Since early 2024 I've been working on a Yume Nikki inspired top down 2D game which I've codenamed 'Untitled Game' for the time being. The name is still subject to change. It's an exploration simulator with slight puzzle elements that involves exploring unique locations and discovering hidden areas and interactions in order to unlock new areas. This game is meant to create a nostalgic and dream-like feeling, with the music being a major focal point. Many locations in the game are based on actual memories and dreams that I've had in order to create a very nostalgic yet surreal vibe.

Without revealing too much about the lore, I'll explain a tiny bit about the story and setting. the character is stuck in a world made of broken and twisted fragments of their memories, and no, it isn't a 'dream' world like Yume Nikki and every other fangame. I can't really say a whole lot more without spoiling the main plot, and to be fair the story isn't super in depth or planned out at this stage of development. there is a 'plot' and some backstory, but the series of events that takes place during gameplay is mostly irrelevant to the story itself, at least in its current stage. It's mostly just about exploring and piecing together the story slowly.

The actual game design process has been somewhat difficult for me. There's a lot more that goes into it than you might think. Even for seemingly simple behaviors it takes a lot of code to make everything work together. And not to mention the sprite design and the sound design and the music and the animations. It's a long process, and it's been very slow, especially to do everything all on my own. I'm sure there are people out there who could have this whole project done within a week, but I'm a slow worker and kind of a perfectionist. A good portion of the sprites in the game have been through at least two or more redesigns, some music tracks have been through upwards of three revisions, many maps have been rebuilt a few times over, and a whole bunch of stuff has been completely scrapped. The point is that it's real hard to get things right, and when it's a solo project, I don't really have anyone to look to for creative feedback. I'm doing this all on my own with no experience and no direction, and when my vision changes for the project, everything has to change with it. The sprite design especially has been a struggle for me. I went into this project with zero sprite design or pixel art experience, and I've just been learning as I go. Some of my early sprites were genuinely terrible. If you were to look at my first designs for the player compared to the current one, it's honestly embarrasing. Maybe I'll include an easter egg in the game that reveals some of the early character designs, but for the time being they will stay stored away on my hard drive never to be seen by anyone. As bad as I was, I'm happy with the progress I've made. I've learned a lot of new techniques and I've definitely seen more success in my sprite design as of recently. I'm sure there are many more resprites to come, and who knows how many more designs the character will go through. Or maybe he'll just stay as he is. I'm happy with the current design, but who knows how I'll feel about it in a few months.

I think another misconception about game design is that the creative design is the 'easy part.' I'm not gonna pretend that thinking of ideas is harder than coding them or drawing them or composing them, but it's also real easy to think of a surface level idea and think you know exactly where to go with a project and exactly what you want it to look like. It's a lot harder than it seems. It's hard to come up with enough ideas to fill a somewhat lengthy game, and it's hard to think of a song to go with every level, and it's hard to think of a level to go with every song. I always try to base the level off the song or vice versa, and I don't really like putting a random song over a random level just for the sake of there being some background music. Sometimes I have to though, and honestly sometimes it works, even if I didn't make the somg with the level in mind or the other way around. In the case of probably 80% of all the levels I've implemented so far, I made the song first and based the level off it, but that probably won't be the case in the future because I have a lot of levels planned that I haven't yet assigned a song to. The music design is honestly a surprisingly independent process to the level design. I know it probably shouldn't be that way, but it's often easier to play around with the sounds and see what kind of vibe it creates than to try to fit the song perfectly to a world that already exists. That's how just about every single track on the soundtrack has been created so far, but clearly something needs to change because there's a lot of songs that I just don't know what to do with. Sometimes it's really clear what to do with a song and what I want its level to look like, but often it's very difficult to think of a level idea that fits. One thing that has annoyed me about the level design is that a lot of ideas just don't fit certain constraints, for example it's extremely difficult to portray claustrophobic spaces or adjacent rooms in a 2D game with perspective, and it's completely impossible to protray a 3D space at all. This has bothered me so much that I actually started planning a 3D sequel to this game so I could implement some of these ideas. I'm not sure that idea will ever see the light of day though, as I've kinda abandoned it in favor of other ideas for future games, but that's besides the point. I think one of the biggest problems with my level design so far is that they are far too rooted in reality. Most of my levels so far have been based on some real setting, or some setting that could exist in reality. The difference with Yume Nikki is that it's levels are often way more surreal and not based in any physical setting. That's something I want to capture way more in my game, and it's actually the original vision I had for this game, but somehow I got caught up in making these 'real' settings, probably because it's harder to come up with ideas for worlds that are so abstract. Nevertheless it's something I'm determined to do in my game, and I'm already working on some ideas that I think might be more unique and surreal.

That's all I have to say about the game for the time being. I will probably update this page in the future, but for now I'll keep it to this. If you've read this far I'd like to thank you for your interest in my game. I will maybe make a youtube channel or some social media pages in the future to post footage or updates about the game, but for now feel free to contact me if you want to talk about the game or see some behind the scenes work or listen to some of the soundtrack. I'd be happy to share with people and hear some advice/ideas for what to improve or add. Thank you for reading, and I hope I can get this game out to you as soon as possible! :)