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syrupspinner · 28 days ago

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ive been playing a lot of collective unconscious lately

at first i was gonna make a post talking about multiple ynoproject games before i realized that i just had too much to say about this one. also, this was written before the update dropped

header made by callisto on steamgriddb

if you dont already know what yume nikki is, i consider it a must-play if you enjoy analyzing games. its effectively a rorschach test with just enough fuel to point you in an interesting direction that nobodys pieced together in quite the same way yet. the best way to play it is either for free on steam, or on ynoproject.net, which also hosts a handful of the fuckton of games that act as entries into the yumenikki-like genre. perhaps the most notable among these games, along with the classics like yume 2kki and .flow, is collective unconscious, a yume nikki fangame designed with the website's massively-multiplayer functionality in mind.

initially, i was worried that the collective nature of the game would encourage way more obtuse design. like, if youve heard of namco's tower of druaga, you might know that while english arcade-goers hated the eclectic and bizarre progression requirements, japanese arcades were abuzz with collaboration, people starting cabinet journals that list their discoveries and offer tips. i minored in sociology and therefore have the confidence to declare that this is a perfect example of collectivism vs individualism. anywho, i was worried that the post-fnaf world would encourage this kind of design on a more widespread level again, which would just mean tabbing out into a guide every few minutes. well, youve gotta for a handful of the journal covers and menu styles (the game does a great job at pacing out the rewards while still maintaining reasonable expectations), but those are optional cosmetics, and their obscurity is par for the course. the effects (scuse me, the eidola) are pretty clear-cut too, i feel like yume nikki just kinda handed em out for random stuff (which is great for what its going for!) but i really like the spectacle and circumstance around em here. like, you find the rat one in a random dumpster somewhere, but the weather one is from communing with the gods

ill note now, there isn't the stock speed vehicle like in most fangames, you can just sprint whenever. this isnt a trivial change, and the game knows it. theres one puzzle that is built around needing to sprint with another effect active. personally, i like this change, but i understand why oldheads wouldnt. dont worry, i still take my time, its just nice to speed up a bit without having to sacrifice my cool eidola

unfortunately, the multiplayer aspect wasnt too lively. there were only a handful of other dreamers, and the ones that werent just afk in the nexus were off doing their own thing god-knows-where on the map. i think i ran into one other person organically, ever, and they just ran past me. i suppose this is an inevitability when you put strangers in a sandbox together... especially since most people (hundreds compared to our twenty-odd) were in yume 2kki, the MUCH larger sandbox. anyway, im gonna stop talking about meta stuff and get into what youre all here for: dream analysis. finally, a use for that stupid psyche degree.

oh real quick, the exception to the loneliness thing is expeditions, something built-in to YNO at large. you get exp if you go to a specific location in one of the games, so you can expect a lot of people there. once you get there, youre gonna see a bunch of people standing around the entrance facing the camera afk.

anyway, when i got the soulfire eidola, the obligatory weapon effect, i got some "donut steel" vibes. its kinda funny to jump from a kitchen knife to casting Demonic Flare: Pillar of Hellfire with a floating eye face vigil and arms made of flames. but then i simply got over myself and took this as a surface-level aspect of minnatsuki's personality. you can tell a lot from a protag by how they kill npcs. for example, sabitsuki has a gun, but only uses it for intimidation, leaving the act of killing to some old pipe she found; implying that she is pragmatic, and still sees the act of murder as something dirty and ill-fitting. meanwhile, urotsuki uses a chainsaw, a weapon infamous for being impractical against humans irl but pervasive in fiction due to the sheer cool factor; this tells us she glorifies killing, seeing it as something fun and badass. minnatsuki is similar to the latter, having a fantasy spell as their method, meaning that we can see a hint of escapist desire, to be empowered beyond mundane humanity in a way that equates to the ability to harm others.

other eidola, like her animal forms being a mouse (stereotypically skittish and shy) and a jellyfish (weak and passive, confined to water), and her instument of choice being the meek and obscure kalimba, paints the picture of a girl who feels desperately powerless. she doesnt want to lash out and kill others per se, her weapon is a bit too fantastical for that. she just wants to feel strong, and whats stronger than some arbitrary mythical abstraction of an element of destruction? and dont get me started on the umbra and spectral eidola, letting her fade into nothing or just be untethered to the world. theres something she wants to escape

another thing? very rarely are you given an eidola. with soulfire and umbra you have to actively avoid people trying to stop you from leaving with it. the ones that seem more permissive have caveats: you get rodentia in a back alley from someone hidden in a dumpster, you loot lumen off a corpse, spectral comes from a literal cult ritual, and climate makes you earn the blessings of three separate... gods? before youve earned the right to it. the only real exception is kaliba, because theyre like $20 on amazon. nah but seriously, maybe it represents being a heartfelt gift from a friend? or maybe its granted more readily because its recreational, and doesnt empower minnatsuki in the way weve talked about them desiring?

by the way, i dont think minnatsuki has a gender. not like in a kris deltarune "actively canonically nonbinary" way, but as an unimportant detail left up to interpretation. maybe theyre just a cis person who doesnt care and puts no stake in it as an aspect of their identity, or maybe they just feel alienated from the social concept of gender altogether? i prefer the last one, personally, for reasons ill get to later

that brings us to the eyes. there is so much eye imagery in minnatsuki's dreams. eyes on stalks that watch you, where trying to talk to them is useless. giant murals with a six-armed diety that has an eye on its palm. women in melancholy, whos faces lack eyes. a giant flower hidden in the dark that hides a single large eye. only being able to enter the house in rainstorm city that has the eye symbol next to it. perception plays a toll on minnatsuki, and i think it goes both ways. they feel observed in a burdensome way, and they feel incapable of 'seeing' on the same level as others. or maybe they see too much? is there an event she shouldnt have seen, or does she experience sight at a level above others, recognizing things others cant? the child and spectral eidola may be a wish fulfillment of the former, letting her see the unseen in a literal way, while also letting her overcome limitations that she has seen for herself with the latter

another thing about the design i wanna mention real quick is that so much is diagonal. this is something that the rpgmaker engine isn't built to really allow. like yeah, you can, and this game goes out of its way to make it non-obtrusive by having minnatsuki slide along walls sometimes, but it's not something the foundation was set in mind for. this also brings to mind the idea that minnatsuki doesn't fit in with others. it's not a disease like in .flow, it's not something that's detrimental to her in a literal way. it just causes friction with the world around her, because she doesn't feel as if it's built for how she is. she just doesnt quite fit with the world around her sometimes, the way she moves is just a bit off, like a direction-locked movement system trying to go diagonally

theres also a lot of thematic relevance to the idea of connection and ingroup membership. the game is named from the jungian ideal, a level of understanding inherent to the human mind where process instinct and achetype (the latter basically being our classification of others into pre-conscieved schema like "the wily trickster" and "the tyrant leader"). in addition, the game has a lot of togetherness imagery, with npcs sometimes travelling in packs or existing as hordes (the only exception i can think of are npcs that give you something like an eidola or menu theme, perhaps meaning isolation holds a deep importance), and things acting as notable points of interaction when they are isolated (note that the dungeon-relevant houses in gbc world are furthest from the village, for example). there's also a lot of totem poles, acting as the dream trigger and the centre of the nexus, signalling great importance. in first nation tradition, totem poles are created to honour the lineage of a clan (using designs that are unique to that clan), and send messages such as welcoming visitors and shaming wrong-doers (both of these uses involve establishing in-group membership).

i believe these themes combined, minnatsuki's dreams letting her feel powerful and connected, paint the picture of a person that is alone and powerless. minnatsuki doesnt have friends, and im not sure if she even has bullies. i have yet to meet a chaser in this game, so maybe that means that nobody even singles her out in a negative way? stares and weird looks, maybe, but only as a collective and not as a personal connection. this is corroborated by the school location, which minnatsuki's dream constructs as a tainted and evil place, half-formed from broken blueprints. she understands it as a flawed idea done poorly; implying that her disillusion is so severe she sees her isolation as an inseparable corruption of the entire system. so, she feels powerless to stop it, as well as alone and friendless

unfortunately, the game doesnt seem to have a proper ending yet. which is a shame, because most solid ynfg theories start with you working backwards from the ending. well, i supposed "social outcast that struggles with confidence and/or self-esteem" isnt a groundbreaking theory, but im still interested to see if this supported or jossed as the game gets more updates. also, i noticed while brushing this up that at some point i switched from they to she for minnatsuki, so i guess the audience has interpreted.

look i could ramble about this wonderful game all day. dont get me started about my thoughts on the event in uncanny world, the lonely girl in snowy shoal, and the random blond girl that can just show up in random places out of nowhere and that takes you one a scooter ride once you get to know her?

im gonna be playing this for a long, long time, and im gonna love every second of it

#collective unconscious #yume nikki #ynfg #ynoproject #in progress #i hope this inspired you to give the game a try! lemme know if you run into me my username is queenzigzag #this was cathartic to write because its been a while since ive really sunk my teeth into some story analysis #mechanical analysis? sure. but as a skill of mine that pales in comparison to english lit-style breaking down themes and subtextual meaning #wait thats not true. ive been going off on literary analysis i have a 7k dan*anron*a retrospective in my drafts #i think that plus fl*thead might be why i feel like ive been so negative in my reviews lately?#maybe im still rattled from reviewing g*d str*ke and t*los princ*pal back to back #which was like. last year lol #i promise ive written up reviews for my all-time favorites and im currently playing some that are sucking my dick clean off #ill uh. finish em someday. if i dont get distracted

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