It makes sense that a follow-up to Yume Nikki, the cult-classic Japanese horror game that just got its first official release on Steam, would receive an extremely weird first teaser. And this is certainly one of the weirdest teasers we’ve ever seen.
Yume Nikki has built up a niche fanbase since its 2004 release both for its uniquely disturbing, esoteric premise and its freeware status. Developed by a single, anonymous person, the game stars a girl as she travels through increasingly frightening dream worlds. It circulated around the internet after an English fan translation, and has since compelled players to theorize over what its barebones plot and bizarre imagery are really about. (There’s even a whole podcast dedicated to breaking Yume Nikki down.)
That fanbase shouldn’t be surprised by what’s in this teaser: a whole bunch of nothing. There are psychedelic patterns underscored with a young girl’s laughter and screams. Toward the end, a shaking pattern moves closer and closer to the screen, revealing the game name at the very end.
The whole thing runs for more than eight mind-boggling minutes. The teaser is hosted on the YouTube channel of Enterbrain (a.k.a. the publisher of Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu); combined with a countdown clock on the Yume Nikki website pointing to an official info drop coming sometime in the next two weeks, you might want to keep an eye on Famitsu and elsewhere for more in the meantime.
