Why is Yume Nikki something that I unconditionally recommend?
I can sorta understand Undertale, that game is a labor of love by a guy who is a lot like me so if you play that game it's almost like if you're playing a game that I made except not shit. Spirited Away got applause from a bus full of high schoolers, you don't forget something as weird as that, and something about it makes me want to really want to share with people who've never seen it.
Yume Nikki has nothing I can think of that makes it particularly stand out except of what it is. It doesn't represent me in any way; it's about a reclusive girl who seems occupied with her femaleness in some way, and the whole game's just an exploration of her weird dream world, there's nothing there I can relate to, but it's just so good, it's just a big world full of odd things that I can't think of anything bad about. I can't think of any reason you shouldn't play it.
Everything about Undertale appealed to me nigh-instantaneously but it wasn't until the Yume Nikki connection that I really loved it. Why?! I can't see how that game means anything to me...
Because it's totally strange and unlike anything except the games that were created afterwards to emulate it. It's not weird in the sense of "lol foreign culture baka gaijin can't comprehend", it's outright
strange. Like, you can just find weird things.... and no explanation is offered, at all, even a little bit. Things just happen. Psychedelic things, weird things, scary things, cute things, no rhyme or reason. FACE, Uboa and KyuuKyuu-kun are the most popular ones, but there's loads more.
There's also the lack of story, which means that there's a metagame of creating your own theory. I like the car crash theory, although I have to admit it doesn't explain all of the imagery.
Yume Nikki takes work to love, is all. It doesn't apologize for what it is or try to be something more popular or appealing, it simply
is.
Also I'm personally fascinated by Kikiyama themselves, the mysterious creator of Yume Nikki. I would like to know what they're doing now, and I hope they're alright because they have created a dark, strange game.