playing, such as being unable to play the game at all, I had to call it quits after only playing the game for an hour and collecting three effects. I really wish this game had turned out differently for me.