What a weird dream...

Nights Into Dreams (or just Nights for short, which is what ill be going with) is a 2.5D highscore-esc game that came out for the Sega Saturn in 1996. Its a game that doesnt tell you shit in any way and lets you do your own thing. I love it very much :)

i found out about Nights through Balan Wonderworld back in 2021 when it first came out.. i was really into BW for the designs and the designs alone (plus the aspect of missed potential that was That Game that spurred me so much that i actually have a google doc of me just trying my hand at cutting down the costume roster + rewriting the game... getting a bit off track here. this is a Nights shrine not a BW one!!!)
Most BW fans were also Nights fans (BW was supposed to be a spirital successor to nights etc etc etc) and would draw them together often. Night's design peaked my interest enough to look further into NiD and. well i bought it on steam :) and got A-ranks on every level :) and (NEARLY)* got every achievement :) i ended up liking it a lot.

*the only achievement i havent been able to get yet is the one for doing all tricks in one go. due to how the controls are in the pc version i am not sure how doable that is for me lol

funnily enough, it was an especially good time waster between my final exams- most of my a-ranks actually came from playing nights between the few hours i had free waiting for exams to happen lol. i have good memories of that time because of it... its very peaceful just sitting in a school room, with one or two friends, just chatting while playing nights in the background.

now im a Freak (platonic) for this stupid jester. i love them alot. their design is cool. their gender is cool (canonically nb/genderfluid- the creator literally said 'nights' gender is whatever you think it to be'). their game is cool. shaking this thing around like a dog toy.

the original game holds my heart, but there is actually a sequel to nights into dreams (nid)- nights journey of dreams (njod), a wii game from 2007. do i like it? uh. to be honest after playing quite a bit of it, not really.
it just isnt my cup of tea- i personally liked the open-endedness of nid's story, and the sort of liminal aspect it had to it. if thats the right word. njod holds things a bit too much together for my taste (bc now the game has actual cutscenes and voice acting lol), and i personally dont care about the two bri'ish kids. I also just prefer the artstyle and nights design in nid- njod is just Not My Taste. And, while entirely not the fault of the game as i was using an emulator to play njod, the controls kinda sucked ass and felt bad to control precisely. which is kind of what you need in a game like njod so you can go through rings and such.

did you know that they made nights british (british va) in njod and i didnt realize for a good chunk of time i was playing it. ...they make everyone british in that game now that i think about it. why.