yurufuwajukaiboy - Tumblr blog

yurufuwajukaiboy · 6 hours

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i'm not afraid of tomorrow // i am afraid of an unholy light!

before ambitious conditions // i find myself in an evil picture

the hollow face of the others // it's terror every time

cynical, oblivious, lies on top of pride

the broken link of a friendship // the feeling that ceases to exist

a hidden cave in the corner with a cruel digital kiss...

happy 15th .flow release anniversary !!! yay! :D

#dotflow

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yurufuwajukaiboy · 6 hours

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travel hotel

#2kki

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yurufuwajukaiboy · 6 hours

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transitional hallways between lamplit stones, adabana gardens and field of cosmos // Yume 2kki

#2kki

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yurufuwajukaiboy · 6 hours

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2kki friends

#2kki

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yurufuwajukaiboy · 6 hours

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love the theory that madotsuki and urotsuki knew eachother/were friends at one point

#yn #2kki

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yurufuwajukaiboy · 22 hours

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hey yo, nice hat!!

#genshin

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yurufuwajukaiboy · 24 hours

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Why I love Ultra Violet, the one of the best indie rpgs you haven't played yet.

Ultra Violet has it rough. It is hopelessly obscure, but if you HAVE heard of it, you've likely played dozens of games like it. It's a Yume Nikki fangame, living in the shadow of the more popular games in the genre like .flow, Yume 2kki, Answered Prayers, and of course, Yume Nikki itself. And in the small community of Yume Nikki fangame fans, it struggles further to stand out. It's creative, but also leans on the existing ideas of Yume Nikki. It's extremely pretty, though nowhere near as pretty as 2kki. It gets dark and atmospheric, but not as dark as .flow. It's mysterious and tranquil, but not as mysterious nor tranquil as Answered Prayers. Between all the games in this niche genre trying to change and innovate, it seems to fail to find its voice. And yet, I can't stop thinking about it. Ultra Violet has been occupying a spot in my brain since I first played it half a year ago, and in an effort to figure out why, I decided to 100% it. I collected every effect, and got every achievement available on Yume Nikki Online. And now I finally get it. Ultra Violet isn't just some unique worlds in an otherwise standard yume nikki game. Instead, it has a specific story it is trying to tell, and quite an interesting one at that. Ultra Violet is the story of a young woman named Sometsuki. As is the standard with these kinds of games, she refuses to leave her room. However, going to sleep will allow her to explore her dream world. This is the basic setup most of these games follow, but Ultra Violet sets up one unique inversion. Sometsuki's room is very cozy. It's hardly the boring and barren room most of these other games have. Instead, she has an incredibly modern looking home. Where other games put static on their TVs, Sometsuki has cute cartoons she can watch.

This sets up part of the lie of Ultra Violet. This modern cute room doesn't seem to fit in the dark worlds of Yume Nikki games, but Ultra Violet tries hard to present itself as a cuter and more innocent game. This is the first impression the game creates, but it wasn't the one I was left with. There's one thing that becomes more and more evident over time as you play: There is something wrong with Sometsuki, and she doesn't want you to know about it.

I should preface this by saying I don't know if this was intentional. I don't know what story the developer wanted to tell, but due to the interpretive nature of this genre, this was the story I got out of the game. Ultra Violet's worlds are often extremely cute on the surface. Rabbit motifs are one of the most common reoccurring images. The game definitely wants to be cute and heartwarming, with even the game's equivalent of the Yume Nikki eyeball world, a nexus world filled with bloody body parts, being not TOO graphic compared to what other fangames have done. But the deeper you go, the deeper things get... wrong...

The nexus worlds are rather abstract. A snowy lake, a pastel forest, an ocean. But the deeper you go, the more things start to get specific. Things start to feel closer to her memories. And these are where the game dives into Sometsuki as a character. You can tell these are the areas that are clearly traumatic for her. But the game doesn't just hide the horror here, there are many horror easter eggs hidden in the cuter worlds, and the deeper worlds often contain the most comforting areas alongside the scary aspects. And this is where I think the character of Sometsuki lies. She buries and masks her memories due to her trauma, trying to hide her pain. But the trauma hasn't gone away, it's just well hidden. It leaks into the nice dreams she builds for herself, not letting her forget. The game's only horror effect, the headless effect, interacts with a surprising amount of areas in the cuter worlds. Sometsuki's dream world is lie. Her cute room is a lie. She buries her past, to avoid confronting what she's seen and is implied to have done.

One horror area is actively blocked off by boards and boxes you have to smash through, physically breaking down the walls she put up. Another requires her to continuously return to a room, similar to Yume Nikki's uboa event. But this time, every time you return to the room the woman inside is doing something different. This character appears in a variety of areas, obviously important to Sometsuki. It's like you have to go through her entire relationship with this person before uncovering what Sometsuki doesn't want to see. I think this, the way people bury what they don't want to feel deep inside and ignore the way it tears them up, and the difficulties of breaking through that habit and confronting the darkness, is the theme of Ultra Violet. Ultraviolet: A colour you cannot see, but is nontheless present everywhere you go. This is the overarching theme of the game, how one's demons can lurk within them even when they try to suppress things. It explores how trauma can manifest even in people who seem fine. Sometsuki doesn't come across like the more obviously depressed protagonists of the other fangames, but she is nonetheless suffering through her mask of tranquility and happiness, a mask she wears so well she believes it herself. The game commits so hard to its theme of hidden scars, that some horrific imagery is only visible by going out of bounds, and isn't allowed to be seen in normal gameplay. This doesn't make the cute stuff all a lie though. Ultra Violet has darkness lurking under the surface, but it can be very lighthearted and soft too. Sometsuki's memories contain a lot of gentle areas, maybe even more than the horror themed ones. Despite what I have said about darkness lurking under the cute facade of many of the lighthearted worlds, that doesn't invalidate the comfort they provide to Sometsuki, and the game understands that. It never frames the dark areas of Sometsuki's life as more 'real' than the happy ones. And in doing this, it pushes back on many of the theories about these types of games that interpret them entirely through suffering. Sometsuki has had a very hard life, one that she tries to bury, but as she works her way through her subconscious, she also finds a lot of buried memories of sweetness and tranquility. This game isn't a "this cute game is actually MESSED UP!" type of story. No, it is the story of a woman who has repressed her memories finally coming to terms with everything, the darkest parts of her psyche, but also the nicer places in her subconscious.

This is definitely one of the most standout aspects of Ultra Violet to me. It would have been so easy to make all of the deepest parts of Sometsuki's subconscious dark and edgy, but it doesn't. The sweet moments are just as much a part of the game as the scary ones. This gentle atmosphere carries through the game. While the eerie moments can be in-your-face, the happiest moments are often rather understated and tranquil. The peaceful areas are often as mysterious and open to theorizing as the scary ones. A bizarre shrine at the top of a hill in the countryside, helping someone in a blizzard and making a new friend, or sitting and looking out across a vast lake with the girl from the uboa analogue. The lasting image when I finished was not of a woman haunted by her past, but someone who made peace with what happened, the good and the bad. It's an unusually hopeful message for a Yume Nikki game. Overall, Sometsuki is one of my favourite Yume Nikki fangame protagonists. If Yume Nikki is about exploring one's subconscious, then the simple act of hiding Sometsuki's subconscious makes this game stand out from so many other fangames. Sometsuki is not an open book, so while the horror isn't as groundbreaking as .flow or even Yume Nikki, Sometsuki's relationship to the horror is what makes her such a compelling character.

If you'd like to play Ultra Violet, it is free to play on the Yume Nikki Online Project. It's incomplete and lacks an ending, but nonetheless I highly recommend it. It's both a cute and interesting game that does a lot in a genre that is hard to stand out in. I won't act like it's going to change your life or anything, but if you're a fan of Yume Nikki or surreal indie rpgs with horror elements, I'd say it's definitely worth a playthrough. It's cute, a bit scary, but overall very sentimental and sweet.

#ynfg #ultra violet

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yurufuwajukaiboy · 1 day

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