Exploring this game and mapping out the different worlds for fun together with other people is great. There's a lot of unfinished areas at the moment and a lot of dead ends with a construction sign which is a little disappointing sometimes but at the same time it's exciting because I can just wait a few weeks and then hop back in and find a lot of new stuff. Still haven't found everything there currently is tho because it's a lot but I'm getting close. I never properly played the original Yume Nikki but after having played this I have to go back and do so for sure.

Really gorgeous fangame. Basically a Yume 2kki spiritual successor without the years of bloat and building upon worlds upon worlds upon abandoned content from 2007, and without some of the really low quality recent updates. It’s refreshing. The pacing here is a lot more consistent and considerate of the whole: the effects here aren’t clustered around specific classic authors’ easy to access content like in 2kki, for example; they are as deep in the dreamworld as Collective Unconscious gets. I do think maybe a little is lost - you don’t really have the wataru-esq long, isolated, authored pathways in this game, for example - but it’s hard to deny that Collective Unconscious is much less abrasive and that it’s much easier to find high quality areas while playing.

I really do hate that it’s online only, though. You can find an offline build on the internet through unofficial channels, fortunately, but I don’t really think Collective Unconscious does enough to justify its multiplayer exclusivity: sure, you can emote, and the levels and nexus are designed around multiplayer a little bit, but I still spend most of my time alone or almost alone doing the same things as any other fangame. I enjoy Yume Nikki Online and play with friends on it sometimes, but I’ve always found it to have way less atmosphere. Even on immersion mode, without other people, the streamed-from-the-cloud audio quality, framerate, and fullscreen options are just worse than natively run EasyRPG player. Not to mention that the extrinsic motivation driven badge system leaves me distracted and anxious (better hope you don’t miss an event that will give you a badge, else you’ll have to come back here, 15 dream worlds deep, if you ever want 100% completion!) YNO is cool, and has brought a lot of attention to games that deserve it, but I fear that it may start to be seen as the default option for the Yume Nikki community.

Collective Unconscious is an exceptional start and harkens back to first playing 2kki: a seemingly infinite library of interesting worlds to be lost in for hours, chasing stories of picaresque landscapes that you one day hope to discover for yourself. It feels modern, high quality, and satisfying to play; I’ve had fun interactions with randoms and gotten lost in Shrimp World with friends. I know that the devs intend to add more multiplayer specific features…but, until then, if my friends are busy, I’ll stick to playing locally.

The Yume Nikki Online community is one of the kindest, most welcoming groups of people I've ever met, and I'm so glad this game has finally come out. There's so much stuff here and the attention to detail is insane, it feels like every fan of these games has something for them, with collectors items of all kinds scatter about the dream world, as well as an art direction that goes from Wataru hyper detailed pixel art to Kikiyama weird shit seamlessly.

However the most important part of this game is the social aspect, every other fangame was not built with multiplayer in mind, this one was. It's so easy to wander into a world you don't know and ask someone for directions, explore worlds as a pair or group, or just sit around in a place to your liking and just talk about stuff.

Yume Nikki is a game about dreams, a diegetic representation of escapism made real with systems and sounds. That's why it's gained such a massive following that's lasted for decades, because we all need escapism from time to time. So when I find myself next to hundreds of other people in game, a game that is on a fan website for fan games that came out almost 20 years ago, I feel so warm inside, to know I'm not alone when I need to know the most.

Please, go into this game as blind as possible, wander around, meet someone, talk to them. About the world you see, the feeling it creates. Maybe go somewhere else, find something new. Share that experience, maybe give it to someone else. Find your peace in this game, where ever it is and who ever it's with.

And remember, don't be a dick. https://ynoproject.net/