Ideas for Yume Nikki: Fuji

Okay I guess I'll add some things

Pretty much came here to do that, after all \(-_-)/

NOTE: This page will have spoilers for Yume Nikki, Dream Diary and Fuji

General idea

Yume Nikki: Fuji is going to be an open-world exploration puzzle platformer where you can acquire a diverse range of different abilities by collecting effects. It's going to be a fangame of Yume Nikki and Celeste, and I think I can do a better job of making it a spiritual sequel that follows both of the base games' respective game design philosophies than the guys at Playism did with Dream Diary. (The spiritual sequel only to Yume Nikki, of course. As for Celeste, I already have a few ideas for Celeste 2. (Unironically))

I talked some more about it on this comment. (NOTE: The video has a little swearing and probably some other stuff I didn't bother to check.) You can look at the repost here if you're in my Discord server (yeah, WidgetBot can't jump to messages yet), but I'll also put it here

Story

A postcard from Mount Fuji sails onto the balcony of Madotsuki's apartment and invites her to gaze at it while she drifts off to sleep.

So she does that, and the magic of the mountain takes effect on her dreams.

It will probably have multiple endings.

I think there might be three for leaving the apartment: one by herself, one with the dream diary (if you attempt to save after finishing and suddenly realise that you can't), and one with the knife, which appears mysteriously just like the stairs if Madotsuki kills all of the significant dream NPCs (can someone say why the hell she sleepwalks to take it away if she picks up one of 24 eggs in the Nexus), with Madotsuki picking it up and equipping it automatically.

Effects

I wrote a list of these on my Discord server, but I'll paste and expand on them here

Honestly, this was kinda the main motivation for the whole idea for me. Well, that and the fact that both Madeline and Madotsuki are so mad at themselves and looked quite ambiguously young (at least until I heard about Madeline drinking and realised that she drives a car)

Platforming effects

• Frog: Allows for higher jumps (or further when on walls) and makes swimming faster.
• Umbrella: Toggles rain. Can be used for double-jumping and gliding like in Dream Diary, though it won't be as effective if it's raining or snowing.
• Fat: Makes Madotsuki heavier, allowing continuous trigger of mechanisms that require force. Can be used for ground pounding.
• Midget: Makes Madotsuki tiny, giving her floaty jumps, allowing her to walk through small passages without crawling (or in the first place) and disabling a significant amount of her abilities (mostly transformations), but allows her to clone herself and control/kill certain clones on command (limit eight, which is a lot honestly). Multiple clones can be selected and used for multiboxing. Only one clone is allowed to exist to revert Madotsuki. Moving one clone to another room discards other clones.
• Bicycle: Makes Madotsuki travel faster. Can do small jumps while on ground and be leapt off, making it suitable for mid-air/long jumps.
• Long Hair: Allows Madotsuki to dash in any direction. Her hair ties will drop when this happens. It recharges every time she lands.
• Blonde Hair: Allows Madotsuki to dash twice per room in any direction. Can be recharged upon landing if Long Hair has also been collected.
  I'm not quite sure how the hair abilities would affect Madotsuki's effect system yet. Seeing as each effect is single-file, dashing could preclude Madotsuki from using other effects and even reverting to an ineffectual state until the hair effect recharges. It could be construed as a challenge to only dash as a last resort when other effects won't help, but that still seems a bit odd considering how it's an exception breaking the flow of the other effects' common functionality.
  Oh well. It's a Celeste thing. This is what I signed up for
  I might have to make a table for this
  

  I can't believe they vilified the hair monsters in Dream Diary	Long hair unavailable	Long hair collected
  Blonde hair unavailable	Attempt failure	Hair ties drop; effects disabled Recharges when landing; effects enabled
  Blonde hair collected	Hair turns blonde (this is new); effects disabled Hair ties drop Recharges with item, room or respawn transition; effects enabled	Hair ties drop; effects disabled Hair turns blonde Recharges when landing; effects enabled

  Okay, you know what? It's fine actually. Midget would also prevent Madotsuki from effectualising until there's only one of her.
• Buyo-buyo: Makes Madotsuki a bit more flexible and agile, although she might have a bit slower acceleration to make up for it. I suppose she can also grab onto ceilings for a short period, or something. Maybe she can have an easier time landing jumps and climbing terrain with lots of ledges.
• Witch: Allows Madotsuki to fly. Definitely suits the ambience of tension in the Witch Island and will probably be used for some of the last sections of the game. I think making it capable of flying but having poor handling (e.g. slow turning speed and acceleration control) and limited vertical glide would make it a good balance with the other effects.

Environmental effects

• Yuki-onna: Toggles snow. Can be used to turn water into ice at a close range. Useful for turning lakes and splashes into platforms, and also summoning projectiles/weapons underwater.
• Neon: Tints the room colours. Certain things will react to changes in colour, usually by glowing. Honestly I don't know where I'm going with this, but there needs to be something...
• Lamp: Brightens a room when applied. It might also trigger mechanisms involving light. Also if NPCs are able to lose Madotsuki, this will probably help them find her. It's bad for stealth, and the Cat effect would be better for attraction (or not if you just want attention, not attraction).
• Poo Hair: Leaves flies to mark certain things. They last indefinitely, although they'll meander a bit for every room you traverse, and they'll reset every time you dream or teleport to the Nexus. Flies summoned after the eighth will be reused in a cycle.
• Oni: Can be used to summon thunder if it's raining, which can electrify certain things (including entire bodies of water with NPCs and stuff in them) and electrocute NPCs. I suppose she'd summon the lightning and have it strike at her position a few seconds after, and maybe it can be charged.

Interactive effects

• Knife: Allows close-range attacks of NPCs, and can also be thrown. Most NPCs will respawn, but some significant NPCs will never come back and alter the game drastically if killed.
• Flute: I dunno. Activates certain mechanisms controlled by sound and NPC interactions, I guess. Madotsuki will probably stand in place and reallocate most of the controls to flute-playing if it's used in detail.
• Nopperabou: Can be used to spook certain NPCs, I guess. Uhhh... maybe it can make some NPCs or other things that react to eye contact non-reactant, I guess.
  Okay I really have no idea what to do with this.
  Another idea I recently had was being able to phase through things, since it's ghostly, or throw your head somewhere since the effect's quirk is that it's detachable. But the Spirit Headband effect makes you ghostly... *sigh* Oh well. The second idea would make it a lot like Severed Head, but, maybe it can be a bit more challenging. Perhaps you need to join with your head to reeffectualise. Maybe you can still get noticed or caught in traps. Maybe you have to make sure that your body and head both don't die.
• Severed Head: Probably can be used to make some NPCs ignore you or react a certain way. Disables pretty much all platforming stuff while in effect, obviously, and it would have to have some kind of use that's a bit different to the Spirit Headband.
• Towel: Can be used as some sort of a cloak, I guess. Maybe it can be used to parry NPC attacks, like when they trick charging animals with a red cloth, or hide yourself or something. It can probably try certain things but I dunno what that'd be useful for, and I'm not sure I want it to be able to be used to hold certain mechanisms tight since effects should go one at a time.
  Not sure what else to do with this at the moment.
• Neko: Can be used to attract NPCs.
• Spirit Headband: Makes you invisible to NPCs, although I suppose it'd have to make you unable to interact with certain mechanisms as well.
• Stoplight: Toggles NPC movement, among other things.

Other effects

• Hat & Scarf: Can be used to become a snowman if it's snowing. Dunno what that would do.
• Medamaude: Returns Madotsuki to the Nexus when used, or wherever.

Worlds

Each world will have some sort of unique and interesting mechanic based on the elements they have that plays into the puzzle or platforming aspects of the game.

Here's a few examples I've come up with:

• In the Number World, you can observe the background, which is a copy of the map, figure out how it corresponds to where you are in it, and find hidden paths and secrets.
• In the Block World, you would normally be stuck on an XZ looping plane, unable to change your height without a lift from Mafurako. In Fuji, you're stuck on an XY looping plane, and you need Mafurako to move to another Z layer - even if it's just one tile across.
  There might also be a special XZ rotation event that completely changes things

Layout

Okay, lemme think...

Here's what I wrote in the Scratch description:
My current idea of the map at the moment is to start in the core of the mountain, housing all of the surreal dream worlds. (I'll probably discuss this with other people to see if it fits well enough thematically, but I think it'll do for now.) There are paths that would lead outside to four trails leading to the summit of Mount Fuji. Navigation works the same as in Yume Nikki: it is fast and straightforward to get somewhere if you know where you're going. There will be many puzzles whose solutions will be memorised over and over again as you pass through. Madotsuki will start on the dream balcony every time she falls asleep.

Super Mario 63 did a pretty good job at implementing open-world exploration into 2D platforming, so it'll draw from that a bit.

One idea I recently had is for her to see her "real" apartment when she gets to the summit, see herself sleeping, and pinch herself awake.

Okay I'm gonna need a diagram for this

Some of the threatening and big entities will also become secret bosses. These will include the Bloody Touching Monster, FACE, probably a horde of Toriningen, maybe the Aztec Rave Monkey, and the final boss of Dream Diary (but with a more fitting and pervasive interpretation. You'll see. You know the transition you get when you play NASU or view the instructions, and in Fuji, every time you die and spawn? The appearance will heavily involve that pattern. Honestly, I think the final boss of Dream Diary is way easier to organically integrate into the game than the Panacea PAP Station in AEWVS). Not sure whether they'll unlock effects or not.

I think there might be two variations of the final boss, one of them for going up the summit under certain conditions, and another one I forgot. I don't even remember at this point. I want the story to kind of be sensible and consistent, while still leaving room for mystery and interpretation.

Man, I'm really just throwing ideas at this like it's a splatter wall, aren't I :P

Misc

• Just got the idea to press a button to get up while opening the wardrobe on the Checkered Tile Path and be able to multibox with a full-size copy of Madotsuki. You'll probably be able to get to some unique secret with her if you don't die first

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