Nirvana Pilot Yume

i may not have played much but i absolutly loved it, the levels are somewhat difficult, the last 3 took a few tries to complete but i made it without getting below 30 % nirvana sync. apperantly not that many have completed all the tracks (the first track has 70% completion rate but afterwards every track is below 50% of the playerbase) the game has great graphics and i think most space lovers will like this solo racing game, even if its not really racing. 10/10

It is with some regret that I find myself having to express a negative judgment on a video game created by Italian developers, especially when I have to start by highlighting very silly issues like grammatical errors and lack of care for the script. But let's try to move beyond this, as I consider these problems comparable to receiving a book with pages full of holes, something that shouldn't directly impact the work itself but rather the quality of the edition, if we want to call it that.

Nirvana Pilot Yume is essentially a racing game with the addition of a visual novel-style narrative set in a futuristic space world in a society with aesthetically vaporwave tones (like the entire game's style), hypersexualized (in attire and customs), and culturally close to Buddhism. Particularly on the latter, as someone who has studied this cult minimally, I can say it's appreciable to see that whoever came up with the idea knew what they were dealing with, and it fits quite well with everything.

This is also visible in the piloting modes of the spacecraft, which require a pilot and an "eye," a secondary pilot external to the ship, who connects to the primary pilot through a form of meditation to give them sight. Throughout this, as Mitur says, forming bonds with your pilot is expressly discouraged to avoid interference in nirvana sync. In short, one must adopt an approach of detachment from bonds, much like in the philosophy of some Buddhist currents.

Nirvana sync, the state of harmony between the two pilots, will rise and fall based on choices made in dialogue, loading a bar, and ONLY ONCE in the game will it be possible to spend nirvana sync points to perform a certain psychic action towards a character. I don't understand why such an interesting mechanic was only used for this moment, which will have no impact on the story. It seems almost like an afterthought.

The story is at the level of low-quality drama, with the typical protagonist making the same mistakes that caused his torment, which is overcome relatively easily without any particular development. The same goes for secondary characters and their relationships.

There's a sentimental component that can also border on the sexual depending on our choices, but it completely lacks depth and versatility.

As for gameplay and racing, it's a linear obstacle course, without much challenge and even with a mechanic used only and solely on one track, namely the ability to slow down to overcome a specific otherwise insurmountable obstacle due to speed.

Now... After you've told me that piloting these ships correctly requires harmony, how can you not introduce a mechanic that could cause problems during the race if we have low nirvana sync? Just to give an example. It would have been a great opportunity to add difficulty, perhaps by altering the track, disrupting the player's view with a glitch effect, or making the vehicle difficult to maneuver.

The game could be described in two ways, one more or less good and another seemingly bad.
• The first, the prologue of an interesting project.
I'm not one to complain about the length of games, but here we really have a narrative, along with gameplay mechanics present but not utilized, that almost makes you think this is a prologue of a larger game. Which I would gladly play, moreover.
• The second, a flash hentai game.

Despite everything, I emphasize again that there are appreciable things in the game, including its aesthetics and some elements related to the game world, such as the fact that races are so central to everything that they are also used to solve geopolitical problems without resorting to intergalactic wars. This places a significant responsibility in the hands of the pilots.
If the project were to be revisited in the future to create something serious, I would be ready to give it another chance.
Furthermore, the vaporwave soundtracks are quite charming.

I quite liked my time, and the romances were cute. But the racetracks are too short to be able to enjoy the musics and gameplay, and the past "incident" was not an "incident" and is too quickly resolved.

This game is a very interesting mix of genres: visual novel and arcade racer. The story is about a retired pilot (the player) who is approached by an up and coming pilot, Yume, to be taken under his wing in order to become a pro. It's got a nice vibe/aesthetic to it, I like the initial premise, and the music is pretty good. However, I have some major problems.

In terms of the racing sections, I despise these tracks; I can barely see what's ahead of me and it's somewhat difficult to gauge jumping distances with this camera perspective. Some tracks also have dead ends that instantly kill you, so tough luck. You have a limited number of tries to get them right in story mode, and it sucks you can't do practice runs but there is an arcade mode for that at least. Doesn't help that the tracks themselves don't have particularly interesting designs which makes it even harder for me to come back to.

Safe to say I'm not a fan of the racing, but what about the VN aspect? Well...I'd consider it the better part of the game but that's not saying much. As I mentioned, I like the premise the story is built on, but the game is so short there's barely any time to develop the characters, flesh out their dynamics, or explore the world. Everything happens in a short hour and the game ends just as I thought it was getting started. The writing wasn't anything spectacular but it served the game decently enough for what it is, however I need to mention the incredibly forced romance aspect, in which you get the choice to be intimate with the characters. Or should I say non-choice, cause before I knew what was going on Yume started stripping, and I really didn't want to get down on my young protege, especially given the fact that I just met her. I'm down to see a titty or two, but you have to earn that. There needs to be development before a stage like that can even be reached, but that's impossible in this game because of it's short length.

Overall, this game is missed potential. Doesn't really do either genre too well which is a shame. Best part was the music. I don't hate it but I don't love it either, and since steam doesn't have a "thumbs middle", I'm leaning more to the negative on this one.

If it's going for dirt cheap in a sale and you've got a few hours to kill, you can pick it up. It'll be mildly entertaining for those few hours, but you'll probably forget all about it five minutes later. It's nothing special.

Good music and decent story, but I'm not a fan of this kind of gameplay. For those of you who never played SkyRoads (like myself), the 'race' is an obstacle course like those endless runner mobile games. Lots of trial and error. Only buy if that's what you're in the mood for.

Some interesting ideas and art, but not really fleshed out or polished. Also very quick and short.

On the gameplay side, they ditch the gravity and fuel mechanics of the original Skyroads and lower the perspective. This makes it harder to gauge jumps and gaps, and is honestly a cheap way of introducing difficulty.

It would be an interesting game if they improve at least one of the three areas of visual novel/plot/world, gameplay, and graphics. As is, it feels more like a demo that was built up a bit so it could be sold on Steam.

The setting has some promise, but the gameplay does not deliver on it.
It's neither a good visual novel nor a worthwhile successor to Skyroads.

Ah yes, the most famous SkyRoads-inspired game. In other words, hardly famous because barely anyone seems to remember SkyRoads.

That aside, it's a decent game overall. Courses are a bit short and simple imo, but they're still fun. Music is good - just note that its post-'80s style is nothing like SkyRoads's dream-like synth. The romance feels rushed and even tacky at times, but at least the overall story's pretty good - an eye and a pilot at large with their selves. The biggest flaw by far is its length. A first playthrough is only an hour long, and especially for $10 US (though this DOES go on sale!), there's a lot more room for both story and gameplay. Regardless, Nirvana Pilot Yume is a fun one-off - especially for those who loved SkyRoads.

Racy racing.

Nirvana Pilot Yume is two parts visual novel, one part space racer developed by Dev9k. You play as Eye Aldaine, once a legendary Eye in the GURU races, you’ve fallen from grace after an accident killed your racing partner. An apprentice called Yume approaches you and asks you to pick up racing again and train her and over the course of the game you do just that, while also romancing several characters.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect going into this game, I mainly picked it up because I liked the music in the trailer and it was on sale for less than $1. I’ve left it feeling somewhat disappointed. It’s not terrible, but I don’t really see it as being worth the time or money to play it.

Positives:

• The art for the VN side of the game is fairly well done. Yume does have a bit of a weird feature under her nose but other than that the character design is good, and I really liked some of the scene backgrounds.
  
  
• The four characters you have interactions with all have pretty distinct personalities, and the three of those that are romanceable characters are well differentiated. Each one even has their very own sex position. Speaking of which, the sex scenes weren’t as over the top as I had expected them to be. I don’t think the game would be worse off for not having them, but they didn’t feel gratuitous or anything.
  
  
• The music is excellent, some great synth-y stuff and it fits really well with the game.

Neutral:

• I didn’t find the story particularly compelling. Maybe it would have benefitted from a little more background info about the world the game is set in. It feels like a character drama but because its set in a completely different time and place that we’re given little information about, I don’t think it quite worked.
  
  
• I wasn’t particularly impressed by the visuals for the actual races. Now, I know that they’re trying to channel SkyRoads and in all fairness I can definitely see the similarities. Having said that, I did feel like the levels were a bit too sparse and I don’t think the low poly look was particularly well done. It ended up feeling more like it was cheap artwork rather than trying to play off of that nostalgia. Maybe that’s just me though.

Negatives:

• It took me just over an hour to finish the game on my first playthrough, which for a game that costs $7 and only has replay value if you care about achievements, isn’t really good enough in my opinion. I think a base price of $2 or $3 would be much more reasonable.
  
  
• The controls for the racing part were really inconsistent. Sometimes I could double jump, other times I wouldn’t be able to or the second jump would be super shallow. Sometimes my first jump would be really high, sometimes it wouldn’t. Sometimes I’d slide fairly far after holding the button down for a second or two, other times it’d be a real struggle to move. It’s not like the speed is fluctuating often, you only have to brake occasionally, so I really could not understand why it was so inconsistent. It was rather frustrating.
  
  
• The devs do give a warning at the start about flickering and how it may effect epileptics, but even so I wish they’d have toned it down a bit. I’m not epileptic, though I do have fairly sensitive eyes, and some of the racing levels have so much flickering in them that I found it fairly unpleasant to look at.
  
  
[*]I regularly noticed typos and/or poorly constructed sentences throughout the game. It didn’t really seem like it had been proof-read.

Verdict:

The music that initially drew me to the game did not disappoint, but the rest of the game did. The story isn’t particularly compelling and its made worse by lackluster writing. The racing side of the game is frustrating due to inconsistent controls. I wouldn’t recommend picking it up, especially not at full price.

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if you liked skyroads in the 90s, this should be a no-brainer. you control a jumpy spaceship on colorful obstacle courses while listening to excellent synthwave music by hungarian band retroxx.

even after all the nerfing and with my hands not letting go of the brake I still died plenty of times, it wasn't always clear what's safe to land on, but I really appreciated the music not stopping or restarting, it would've been really annoying.

10 levels, relatively short and easy, especially if you have any kind of video game skills (I don't), and between levels you're presented with a visual novel and several choices. nothing exceptional, but you'll need more than one playthrough to get all the achievements, and if you still want to keep playing (or listen to the music), there's an endless arcade mode.

there are resolution options, windowed mode, separate volume sliders, a retro filter toggle (only during races, not in the menu), but it's a bit disappointing that you can't access these mid-race, and when you quit a level, you're shown the company logo, language select and epilepsy warning again, and quitting the game itself resets volume levels.

controls aren't rebindable, but most things have alternate keys to press (or you can use a controller), but the control scheme can only be seen as a loading screen and it disappears as soon as loading is done. they could've added a 'press any key' prompt, or the same screen to the main menu. and there should be a way to choose dialog options with the keyboard, as that's the only time you need the mouse while playing.

so it's kind of a mixed bag, but for the price I paid and with such awesome music it's definitely recommended, and hopefully more similar games will start appearing eventually.

Nice game. Story is like a thoughtful sci-fi short from a beginner writer, it has enough ideas to carry it forward. Racing is chill, not very precise, but it's fine. VN parts are painless, no jank. The romance is not as obnoxious as I feared, it fits the atmosphere, nothing salacious or tone-deaf. The racing could have been fleshed out more with more interesting tracks.

Nirvana Pilot Yume has a neat 80's graphic style and pretty cool futuristic romance story. Racing in high speed and quite tense. Only short coming is the race course has no checkpoint and too short in length. In discount price is still worth of it, recommended!

Gotta Love quirky, inspired games. A combination VN/AG racer (lite)... Who'd have thought?

Pro's:
-Simple racing that functions as a part of story
-3 romance options
-Consequential choices
-Lovely Women. (R-Rated Nudity)
-Cool, vibrant artwork
-Great music
-cyber-punk-ish vibe
-Bargain Price
-Story is good for Multiple replays.
-Arcade Mode if you just want race.

Cons:
-Short - Left me wanting more.
-No CG gallery.

The racing is very straightforward, mostly based around the player learning the tracks. Despite it's simplicity, it can still induce, nail-biting, edge of your seat excitiment. Visibility can be an issue, but after a while i realized it added an additional layer of challenge. They ever placed a few "not so obvious" secret tricks to the tracks, which I always find awesome.

The story doesn't attempt to re-invent the wheel, but despite the limited time to tell the tale, it ends up being compelling. I found myself thinking about the choices I was making and caring about the outcome my choices caused for the characters.

The amount of available attempts you get during a race is affected by dialogue choices... another really inspired mechanic.

Two passes took me about 2 hours, 3 would probably take a player about 2.5 hours, to get all outcomes and check out all the romance options. I got a "bad" end my first time... and this in particular was really cool in a VN, Getting the bad ending depends on how well you perform during the race, instead of merely depending on a story choice. I suspect that there are at least 8 possible endings, 4 "OK" 3 "BAD" 7 1 "GOOD"... maybe more...

This one took me by surprise... I would love to see more games that had all the options this game has. A user-driven story, an action mechanic, mature content and a snazzy soundtrack.

While the premise of visual novel and racing game sounds awesome on paper, the execution is very poor.

The visuals are nice, the VHS vibe with 1980 cyan and pink colors is gorgeous to look at, the story is mystical and interresting but the gameplay is absolutely horrible.

I wish I could say that it's purely skill based, but in the end, luck is the only factor that matters when controling the ship.
Tracks are sloppily put together, there are small gaps in the environment over which you can pass without any problems, fall trough or even get stuck for eternity. Several parts of the track are also based on pure luck with no proper thought put into it. Go to the left and proceed? Or turn right and have absolutely no chance to finish the race because the route you chose was not intended for you to drive on - what kind of gamedesign is this? If it was atleast a tougher route which leads back to the main track, okay - but it was made to kill youor never properly tested.

But the worst part are the controls. The jumping is an absolute desaster. The game never communicates that there is a double jump, however, there is one and you need it - the problem is, it only works in 70% of the cases. Jump height is inconsistent, sometimes the double jump works, at other times it does not at all - it seems too often that if you jump once, the game thinks that you are still in mid-air, even while on the ground for several seconds.... only to have you execute a whimpy leap over an obstacle, killing you.

Unity is an easy to learn engine with a lot of tutorials, games like these have been pulled off flawlessly in the last 30 years so it baffles me how the basic gameplay and controls falls so badly on its face.

I hope for a patch soon but for now I cannot recommend it at all.

I don't usally review a game, but when I do... GOTY!!!
Novel is awsome, Music is Great and artworks are simply Wonderful!!!!!!
A true retro-game as the old good ones, in which the player must learn every frame in order to win races.... if not you loose and restart.

Of course there are some bugs to be fixed and optimizations that can be done, but it's an excellent first release from this team!!

Hope you guys will publish more games like this!!

I love the concept for this game - visual novel + SkyRoads (which was an amazing DOS game where you piloted a little space car hopping along interstellar highways) is such a good, fresh idea. Nirvana Pilot Yume also throws in a great synthwave soundtrack as well as an artistic style that reminds me of 80s anime and vaporwave music videos. The visual novel aspect of the game is really well written, and the dialogue is enjoyable and the sex scenes natural and non-cringy.

The racing sections are a little rough at the moment - I think my biggest problem is that the tracks are REALLY hard, or at least the difficult bumps up dramatically after the first track, which is dirt easy. It's quite hard to see what exactly is coming your way, because the vantage point is directly at the horizon whereas in SkyRoads, you had somewhat more of an overhead view, and thus more time to react and move your ship around obstacles. In Nirvana Pilot Yume, I feel like there's almost no time to react at all because stuff is coming at you so fast, and the collision detection is VERY sensitive. The brake option also doesn't seem to do much at the moment but pull the camera in closer, and currently when I try slowing down in all tracks after the first one, the speed meter at the top doesn't change. (Not sure if this is a bug or not.)

The difficulty of the tracks might turn some people off, since I believe it is mandatory to pass a certain number of them to progress to the true ending... I myself have gotten the "bad" ending twice because some of these races I just haven't been able to beat. =( You have to restart from the beginning when that happens, which isn't terrible since the game's not too long, but if some kind of Save File option could be patched in at a future date, that would be excellent.

Overall, if you like old anime and don't mind hard games then this is worth checking out simply for the ＡＥＳＴＨＥＴＩＣ, as the kids put it these days. I'll keep practicing in Arcade Mode and hopefully get a better ending for Yume in due time...

EDIT: As of Update 1.5, any little issues I've had with the racing gameplay have been RESOLVED. There is now a changed camera angle to make things a little easier to see, the brake has been fixed and practicing the courses over and over again is a blast. There's still some challenge here and there but it's reasonable.

Future things I'd like to see? Maybe extended tracks could be added later, or perhaps ya'll could save those for a sequel. A gallery mode with some unlockables like concept art would be fun.

Mad kudos to the devs who have been listening to the people on the Steam boards and implementing this stuff bit by bit. They even put in a special CRT mode in which makes the screen look awesome and fits the game's feel perfectly. *clap*

I had to crash endless brainpower-driven and super expensive starships before seeing a nipple, but boy, I liked it!

I think it depends on my undeniably low skill as a pilot and on the tracks being a real challenge (that I didn't expect at all from a game being partly a visual novel)

I was first draw in on Twitter a few weeks ago when I found out the guys were from Estonia as well and I saw the demo link. The first try of the demo was nice but I didn't go wow on the first run. Then last week I saw the latest visuals and heard the soundtrack ( the soundtrack is P H E N O M E N A L - I was walking the dog out and kept on whistling it for half and hour) and I was hooked.

Yesterday saw it out, needed a break from grim strategy games and programming, and decided to give it a try. I really like it, I was not 100% I would, but after one hour and half I can honestly say I do.

The writing is good and flows well, the characters are teasing, the seduction is well handled without getting on the gross side, and the races as said above are really challenging to beat!

I found a couple of super minor bugs (nothing ruining the experience but worth fixing for an update), will PM you the details.

Good job guys, really good job!

I was skeptic, basically, everything nowadays promises us good stories and compelling characters. Since I love the style and music I decided to give it a try, so yeah, I started the game without expecting too much except some eye candy.

And I was wrong. Like, DEAD WRONG. Why? Because this product is a little gem: interesting characters and story, original lore, lovely gameplay.
On top of that, I was used to playing videogames since the early 90's and it was really a nice surprise to experience the same type of vibes/feeling from that time.

I'll be 100% honest, I basically bough this because of the soundtrack and aesthetic of the game, thinking that the racing was the primary focus which it's basically 50% VN / 50% Racing.

I also thought potentially was a lewd game with gratuitous nudity but was pleasantly surprised to find out this is actually a great VN that does have nudity but only advanced through your choices and also actually reflect back to the story elements and have meaning.

Man, while it's relatively short, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with this game and found the writing actually good and the characters all loveable. Will be looking forward to more games from the dev.

https://youtu.be/IA1P3FGGeYA