Miserere

So this is considered a Yume Nikki fangame, apparently. I can see the similarities. You're a someone who walks around all sullen-like, to the point of never opening their eyes, you live in a place with stuff to look at and sometimes interact with, and of course you get a bed to sleep in which counts down to entering your dreamworld, which consists of a nexus, of which connects to wildly different, and all strange and sometimes more than a bit perturbing, areas to explore. Oh and you pinch your cheek to wake yourself up. Why not a YN fangame where you slap yourself? Or shoot yourself? Something with more impact. But back on topic. Despite these similarities, this game deviates heavily in many ways from its source of inspiration, unlike .flow and LCD DEM, the only two other YN fangames I've played which while having their own minor distinctive touches pretty much follow the YN structure by the book. If it weren't for the fact that the core of the game at its most basic is the same as Yume Nikki's, being the grim dreamworld aspect, and with a few minor adjustments here and there, this could very well be considered a game that stands on its own without the gross "fan game" label hanging over it.

The differences are both superficial and significant, but combined make for a game that I see as more than a mere fangame. One you'll notice from the start, dialogue! Yes, your character actually speaks! Wow, much talk, very dialo... *ahem* Anyway in addition to speaking, your character will offer observations and descriptions of various things you interact with, including the many gauges and devices that keep the lonely, and rather mossy-looking space station you reside in operational. Really, you can smell the damp. It feels less like a space station and more like an algal cave. While not huge, this place definitely has more real estate than the tiny cramped apartments where your hikikomori of past games resided (as for the question why is there someone just sitting alone on a space station with nobody else on board? If the continuous isolation is causing this person to suffer continuous mental stress and breakdowns then why not return to Earth? There is a very good reason for all of that you'll only find out by playing to the end). Not a single crappy in-game "console" minigame to be found either!

There are even a few NPCs in the dream world who'll speak too, how few there are and how little what they say makes any sense (the exception being a character that shows up at the very end, who probably talks too much so, we'll get to that at the end pretty soon as well some other issues I had with the way the story was told, so don't worry kids, if you need to use the restroom just hold it in for a little while or use it quickly!). Most of them do though retain the classic weird noise effect when you try to speak to them, so don't bother trying to engage in stimulating conversation with the spiders (actually the sound effect they make I've heard before - I'm pretty sure in more than one game in fact - was it from Penumbra?). The wavy fungi things in the same area where you find the spiders make a particularly disgusting sound when you interact with them, so you definitely won't get a debate about Adorno's theories about music in contemporary culture from them, not in a language you'd understand anyway.

And, as you progress further and further, you'll notice another major change - the effects/abilities system has been scrapped entirely. Yep, one of the most significant things to define Yume Nikki and arguably most Yume Nikki fan games is nowhere to be found. Instead you'll find... strange objects, keys, and an icicle whose one and only use is silly enough that it would fit right along some of the inventory puzzles of adventure games of past (at least in this game it'll automatically let you know when an item you have on you can be used on the thing you're looking at). And instead of endless wrap-over terrain, bizarre steps to take to change the landscape, and hellmazes, you get some actual puzzles here. Not necessarily hard ones, but ones that are still fun to solve nonetheless, like the one involving the 50s B-movie horror posters. The only disappointment about this, is that it retains the Yume Nikki/Yume Nikki fangame-style walking speed. But at least in YN fangames there usually is an ability to find right away if you know where to look that'll allow you to travel faster. But because of the scrapped abilities system here you'll be slogging your way throughout this entire enterprise whether you like it or not. Though considering the way the game's designed, more around corridors, shorter hallways and self-contained areas instead of huge empty spaces you get accustomed to it after a while.

Besides that, the game also has fewer nexuses/nexi/whue'r than YN or the usual fan game. Only four this time instead of the usual, like, eight, or twelve is it? Though there are two points you can activate a teleporter that will transport you to certain areas as well, bringing the count up technically to six (unless there's more I missed - very likely). The aesthetics, as per usual, are of the surreal variety, disconnected areas leading to others, nothing making any seeming sense, areas of calm, areas of horror, areas of just... what am I looking at exactly? Graphic style is of course the distinction, you have the SnowOwl trademark of dark, rusty filth staining everything, Silent Hill-ish moments, and character/creature designs that look right out of Middens or Gingiva. Needless to say, the art design in this game is exquisite. The atmosphere is heightened by a superbly melancholy ambient soundtrack. The standout being, most likely because it's the area you'll be finding yourself in the most - the music of the space station itself.

Some memorable areas from the dreamworld - an art gallery from hell, including a painting you can enter, like something from Ib, featuring these strange fuzzball things increasingly populating the gallery, their numbers never resetting when you return. They do nothing to you, and you can't do anything with them either, but they drove me somewhat panicky somehow, like if I didn't do whatever needed to be done fast enough I would be suffocated to death by these things, heh. That never happened, and to be honest I don't know what ultimate effect these things have. There's also a strange-looking ball-looking creature (looked vaguely like a Koffing if I remember correctly) with a top hat. There's also a certain item he wants you can give to him if you find it. Inside this painting also features the area most prominently seen in the screenshots - the center stage, with an audience of... things looking at you. You can even bow to them! That's about it as far as I know. Sometimes in the balcony where the other... thing is there'll be an arrow pointing down or up but I never figured out what this meant. I pushed in those supposed directions but nothing came out it. Then they'd disappear when I re-entered the area. Whatever.

Another is a very simple one, but what it communicates is much larger. There's a walkway with pictures of creatures from earth. Most you don't recognize, others, like one of a snake, you simply remark went extinct long ago. The only one that seems to have survived is the picture of the rat. This is in your dream world too, so it is odd that pictures of animals you don't know feature, but it could be some long-forgotten memories from this earth of the far future. It just hit me how there may be a time when animals we take for granted for their prominent existence and commonly shared knowledge will no longer be and the average person of the future will either not know of them or see them as like we do the dodo bird today, and there are plenty of species where this sadly may very well be a highly possible case. Speaking of snakes... hey remember the teleporter maze from Yume Nikkie and some fan games? Just an area with swirly pads and blue cubes and shit everywhere, usually. Well this game has its own teleporter maze, that functions exactly as the ones before do, only now it's a complete perversion of the form!

Otherwise, the ultimate goal of the game is actually to assemble a mannequin - yes, that's right - to give to a certain something blocking passage to an area where further revelations about yourself are discovered, and where new areas in your dreamworld are unlocked further. The scariest parts of the game are probably where the mannequin parts can be found, usually. There's one derelict ship you come across and navigating its interiors is unpleasant to say the least. The area where you find the mannequin head... how about YOU play the game and tell me what YOU thought of that, huh? I also believe there is one set of parts, I could be mistaken, as there are quite a few items to find, to be found on top of a building, where you this strange shadowy figure walking about. Once you collect the item he jumps off the building. If that didn't take you off guard, then what happens when you try to take the elevator to go back down to the floor level certainly will. This leads to another issue I have with the game, to do with most of the other items you will collect. As is usual for reviews I write, I prefer to cover flaws all in one scoop toward the end, where I can dedicate more time to my issues with them (yes I know kids, and I'm sorry, I said I was going to get to the end of this soon, but it might be a while, so go ahead now and take your bathroom brea... did you wet yourself Billy during this? Ohhh no, time to call mom and dad...).

Before going on, about Yume Nikki itself, because I think this is important to ruminate on: the thing that people often play YN and these fan games for the most is for the surreal experiences they bring. Just pure dreamscapes where nothing can be predicted what'll be around the corner. This game, Yume Nikki itself, and its fangames definitely have that appeal for me too, but the thing that really set Yume Nikki apart when I first came upon it of course was just how different it was. My knowledge of RPG Maker gaming chronology is minimal at best, I couldn't know if it was the first game of its kind (well actually I know it was hardly the first RPG Maker psychological adventure title, Palette did that WAY back in 1998! You can play it for free with a really good English translation too, on vgperson's website, it's an old game so there are some minor compatibility issues like the colors getting all funky sometimes but mostly it played just fine for me), but it's hard to argue that there is really nothing else like it. Everything about it is astonishingly realized in a way I have seen few games attempting surrealism or dream depictions really "get."

Besides the unique gameplay and exploration elements, what ultimately struck a chord with me is how deeply, emotionally personal it felt. This is a game with zero dialogue and where almost everything is just strange and barely comprehensible images and sounds. And yet nothing is random. The longer you play, the more patterns you see begin to emerge. The deeper you dive into it the more troubling it gets. Every world you travel is like an emotional dead end, whether you end up in a nightmare off the bat or when your initially calm outing turns into a nightmare it's as if there's no escape from your mind. It's obviously a strange, off-setting game from the start but I never felt so drained after seeing almost everything it throws at you and arriving at the game's infamous conclusion. It is a game that remains probably the saddest and simultaneously one of the most disturbing games I've played yet. So much so I never want to play it again. That I can say that in a GOOD way should tell you something.

So you can see why this is a game that would inspire so many. That it would inspire so many spin-off titles copying mechanics to the core... maybe that's understandable too. It's its own game, but its basic structure is very open-ended - enter dreams/nightmares, see strange things, collect other things that do equally strange things, and get an ending that is usually sad or bittersweet in some way. Dreams are a subject of fascination for many, and an especial inspiration for artists, so having this structure to work with allows people to express this shared fascination all the more easily. The problem being of course that so many games follow YN by the letter, so much so that it's reached a point of saturation. More Yume Nikki style games need to deviate from the path more, and this is where Miserere succeeds. But does it hit as hard on a personal, emotional level as YN did?

While it does indeed tell a story that ends up being very sad and moving, it's very externalized and literal. With Yume Nikki, it felt so intensely personal that it was as though a heavy load of the creator's psyche was being unleashed on me. The game's creator keeps to himself most times, so I have no idea the intentions behind it or how much of it was in fact some form of self-therapy or catharsis. Maybe he was bullshitting everything all this time and I just fell for it, who knows, but in my defense Death of the Author. This isn't a fault on Miserere's part. Yume Nikki's essence is hard to pin down, and is perhaps irreplicable. You're never going to make a game that gets to you the same way using said game as the launching point. You can, however, take its influence, spin it around and make something that's both a great homage and in itself a really good game too that does enough things differently to not end up being stale, which Miserere succeeds with nearly flying colors at.

I say "nearly" flying colors because there are some things about the game I found deeply flawed, both in the gameplay elements and in its storytelling. With gameplay, let's go back to the item-collecting/puzzle element, shall we. Simply put, most of the items you collect are useless. Not in the sense they don't have a use, but that their end use does not progress the game in any real way. It's especially frustrating when in this game you start off, like most YN-style games, wandering around, probably not making much progress. When you DO find your first few items, you then become excited that you feel like you're finally getting somewhere. But when you find out that the item's use was for something that did absolutely nothing, you become a bit disheartened, especially when you had to go through many steps to even get it in the first place. There are some items, like a fruit, that a giant statue of a face will eat up, changing its expression. I think you could even enter it, or not, I actually can't recall, but you don't gain anything other than an amusing little change in scenery. In the same area, you encounter another character. If you have it on you, it's another food-ish item that he wants from you. Your reward? His gratitude. That's... nice.

There are many things like this and those that don't lead to mannequin parts end up feeling a waste of time. Now some of these actions seem to affect the real world. Things that never were there before suddenly appear, but your only reaction is "did I always have this?" Nothing exactly exciting. The only significant real-world change is the unlocking of a new area of your ship. I don't remember which item did this, but it's an area that, though not anything that seems to affect the progress of the game one way or another, does add an extremely interesting new dimension to the story, one that's never ultimately resolved but gives something to think about in relation to the twists that turn the story on its head later on. Still doesn't change the fact that running about solving puzzles or fetching for things in labyrinthine structures for items that I could have very well left behind without consequence without knowing that they'd be inconsequential is kind of irritating. And I can say that I know for a fact that at least some of these items aren't necessary - when I finished the game, I had two items in my inventory ultimately left unused. I wondered what they did and if they affected anything. I didn't know what they were for, so a walkthrough mentioned a cauldron, something I remembered from long earlier but forgot about until just then. So I used the items in the cauldron and got... a cutscene, that gave some extra reflection from the character on the story going on. While probably not "pointless" in the same sense some other items were, and even lent some extra poignancy to the story, it wasn't anything the player didn't know about already. Oh, and it didn't change the ending at all either. So there's that.

And the story. What issues do I have with that? With Yume Nikki and the dream/surreal-based stories, they are heavily symbolic, open-ended with no one clear interpretation or another. For the most part they aren't meant for only one "real" interpretation. Here, though. It's a bit confused. There is a literal story going on here about a real person trying to make sense of their mind, while these increasingly troublesome and bizarre dreams begin to take hold. I think there could be something interesting done there. A contrast with the literal vs. the abstract, a sort of "battle" between the two you could say, ultimately blending into each other into a pool of gray. I think that is what the game was going for, but it didn't quite work out. For most of the game, we get the character's ruminations on various things, the dreamworld... and in the final third, fourth(?) of the game, BAM! It makes a complete u-turn. Almost everything about the character and the situation on the space station is dumped on us at once, revealing startling twists, and a repressed memory of a certain character we've never even seen glimpses of before. Few of the character's dreams that I know of actually even hint at these revelations, the source of the real struggle of the story, and everything before might as well have been for naught.

Now I take no issues with stories going completely different directions, or doing so in a way that may negate what was previously seen, but you have to ask, how well does it segue? In what way does it negate everything? In a way you may as well have never experienced it at all ("...it was all a dream" - thankfully this is a game all about dreams so it can't technically fall for that), or in a way that merely illustrates the power of the thing which negates these elements? Here it turns from strange and dreamlike to blatantly literal and expository. The transition is hugely awkward to put it lightly. And the things in which it expounds on are things that you cannot just dump off at the very end, what we discover are things that needed to be developed or at least hinted at from the beginning. Outside the aura of some locations in the dreamworlds early on the running around bizarre places have almost nothing to do with what we find out. Or, if they do (I don't claim to be an expert at interpreting these sort of things, but I'd like to think I am fairly capable at spotting a connection when I see it) it is completely lost on me. That combined with the pointless item collecting make for a deadly cross-combo that threatens to damage the game heavily.

Yet somehow I can overlook that for the most part in this case. Why is that? Well first I'll remark that I did like the ending. That's not exactly why I can overlook the flaws, but I liked it. First it ends on a boss fight. Not a really hard one, but a cleverly concocted one, and seeing something like this in a supposed Yume Nikki "fangame" is pretty cool. And the ending itself... it seems abrupt and irresolute, like, has the character really found peace of mind? It would seem there are some terrible things of the past unaccounted for, that never can be, and only through fighting these things through the dreamworld can they be. Though we never find out what happens after the end, it still is deeply sad. Redemptive, in the only way it can be, but still sad. That it made me think and care about the plight of the character that much may mean it was a success in that regard. I just wish this was spread out a little more across the whole game instead of saving large chunks of it for the last segments of the game.

Plus... it's really about the overall effect, it's definitely more than the sum of its parts in this case. If you look at my ratings system and see the ratings I give for most games, I tend towards 3's a lot. It's either the game that does what it does well without any real flaws but without being particularly outstanding either, or a game with some noteworthy flaws but does enough things so well that it all balances out. I rate this a tad higher. Why? Because its triumphs, the real reasons to play it, outweigh the problems, however significant. It's the kind of "fangame" we need more of, one that only uses its source of inspiration as a launching point for the developer's own creative twists and not just to copy everything about it leaving only some room for different ideas. It's a game with some genuinely moving moments, even early on, such as in the room you unlock (it's probably not that big a spoiler to say what it is but I just want to keep some things a surprise). When the game's scary, it's scary alright, though there is some blood/gore and a couple small jump scares it's all about psychological warfare when you enter these "forbidden zones." And the parts where things actually come after you, well, they are never pleasant either. Even though the penalty for being caught by these creatures is a small one (you wake up... just to go back to sleep and retry it/avoid going back to the area altogether) it leaves you rushing nevertheless. Some locations are truly a sight to behold, in one way or another. It's just such a... flawed yet so remarkable a game in its category that I absolve it without completely clearing its record. One of those times when a game, or anything else, gets away with it. And so I'll leave it at that.