Hello, I'm the GeoXGD from the LSD: Dream Emulator's wiki and sorry for my english. I'm the last person to still be active in the site. I still try to analyze more mechanics and publish my knowledge. I'm the author of the Day Type hypothesis, discoverer of the generation mechanic and first person to control the rarest event in the game. I stumbled upon your video and I'm really happy to see such a great research video. I want to share my knowledge with you, if you're still interested. 1) Day Type Subtypes. There are six different subtypes along with the main two types of days: A1, B1, A2, B2, A3 & B3. Each subtype decides the amount or rareness of several objects in most of the areas. For example the pterodactyl statue in the Bright Moon Cottage is A2 type object, " jumpscare giant head " is A1 & static giant head is A3 type object. After the B3 subtype of the dream the cycle repeats from the A1 subtype on the next day. Example: Day 001 - A1; Day 002 - B1; Day 003 - A2. More information is currently available on the updated Day Type wiki page. 2) The Generation Mechanic. There's a mysterious and complicated in-game algorithm which uses the player's observations and actions to create the contents of dreams, place the rare events or objects. I'm the discoverer of this mechanic, and there's a large research page is on the wiki now. This mechanic proves the ability to repeat and replicate any dream in a new game walkthrough. I was able to repeat a 16 year old generation of the Day 001. I also found out that the mechanics of the dynamic links is fully dependent on the generation mechanic and therefore any walkthrough ( chain of actions ) can be memorized and replicated in other playthroughs on any device. That's pretty much the generation mechanic. You can find more of this on the wiki. 3) Giant Astronaut's Landing. It is the most unique and rarest event in the game. I was the first person to discover the logic of this rare event happening. Basically, the Gray Man's flash causes the link to become pink usually ( it seems to mean the possibility of a rare event ). If such link leads to the Bright Moon Cottage during B type day, the astronaut is very likely to land. I spent a lot of time to find a 100% repeatable chain of actions and publish it on the wiki, however, recently i discovered that because of the timer influence in some dynamic links and difference in the game's speed on different devices, it is impossible to perform the needed chain of actions to get the wanted generation with the rare event. In spite of this, i removed my tutorial from the giant Astronaut's page, and added basic knowledge about the gray man's relation to this rare event. 4) The sky color. It was preprogrammed to every location in the game, and has nothing to do with your observations. The color in certain location stay the same for the whole day and changes when the day switches. Same goes for fog. Sky details though is related to the generations mechanic, as well as other visual factors of the dream. The color of suns, moons, position of clouds and it's movement is related to the generations mechanic. That's all for now. I wanted to share even more but i feel like my text is already too much enormous. I'm ready to tell you anything you want to know about the game. Thanks for the video!
I don’t feel this game has anything to do with the drug LSD and is only a “Dream Simulator” that has some trippy dream sequences. Still a wonderful game for a smaller certain type of people.
I had a similar dream when I was a young kid. Had a weird figure in a trench coat and hat appear in some dreams, but he was a bit more of a shadowy translucent looking thing. I always assumed it was some sort of subconscious thought relating to similar characters I'd see around that time - stuff like the character present in the Gamespy logo, or the neighborhood watch logo. Something about those trench coat and hat figures with obscured facial features always seem to bring about some uneasy feelings.
Someone I knew bought this game at a local Japanese pop-culture import store in 99. A local club that had nights for drum and bass, industrial ebm, and a trance/experimental night would occasionally let us bring in his ps1 and play it on their projection screen. Good times.
@@AnomalyAnalysis yeah it was a pretty small club, 500 person max capacity, and the regulars got along with the owners and staff. It wasn't the first, or only, game that people did this with there. Older rhythm games like beat mania, stylistic and sub-culture appropriate ones like jet set radio, etc were pretty common.
@@AnomalyAnalysis I would also like to say that your editing skills and your creativity with openings and segues is better with every video. Your content started solid and is becoming artful.
@@aweminus this was in Pittsburgh. That club has been gone for almost twenty years now. There is probably places like this that exist but it would take knowing local scenes well and being somewhere with an active community.
As a deep fan of this game - I'm so glad someone is finally taking a real look at it. Almost every video on it is totally ignorant to how to actually play the game, just treating it as a trippy meme.
Excellent to see another invested fan of the game. Yeah, I think too many people look at this as some creepypasta horror shit, or "ooh, trippy giant baby head drug monster thing is a spooky screamer that I'll exaggerate a reaction on stream with". I've been playing this off and on for the past ten years and it's just really fun to look far into it and appreciate all the little details. The extra things like the dream journal and everything else is really interesting to look at and compare with the game itself.
@@AnomalyAnalysis :o ffs Ten years! They play it as a game, they take the visual experiencing with the eyes and thats it. And u are experiencing it inside Out and reaching for a meaning. Just like on lysergic acid. I've recorded dreams of each day but after 30 or smth i've paused my dairy . We( i was playing it with my gf) play'd in so called "hot seat" mode and i've got to play ingame odd days, and my gf got the even days ingame. And the algorythm of the game delivered very different but a continual experience. I've had one pallete of in game colors, models, location pattern, and my gf had her own.More like Real-life sorta experience - Kyoto, Violence district and so on.It seemed as it we both had our own storylines, like somehow the game algorythm managed to sepatate which player was in command of controls . It's ridiculous, but the moment i felt as the games algorythm had machine learning skills. It was a bit creepy and i knew that the code itself could be procedural based, like that even the code was a piece of Art . As of mystery the game delivered somewhat similar expierence to Twin Peaks series. Leaving "gaps". So the spectator(player) himself has to fill the missing parts of the puzzle.
Ive never played the game but I sensed there was something more to it than just "woooaah dude what the heck??". So I hope this video will give me the real deep dive
That's crazy that you can spawn giant head at the beginning of the game by looking down. That attention to detail by the developers doesn't just happen. Makes me believe there's so much more to this game that we've given it credit for.
I just did exactly that the other day completely unintended and without even knowing you could trigger it that way, just because I was fiddling with the controls. Gave me the jolt of my life :')
“that’s crazy that” we can get away with the exact same language that has legitimately hurt mentally ill people because it doesn’t count as ableism if it’s not literally launching a person out of a wheelchair into a pit of spikes for teh evulz while screaming the r-slur over and over into the heavens apparently
I never understood why people don't try to reverse engineer this masterpiece, yet scan every nook and cranny of triple A games that has nothing to offer. I hope someone can have a deep look in this game.
It would be really cool if someone would develop a version of this game for every other country aside from Japan. Could be like a series of games that introduces people to a whole load of cultural aspects of each country.
This game is pure streamer click bait waiting to happen. I’m so happy I found this video because it treated the game like an actual piece of consumable media with depth and dynamics worthy of analysis rather than some vacuous, opportunistic crap. Thank you for not being another “lol look at this weird thing” deal and taking it seriously enough to warrant some acute effort. Really enjoyed this.
Thank you kindly. Unfortunately, some of that click bait has already occurred. A good handful of people just reacting to any sudden event during the game in some shitty, goofy way with screaming and nonsense as though dream emulator was some impossible and outlandish enigma. It's nice to just present something in a genuine way. It's an interesting, cool piece of art, but people blowing their load over every little thing happening in game with these reactions is just so forced, boring and unnecessary.
Fun Fact: During an interview with Toby Fox, Kikiyama (creator of Yume Nikki) confirmed that he has played LSD Dream Emulator before the development of Yume Nikki. :>
I had a dream last night of the grey man and I haven’t thought about this game in years. I was in a western town and when I saw him I drew my weapon and shot one only grading the brim of his hat. When I tried to fire again the gun was out of ammo. He started to walk towards me, reached into his trench coat and pulled out nothing but his hand and pointed at my forehead and I woke up
All of the "liminal spaces" and "Backrooms" talk online recently has really just made me think of LSD. It was decades ahead of its time. I discovered it probably eight or so years ago, when I was diving further into my psyche and dream worlds and exploring that sort of subject matter, and while I didn't play through the *entire* game, it was extremely influential on me and remains something I regularly think about and listen to the soundtrack. I'm currently trying to become a video game sound designer, and I'd absolutely *love* to work on a remake of LSD, or at least a game heavily inspired by it. The dreamlike quality of its mythos and the semi-random events, that you're never quite sure the significance of, is just so entrancing to me. The fact that so many things are "apparently" or "theorized" plays into this perfectly. I like a game that can hold mysteries over twenty years after it's released.
Dreams can actually be prolonged indefinitely by frequently linking. Dreams ending seem to be based on a timer set at the start of each transition. With the use of DuckStation's rewinds, I can indeed confirm that the graph is based on how you interact with dreams and is not set at the beginning of one.
I reckon it wouldn't be as good. Maybe more technically and graphically amazing, but everything is nowadays so it wouldn't be so special. The janky, low-poly PS1 graphics are what makes it to me and just the fact that even back then they found a way to make such a special and mysterious game :)
I adore this game. Its the type where i want each and every bit of it disected, logged, and explained, but also one that seems so obscure i dont think that'll ever happen. Tho the lack of that may be what keeps me coming back every now and then. The ever present, seemingly everlasting mystery of it
I wonder if the original writer of the journals and the developers of the games would ever sit down and do an interview. I would love for some of these theories to get confirmed or denied. I honestly think it's super creepy these dreams happened around the time I was born, and now I'm playing it again after playing it the first time it was popular in 2011. I have to say, I am on day 112 and just now getting the hang of the natural world, it's HUGE. I've seen the black sky or "no sky" a lot after dream 90ish. I'm on a mission to actually complete the game this time!
I wish I could have a long discussion with the creator of the journal about dreams. I noticed that her dreams and my own kind of have a similar consistency of appearing long, somewhat realistic up until a certain point, and then taking bizarre turns where the dream eventually ends kind of abruptly. I'd like to know what sort of weird things interested her in her life that had potential influence on her dreams.
@@AnomalyAnalysis I agree! I think your analysis is GREAT btw, I don't know what it is, but I just love figuring this game out since not many others have. I am considering making an updated map with a guide, I've found some, but they don't quite show everything, including other things to see, and a lot of bridges aren't marked. It's also not marked on which side the entrances are to the buildings, I want to make that more clear as well. But in any case, your video inspired me to start taking notes of different things in the game, whether it's a theory or not. For example, one texture I saw on the ground of happy town and the natural world, looks exactly like acid tab designs. So the theory behind the developers being on drugs, only amplifies. I'm crazy intrigued by this game! I've also been playing with Google translate to translate what I can, from the black text cutscenes to the markings on the buildings. So again, thank you for this amazing breakdown, I appreciate your work deeply, no other RU-vidr has seemed to take this game seriously, and they think there is no meaning behind anything and it's just "trippy" but there is so much symbolism and depth here yet to be discovered. Great work.
Oh, not sure if this was supposed to happen, but I was up on top of the building in violence district, and instead of falling, it placed me immediately on the street. Weird note. 🤷♀️
Thank you kindly 😁 I enjoy the enthusiasm that people have regarding the deeper bits of this game. As for appearing on the street rather than falling, I've experienced this as well. I believe if you just walk forward normally, it triggers a fall. However, I think if you either walk backwards, or walk in any direction while looking up, you'll teleport safely to the ground for some reason. I believe it has to do with the camera position triggering certain events, much like how you can have the gray man pass through you if you look up to the sky. Keeping your camera neutral seems to be the trigger for a variety of different things. Looking up or down will often bypass them, from my experience.
@@AnomalyAnalysis ahhh okay, I'll have to test this theory. I also found something else out I've tested multiple times now, if you ever play it again, with the cloud room at the end of the long hallway of "WC" doors (what does wc stand for I wonder?) But I noticed holding the "up" button has made me go "through" the door into the clouds everytime. (Instead of being kicked to the back of the hall) It doesn't matter whether you let go after walking up and hold the "up" button after walking up, or just keep holding it the whole time, both ways have made it possible for me to go through the last ten times or so. Just something to play around with. Thanks again for the great video!
0:00 Video intro 4:30 Act 1: Introduction and Mechanics 11:12 Act 2: The Iceberg, Level One - The Sky 19:06 Act 3: The Iceberg, Level Two - The Iceberg 23:51 Act 4: The Iceberg, Level Three - Shallow Waters 27:34 Act 5: The Iceberg, Level Four - Body of the Iceberg 33:29 Act 6: The Iceberg, Level Five - Deep Iceberg 38:04 Act 7: The Iceberg, Level Six - Bottom of the Iceberg 42:12 Act 8: The Iceberg, Level Seven - Deep Waters 46:01 Act 9: The Iceberg, Level Eight - The Depths 50:35 Act 10: Dreams and Conclusion
I wish you went over the Diphenhydramine connections part more. The "grey man" is almost identical to a shared hallucination on Diphenhydramine, referred to users as the "hatman" - and the fact that the Grey Man erases flashback memory is incredibly relevant, as Diphenhydramine is known to cause permanent memory loss when abused on the level to hallucinate the Grey Man. What you stated, I personally believe, is wrong, as the player is not directly hallucinating the grey man, but the grey man is likely just an homage to the hatman witnessed on Diphenhydramine.
44:40 I always thought the weird sounds were coming from the pulsar next to the sphinx? I guess I never stuck around long enough to sniff out the source, it just sounded pulsar-ish. Also, the head texture is true to real life. The actual Sphinx has had its body re-covered in limestone, only its head is original rock from its initial construction. That's why the head looks kinda tiny and crumbled compared to the rest of it. That's a pretty good attention to detail, especially considering it was a last minute addition to the game.
Fantastically explained! This is my favourite game of all time, and even then I learnt new things from this video. I appreciate not leaning into the 'horror' aspects of the game and remaining passionately neutral. I wish not every surrealist artwork was put into the 'horror' category just because it has unsettling elements. Great video style, subbed!
the band, Alt-J, used a lot of art and assets from and inspired by this game for their third album, RELAXER. Not ashamed to admit that that's what got me into this rabbit hole of a game haha, (If only the album was any good) but either way really cool video. Instant sub for the presentation and atmosphere alone.
It's not the visuals that makes it quite special, the state of mind. If u take it with someone else u can finish each other sentences. As if u have a consiousness bridges
This is easily one of, if not my favourite iceberg explained videos I've seen so far! (Bonus points for it being about one of my favourite games lol) But yeah, this was amazing, keep up the good work man! :)
if im right the flashing of the water wasnt ever there because certain consoles used this method to trick the software into making it look transparent. this used to be the case on sega genesis and N64 games where they would do this allowing the console to make it look more transparent. this was the only way they could emulate transparency on these old consoles. also i think it had something to do with the TVs they were using at the time aswell. where this, with the constant lines going down your screen from the tv, would combine to make transparency
Glad to see an iceberg of this game! I had no idea about the Beams texture, it feels like the kind of the thing an artist threw in as a placeholder and forgot about replacing
Awesome video. I have been doing some experiments and I figured out something interesting about the violence district. If you go into the warehouse eith the chalk outline of a body and you stand on that tile on rare occasions you will link, and also rarely if you finish the night on that spot your dream will end with a red screen and you will fall over. The gray man also can spawn in that warehouse with the gunman. It is just incredibly rare.
Oh and one more thing the Kanji on the walls and floors of the warehouse seems to have some other meaning beyond just what the objects are. But it confuses google translate
The fact that this game is over 20 years old (will be 30 years old in 2028) and is still largely unsolved is insane. The algorithm that controls this game must be unbelievably complex and it feels like there are infinite possibilities that could happen. I don't know how they did all of this on a PS1 disc. It reminds me of playing Fallout 1 and seeing how complex that world is, too for a 1997 game. I would really like to see how this game really works under the hood and what variables it tracks for each dream. Seriously, this game was WAAAAAY ahead of its time its unreal.
It's always interested me that so many people have a sighting or hallucination of a dark figure wearing a hat and trench coat. From LSD trips to benadryl trips, or even dreams, I thought it was crazy that people have the same experience without even knowing that others experienced the same thing as well. My theory is that for a lot of people, a mysterious and perhaps dangerous person is someone shrouded in dark clothing, obstructing their body and their face. It just so happens that a lot of media portrays mysterious individuals as wearing a trench coat and fedora like hat, and that image stays in our subconscious, which is then tapped into when abusing these substances. That's the only reasonable explanation that comes to mind, and I'm 101% sure it's not some ghost or something because that's ridiculous, but you didn't hear that from me.
You can exit Moonlight Tower, there's a wall at the bottom that sends you back 100% to Kyoto Also in Kyoto, around the Tower there are opening at the center of the buildings surrounding it, if you go straight inside and touch the wall it will warp you to Moonlight Tower. EDIT : 31:27 should have watched the video first. Then by "no exit" maybe you mean, no visible door. Edit tried again : Got warped 2 times to Kyoto, then third time to Violence District... so not as consistent as I remembered, The warp Kyoto => Moonlight Tower is 100%
Ever since playing LSD, like ten years ago (still one of my favorite art pieces!) I've seen the grey/hat man a few times in my dreams. To the point of recognizing him. Recently, a few months ago, I dreamed that I was in a park. It was really similar to a certain Georges Seurat painting. I was on a colorful picnic blanket, with lemonade and cake. Through the crowd I saw a man in a suit and bowler hat, and we locked eyes. I've never been that active in my dreams, usually accepting what I see as what is going on in the moment. But as he started walking toward me I just remember thinking, "Not this guy." As he started walking toward me, I stood up and started walking away. I woke up as I broke Through the crowd.
this is actually really fuckin cool, yo. i never knew that this game was basically a backrooms simulator 20 years before the concept even existed. thats fucking rad. youre exploring chaotic assortments of human civilization that house entities lurking in specific locations or only appearing under specific conditions with properties that can warp you around to different stages? literally the backrooms lmfao i really wanna play this now. awesome video
Very late on this but that was a very enjoyable video! My interest in the game has increased as of late, so it's nice to know that as more recent the games get the more often the game is treated as what it is rather than the usual "wow! This is weird!" content there used to be years ago (although that was probably because the game has just begun to be known in the west at the time) The game reminds me of a lot of dreams I used to have when I was very young, where dolls or statues set around my house would transport me to various locations (most notably a strange checkerboard plane) One more thing, my theory for the gray man is that he's a representation of the fear of being watched or followed. Not only due to its file name implying it's some kind of spy, but also how the gray man himself is one of the only NPCs attempting to attack the player In any case I really enjoyed the video, and I'm looking forward to more people showcasing the game in this light and making more interesting projects with or inspired by it
This game is the literal definition of fever dream.. Especially in my case my dreams can be so bizarre and somehow familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time... My belief is that our deepest subconscious is accessed through dreams and can be through psychedelics as well... Im no psychonaut by any means but I have tripped a number of times and its one of the most bizarrely beautiful things ever.. Edit: Id also just like to add life after psychedelics.. At least if youre open minded is never the same and sometimes its hard to tell if youve been made more aware of something or just a side effect of drugs on the mind
took me a minute of soul searching & google searching but the song that plays verrry quietly in the background around 8 minutes in is from spyro 4: enter the dragonfly. track's name is dragon realms. dont think either akira nor osamu worked on that game, but that ukelele riff is unmistakable. maybe was sampled by either musician? cause it sounds rather remixed
Ah yes, Osamu used that song to sample in TV River, which is the specific track playing here. I'm not sure if other tracks in the game sample off anything else, but yeah, none of those two ever worked on the Spyro ost. I think it's always just been that Stewart Copeland guy.
oh thank goodness it was actually sampled, i was starting to wonder if i was mishearing it! i would have looked like an ass insisting it was spyro ost in that case hahaha, thanks for clarifying :]
I love this game so much - discovered it about 5 years ago and always end up coming back to play. Despite this, I still learnt a lot from your video! Thanks for posting :)
Black Space is like a reoccurring nightmare I once had. I would be stuck in a black void with pillars and I would feel extremely anxious and alone. It's pretty unsettling how much it resembles my dreams. I guess I'm not the only one who had a dream like that.
I believe that how the Dream Chart works is probably that Upper and Lower describe *WHAT* kind of dream you had, while Dynamic or Static described *HOW* you dreamed it. This probably runs on one of the most complicated algorithms, to be sure, but I think this is the basic premise and intent behind the dream chart. I would like more games just like this one for each country from across the world. I would not mind modding in a part in this game where you can have a dream where you turn into a girl or boy and you get to live life as one. I mean, some would say that that is why we have VR but I still want to mod in something like that into this game. First Dream: Good thing that was just a dream, and not your real home. Second Dream: I wonder if you've convinced him. Third Dream: Hey, at least you "checked out" of your illness.
Regarding Monument Park being mostly uneventful, I've had the buildings stretch vertically one time. Don't know how common/uncommon that event is. I have a few screenshots of it meshed in a GIF.
@ 35:00 Your explanation of the Beams logo cameo is lacking. In the instruction booklet included with the game, it's explained that the person who wrote the dream journal the game is based on had frequent dreams involving the Beams clothing logo. Outside Director's Company asked Beams for permission to include their logo and slogan "Basic & Exciting!" into the game. The dream journal itself is illustrated and published; it can be found in certain places under the name Lovely Sweet Dream. To understand this game, you should first read Lovely Sweet Dream. Many of the dreams have an english translation as well if need be.
This is where my gaming and music interests intertwine; I know and listen to Alt-J and the album where their third album (Called ‘Relaxer’) uses LSD as an influence, for example the singles and album cover uses locations of the game but the unnaturally fit to the tone of mood of the artwork melodically especially the use of Violence District on the cover of the single Deadcrush or the Temple on 3W and the use of other locations in it’s music video; oddly enough when the album was released the critics gave majorly a mixed response to it like how LSD was reacted in a mixed manner due to how odd it is to the point that later on it got it’s cult classic status; I wonder if Relaxer and LSD Dream Emulator are more similar than it seems to be?
I know this video is 2+ years old but “the gray man” is an entity often described by “experiencers” (people who have the misfortune or fortune to interact with the highly strange) and only shows to people going through dark times. For instance, people overdosing on Benadryl will often see the “gray man” or more well known as the “hat man” and will subsequently feel incredibly unsafe or at minimum uneasy. As for the “alien theory”. I wouldn’t say a “space alien probing the MC’s brain to erase memories” is the most accurate theory but rather the “gray man” is likely a thought form entity created by the universe to interact with humanity in bizarre ways. These things fly around in the physical waking plane in UFOs that don’t follow any sort of consistent design for some reason. It appearing in the MC’s dreams and erasing their memories could be a byproduct of it’s malevolent trickster behavior and it simply seeking to make the MC’s life miserable. The benevolent interpretation is equally valid. This world is very strange and this game is very honest about this oft neglected fact of reality.
Many thanks for the creation of it! It's extremely well made. I love this sort of template, and it really breathed some life back into this game for me.
great video so far. i"m 21 minutes in, gonna have to disagree with you about the developer not experimenting. look at his album artwork at 21:35. That's definitely representing a sheet of acid. I've done it before and its really hard to invent visuals like this without chemical assistance, inspiration from other artists experimenting, or deeeeeeep meditation. etc certain types of shrooms and other psychedelic substances were semi-legal ("not for human consumption") in Japan until the mid 2000's.
I used to love to a lot of drugs and play this game, I would get really into and think I was actually trying to help some dude have some cool dreams.reminds me of much better times in my life
I played this game for many hours and only now do I learn you can perform actions with the O button. I did play on an emulator with keyboard so I may not have missed it if I was using a controller.
@@AnomalyAnalysis No, i guess 2D was a wrong way of saying it. I meant 2D as in "boxed-in", like warioware. Not sure how to describe it. It was way more bizarre than LSD dream emulator
