Junko - A 2018 "Yume Nikki inspired" game by P. Yoshi

Gosh, where do I even begin with this thing I'm going to call a "review"...?

I guess how about how I stumbled upon this game in the first place, maybe give a bit of background as to how or why this game maybe resonated with me so strongly that I ended up getting quite frankly obsessed with it and it's subsequent related games from this developer.

It kinda started backwards in some ways. I remember briefly seeing it in the new hacks section on Romhacking.net, a hack just simply called Super Junkoid. So I grabbed it, stowed it away, figured it would be good to unwind with when I was in the mood for something. Unfortunately for me, that mood hit pretty harshly. I can't exactly recall, maybe it was a rough day at work, or having some really bad thoughts that day, but it was a day I felt really paralyzed and just couldn't bring myself to do just about anything. I was frantically looking for something to keep in front of me to keep my bad thoughts as bay, and I settled on Super Junkoid.
What was going to be a depressing night turned into a rather rare sensation for me, full blown fixation that led to me staying up until 3am until I had beaten the game. In fact, I was so in love with it, I loaded it onto my 3ds and beat it again while at work during my obscene downtime. 100% items both times. Then I showed it off on stream because I was just that blown away how much care and love was put into this hack. Of all the people to stop by during that stream, P. Yoshi had swung in, giving me tips, teasing me with tidbits I didn't know about before, including alternative routes and getting certain items early.
To top it all off? Even told me that getting sub 1-hour in game was actually how to get the best ending. So I did that. On stream even! And even went on to play the NES hack that came before it, Junkoid, to celebrate.

During those streams, however, P. Yoshi had teased about those fun little Metroid hacks being based on a game of theirs they had made prior. So my super sleuth best friend Demo, who was with us at the time, went to digging. And uncovered this game itself. A game made for a long passed Game Jam that no longer has its page up nor its entries available. We had found it on Internet Archive of all places, as opposed to the blogspot that used to contain the game's download.
I was elated to find the origin point of this new, gripping fixation I was developing over this Super Metroid Romhack of all things, to the point where I immediately began to make plans to stream it until... I thought about it for a brief moment. It wasn't a public download in its usual places, we found it on internet archive. Was it... intentionally put there? Did P. Yoshi have a greater reason for not wanting to keep up the old link? So I wanted to make sure I was doing this right, I reached out to ask permission. I would be devastated if I had stepped on the toes of a creator who honestly brought a big light to my life, even if they didn't know it.

The answer was a resounding yes.

So I streamed it, completely blind. There were no guides, no walkthroughs, and the only thing I had to go on was that it looked very cute stylistically, and that it was very Yume Nikki inspired.
The first thing you're greeted with directly after selecting new game is just our protagonist, Junko, being watched by a serpent in the middle of some inky void, presumably in a nightmare.

The game kindly guides you through with as little dialogue as possible to let you wonder what this world is, who this girl is, and what is going on. There is text. I know some Yume Nikki game enjoyers believe that text is a sin in these games, but honestly? I love the text in this game. It just adds flavor, it adds love, it adds much more to a Dream Exploration Game than something, like, say, .flow which is just text to be text for a broken mind. If you dabble around with the menu before anything else however, you're greeted with two things immediately available. The inventory, and options;

Along the way you'll probably inspect some of the surroundings, particularly noting the Pumpkin, and a locked door with a Lion insignia on it. You're pretty much railroaded into your first "effect", items that change Junko's sprite and have applicable uses, the Revolver. So having not played any Dream Exploration games, you might be led to thinking that it may be like a combat thing, right? Nope. And in fact, if you travel backwards, you're greeted with some mocking spiders that nudge you into the idea of using the effect. If you have it equipped and go back into your menu, you might even notice that Junko's portrait has changed!

Once you finally find the "Use Effect" button, Junko will use the revolver alright. Straight into the air with a jarring gunshot. To which rips you out of the Nightmare and back into Reality. You can poke around, check the Diary (save), but otherwise can do nothing else but go back to bed and resume her Nightmare. From here, you're able to start exploring much more "freely".

I'm putting quotations around that because, unlike Yume Nikki itself, Junko's work is very cleverly organized in a progressional sense. Needing certain Effects, or combination of Effects, to progress from area to area, or even to deeply explore certain areas even further. Instead of a free for all, just trying to find "the right connector" to find an Effect that is ultimately just for show, each Effect actually does something in the conglomeration of the Nightmare. I really like that! I like that my cute and funny effect actually has a use, even if it's only one!
The Nightmare is comprised of quite a few areas, and from the get go, you have the "main hub", so to speak, a barely exploreable forest, a strange Desert, and a cozy Snow land to start you off with easy access to some effects.

I won't go into much detail as to what resides in these zones, save for a lot of Pumpkins, and a lot of chatty Spiders. But there's a lot to learn from them! They'll give you some hints, some minor advice... or just talk bad about you. In fact you'll notice that's a running theme. Junko's got a lot on her mind and it certainly shows in this dreadful Nightmare. A lot of the music in many areas feels kind of dreary, or if nothing else, rather low energy. Which I think, personally, puts on the idea that Junko has a lot of pent up depression in much different ways than what's typical for Yume Nikki games. Because in a few of the instances where there's a very bad idea involved, she'll even outright not do it, and in one particular instance even outright says "No, I want to live."
Yet she's still plagued with this nightmare, surrounded by these spiders that are only moderately friendly at best, hints and messages that outright insult her, and even when you finally find the applicable place where that Bunny Politeness slider comes in? Well, don't let it be at 0 if you don't want to feel bad for her 'cause boy do they say some mean shit to the poor girl.
I don't like the idea of overanalyzing dream exploration games too too much, especially when most are made simply with the idea of just making these dreams fully fledged and showing them off with no real context needed or necessary. There is a lot to infer with Junko, some of which... I kinda even relate to if it's true. And maybe that's why I resonated so well with the game? But ultimately, even without that I think I would be having a wonderful time with this game.

The art is cute, its style very much of its own merits and distinct in my eyes. The progression feels fun without too much aimless wandering being a factor in this exploration game. The Effects are not only very well done in terms of use, but the portraits supplied with it are an excellent touch with a bonus labor of love feeling for it. The dialogue with what text there is was very well written, even if most of it was short lines here and there for banter. The puzzle solving aspect for each area felt clean and fluid and extremely intuitive, I had honestly only felt stumped on like one or two things and still managed to figure them out before too too long.
I spent a whole near 8 hours in this game. This free game. Made by a single dev for a Game Jam no less. I'll be really honest, I've not played any sort of game that captivated me made by a solo dev, especially not a game jam game, for more than an hour at best usually. The only other solo indie dev game I've played I've put so many hours into like this? The Original Cave Story.

Maybe it's just me and how this struck me at what feels like the perfect storm, but I honestly would like to fit this into that silly "100 games that have left an impression on me" list because honestly? It deserves it. So much love and charm went into this cruelly beautiful game about a poor girl suffering a lengthy Nightmare. I don't really know how else to describe my feelings, there's just a lot of them I have for the game, and I'm just desperate to get people to see this game for themselves.

If you're a fan of Yume Nikki, or just a fan of general exploration games with some light puzzle elements here and there, or just like really nice spritework and cute girl adventures;

Please play Junko.*

*I will note that there are some thing to know about this game in case any of these bother you; There is blood, you can kill the spiders, there are things that can "kill" (wake you up forcibly, no viscera involved) you, artistic nudity (no discernible bits but still implied), pretty crude language especially from the bunnies, generally unsettling areas and vibes, and does have implied drugs (pills and needles) scattered about in some areas