I am, I believe unintentionally, the most experienced person with Neko Yume now.
Call To Adventure
I learned of this game from a video about the 2020 Haunted PS1 Demo Discs. Neko Yume stuck out to me for some reason. The original LSD never intrigued me, but something about this felt different. I downloaded a version of it, streamed it for a friend of mine one afternoon. It was neat. But it stuck in my mind. I heard it described as a simple game where you find four cats, a short game. But in my fifteen days, I had only found one cat. And I still didn't understand even a fraction of the world. Why were there pathways blocked off everywhere? Where did they go? How was I missing everything?
From how I describe it, you might or might not realize, I had downloaded the other version, the demo of the full version, which is much more LSD: Dream Emulator like than this version. I did not know this until two hours ago as of writing.
The Abyss
The next night, I did another 20 days of the game. I found one more cat, in an obvious place nonetheless. I'd spent maybe three hours exploring now, I was starting to understand the landscapes a bit - I theorized how the blocked path ways might connect, I found many secret areas that I'm sure most will never know exist. Yet still... I felt I was missing something. I went back to the video I'd learned of the game from, and it showed places I'd never seen. It reinforced that this was meant to be simple.
I took drastic measures - I decompiled the game's code, sifted through the functions, quivered and shook as I learned it was made with Playmaker. Unity decompilation is not clean, much is still hidden, but I read every scrap of code I could find, trying to understand how anything worked. I found mystery Monobehavior objects like "dont", and "ghostcat_003". I found an object that seemed to suggest the space bar was going to be used for some kind of gun that fired cats, yet where was this gun?! How I was I missing everything?
I slept. I worked. I kept thinking about it. This is the first Itch game I've ever played, the first game that's stuck with me in a while. I'm sure it's meant to be meaningless, it must be. Surely I'm just unlucky. Surely, the game is... Broken. The developer broke it at some point and no one but me has noticed! That must be it!
I came back at night again. Played again for an hour or so, thinking. Trying to understand the things that would appear before me. Maybe the sky mattered, maybe the cats only appeared during certain times, maybe me playing only at night was causing... Something. Why did the docks have no cat? What was the Kaleidoscope about? I had run out of ideas. My curiosity was at its peak. And so I resorted to my final trick; Looking at a YouTube video.
Within seconds I realized, their versions were different. I was not playing the same game.
Revelation
I downloaded the new version. I felt a relief unknown to me before. I had solved it. I was nearly done. As I wandered the changed landscape, I felt as though I had lived in this world for many years. It felt less like an LSD dream and more like a home. I theorized how the fields and the apartments were connected - not through space but through time. A place from long ago, now turned into a bustling city, connected only through strange ruins or mysterious beams of light. The oddities weren't unnerving or confusing, but comforting. I knew what they were, what they meant. I breezed through two cats, I solved a puzzle for the third... And then I was stuck again.
I searched for a long time, maybe half an hour. But it wasn't anywhere. I was... Stuck again. I was wandering familiar landscapes again with no idea where I was to go. I had a lot of time with my thoughts during this.
I thought about the inhabitants of this world. They existed here, forever. It felt that, maybe I had existed here too, in a different way. But I was so... Distant, still. I felt a moment of loneliness as I imagined being in a land like this, so separated and different from everything else. I could not stay here. Even if I did, I would not belong here. This world was made for these cat beings, it makes sense for those cat beings, not to me, not for me.
Even through all my exploration, my decompilation and my research, I didn't understand so much. How did these worlds *really* connect? What did the author mean by all of this? How do they feel about it? Do they feel embarrassed, or proud, or alone, or... Maybe they haven't put any thought or feeling into this at all. Surely it must all be nonsense but... Maybe not. Maybe each part is a metaphor, not expressed with intent to be understood, but just to be expressed. This world existed, regardless of if it meant anything or not.
It reminded me so much of my very first creative expression. A tiny map I had made in the Hammer editor. I was inspired back then by another game, The Beginner's Guide. That map was so simple, yet to me, even now, it stills means so much. It has so much of who I am in such a simple package. When I die, that map will remain, even if only in a dusty archive no one checks. Some day someone might load it up, explore it for five minutes, wonder what compelled me to add what I had added, to do what I did. Two separate minds, exploring the same space, connecting in a way words can't.
The End
As these thoughts came to their conclusion, so was my journey. I knew where the last cat was, I could hear it, I knew it was there from playing the other version, but it just hadn't spawned in until now. It was at the top of the apartments, a set of apartments that I knew inside and out. I checked in on the statue below the stairs one last time. I ran past the hidden room the cultists downstairs occupied. Past the tiny creatures observing and consumed by garbage. I zipped past the patrolling cat, endlessly checking on static filled TVs.
The music was serene and simple, befitting the climax I was approaching. I could hear my destination a few floors higher, stuck in a trash can.
On the next floor, a mystery repeated in my mind. Why was this floor empty in this version? Where was the rocking chair that you could stifle the movement of, the art, the admirers who would change form as you approached? What was the music that played as you wandered those empty halls?
I was nearly there. This was all almost over. Soon, I may never revisit this world, this world I had come to love in my own way. There remained so many unanswered questions. Yet this was my purpose being here, my goal, my destiny. The cat was pulled from the bin, blasted into the sky. I returned to the hub to claim my reward, my ending. The floor drifted away as it was destined to do. I was presented the final room. I looked upon all of the cats that had been given thanks. Did any of them understand the world they had been used to craft? A world that would long outlive them, as it would its creator, and me, and you? Could even I understand?
I looked at the command in front of me in final area: "Wake up". It could mean so much, or so little, and it was for me alone to decide. I stepped in.
Post Credits
From here, my path will branch away from this game.
In some ways I wish this experience could persist, that I could remain lost in this world, continuing to explore and attempting to understand its inhabitants. But I can't. Even if it is still being worked on, I may never see it fully realized as my life takes me elsewhere. I and its developer will never truly understand each other, even if for a while it felt as though I was in their place.