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(+1)

I was very hyped when I heard about a Yume Nikki game starring Eternity Larva, simply because I like YN and Larva, but I didn't reflect further on why Larva is a good match for such a game. Having played the game, the concept makes even more sense to me: Just like Madotsuki is trapped in her repetitive life with only video games as her escape in the waking world, Eternity is trapped in a repetitive and frivolous life as a fairy, with dreams being her only window to something more meaningful. (This is not really me judging the lives of the fairies, just me trying to draw parallels to YN. As in YN, there is no guarantee that breaking the cycles will make Larva happier...)

So the concept is great. How is the game? I'm not sold on the 2D-nature of the dream world, since I don't see how exploration would work. I also think the writing and some of the art (but not all of it) is very in-your-face, compared to YN, but this may be a result of the general lack of content, and not a fundamental problem. (Seeing literal scenes from Eternity's past would feel more meaningful if they were deep in her subconsciousness, and not directly accessible through the hub.)

In short, I'm still hyped for the game, and I hope you'll continue to work on it. Do you have some kind of forum or channel where you discuss development?

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Thank you! This is lovely feedback ^^

If you're genuinely curious how a sidescroller would work for a dream sim game, I'd recommend checking out Strange Telephone, as that's the primary inspiration for this game. It relies on having lots of worlds as opposed to big worlds. It's not everybody's cup of tea, but I like it for the opportunities it gives me to make many many maps

In the final game, the Hub is going to be replaced entirely with a system that's somewhere between Strange Telephone's and the world-finding system from the .hack// games. I'm undecided on how exactly it will work yet, but it will mean that scenes will be buried deeper than they are in this demo. For anything like that, basically just chalk it up to me feeling the need for everything to be accessible in the demo for the purpose of having a game to play - I didn't have much time for many filler maps, and I wanted to show that the story has something to it, so I elected to write it like a normal game for now, and make it more dream sim later down the line

I don't have anywhere I discuss development. I didn't really think it would be something people would be interested in ^^;

Thanks for the recommendation, I'll have to check out Strange Telephone.