Nidana

About Nidana

Nidana is a single player simulation game with a horror theme. It was developed by lvl374 and was released on July 27, 2025. It received positive reviews from players.

She continues to dream. A first-person dream simulator where you explore a corner of a dream.

Genres & Tags

Play Modes

Single-Player

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Reviews

87%Audience ScoreBased on 94 reviews

graphics12 positive mentions

gameplay4 negative mentions

Stunning and unique abstract visuals with impressive geometric and surreal designs, creating a captivating art experience.
Atmospheric and immersive sound design that complements the game's dreamlike and hypnotic environment.
Short, engaging walking simulator with some satisfying puzzles, appealing to fans of experimental and art-driven games.

Visuals can cause eye strain, nausea, and headaches due to high contrast, rapid movements, and lack of anti-aliasing.
Lack of traditional gameplay depth, narrative clarity, and interactivity makes it feel more like an art installation than a game.
Performance issues and optimization problems, including frame drops and difficulties on certain hardware, detract from the experience.

graphics
40 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
30% positive mentions, 62% neutral mentions, 8% negative mentions
The graphics of this game are highly unique, featuring striking, minimalist, and abstract visuals inspired by sacred geometry and liminal spaces, creating a mesmerizing, psychedelic atmosphere. While visually stunning and artistically curated with smooth performance even on older hardware, the art style can feel repetitive over time and lacks the polish and variety seen in similar titles. Overall, it’s best appreciated as a moving art exhibit or surreal experience rather than a graphically dynamic or narrative-driven game.
- “Very unique and had some very cool geometry and mathematical artwork.”
- “The visuals are a fairly loose liminal black and white art style, with a heavy emphasis on stairway, cube, and spherical meshed objects aggressively rotated.”
- “Super clean and awe-inducing visuals that are utterly gorgeous.”
- “Coupled with the samey visuals, it can start to stagnate surprisingly quickly as you meander through mostly empty environments with not all that much different to look at after the first two or three areas.”
- “This game offers nothing besides some pretty one-note visuals.”
- “It doesn't really try to tell a story, and the graphics and environment, its only real selling point, are interesting at first, but grow old quickly.”
atmosphere
20 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
40% positive mentions, 45% neutral mentions, 15% negative mentions
The game’s atmosphere is widely praised for its surreal, dreamlike quality achieved through minimalist visuals, abstract environments, and subtle, eerie audio design that evokes emotional discomfort and immersive psychological tension. While its soundtrack and environmental sounds enhance the haunting, meditative mood without overwhelming the experience, some players note the atmosphere may feel one-note or tiring due to limited gameplay progression and narrative clarity. Overall, the atmosphere is the game's standout feature, offering a unique, emotionally resonant exploration that captivates those open to abstract, interpretive experiences.
- “Nidana is a surreal first-person exploration experience that abandons traditional storytelling and gameplay conventions in favor of atmosphere, visual abstraction, and dreamlike immersion.”
- “Ambient noises, distant echoes, distorted audio textures, and subtle atmospheric music create a constant sense of emotional discomfort without relying on traditional horror mechanics.”
- “For players willing to immerse themselves completely in the atmosphere, this creates a meditative and emotionally absorbing experience.”
- “Its impossible architecture, oppressive atmosphere, and fragmented dreamscapes create an experience that lingers because of emotion and imagery rather than narrative resolution or gameplay complexity.”
- “This simplicity allows players to focus entirely on atmosphere and interpretation rather than mechanical difficulty.”
gameplay
19 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
16% positive mentions, 63% neutral mentions, 21% negative mentions
The gameplay in Nidana is intentionally minimal and atmospheric, focusing on exploration and puzzle transitions rather than complex mechanics or interaction, which may feel repetitive or passive to some players. While its dreamlike immersion and emotional ambiance appeal to fans of experimental walking sims, those seeking traditional gameplay depth or varied progression might find it lacking and occasionally frustrating. Overall, it prioritizes mood and interpretation over mechanical challenge, resulting in a unique but niche experience.
- “Nidana is a surreal first-person exploration experience that abandons traditional storytelling and gameplay conventions in favor of atmosphere, visual abstraction, and dreamlike immersion.”
- “The puzzles themselves are generally straightforward and serve more as transitions between dream spaces than complex gameplay systems. This simplicity allows players to focus entirely on atmosphere and interpretation rather than mechanical difficulty.”
- “While its slow pacing, abstract structure, and minimal mechanics will not appeal to every player, those interested in experimental exploration games and psychologically immersive environments may find it deeply memorable and unlike almost anything else in the genre.”
- “Players expecting traditional gameplay depth, combat systems, or heavily interactive mechanics may find the experience too passive.”
- “For others, the lack of gameplay variety may eventually feel repetitive.”
- “Although the environments remain visually impressive throughout the game, the core gameplay loop changes very little from beginning to end.”
story
17 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
18% positive mentions, 64% neutral mentions, 18% negative mentions
The story in the game is minimal and highly abstract, focusing more on atmosphere and visual immersion than traditional narrative or character development. While its surreal, dreamlike presentation offers a unique artistic experience, many players find the lack of a clear plot or emotional connection limiting, with some feeling the game functions more as an aesthetic exploration than a cohesive story-driven experience. This approach may appeal to those who enjoy interpretive, atmospheric journeys but can feel hollow or aimless to others.
- “Nidana is a surreal first-person exploration experience that abandons traditional storytelling and gameplay conventions in favor of atmosphere, visual abstraction, and dreamlike immersion.”
- “The lack of explicit narrative forces players to interpret the experience personally, turning exploration itself into the primary form of storytelling.”
- “Despite these flaws, Nidana succeeds because of its artistic ambition and complete commitment to surreal environmental storytelling.”
- “There also isn't really an attempt to tell any sort of story with the main character that you have to endlessly chase until the end of the playthrough - arguably it does resemble a dream where very little makes sense, but it also feels a bit hollow and overall comes across more like a tech-demo disguised as a game.”
- “If this game wants you to feel like you're just stuck in this world going around aimlessly conveying a story with every achievement system... I would say it falls flat.”
- “Others may struggle to connect emotionally due to the lack of concrete storytelling and direct character development.”
music
12 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
33% positive mentions, 42% neutral mentions, 25% negative mentions
The music and sound design create a strong eerie and unsettling atmosphere through ambient noises, subtle textures, and silence rather than traditional horror music, enhancing emotional discomfort. However, many find the soundtrack repetitive, monotonous, and somewhat white noise-like, with limited evolution or interactivity, leading to mixed feelings about its overall contribution to the game's experience.
- “Ambient noises, distant echoes, distorted audio textures, and subtle atmospheric music create a constant sense of emotional discomfort without relying on traditional horror mechanics.”
- “Silence is often more powerful than music, making every small environmental sound feel important and unsettling.”
- “The game itself shows that off extremely well, not to mention its ambient soundtrack which fits it perfectly.”
- “The soundtrack is very repetitive, with little gameplay interaction, and feels too long, especially with all the walking around and frustratingly not understanding half of the objectives.”
- “Additionally, the soundtrack itself is very one-note and more like white noise that doesn't contribute much to the atmosphere of your environment.”
- “All this is backed by a nauseatingly mediocre soundtrack that never evolves, punctuated by synth bleeps with reverb and a helping of white noise.”
emotional
8 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions
The game delivers a deeply emotional experience through an oppressive atmosphere, ambient sounds, and subtle music that evoke discomfort and unease without traditional horror elements. Its emphasis on mystery and ambiguity encourages personal interpretation and emotional immersion, though some players may find the lack of clear storytelling limits their emotional connection. Overall, it prioritizes mood and subconscious sensation over direct narrative or mechanical progression.
- “Even simple movement through empty spaces feels emotionally charged due to the oppressive stillness surrounding everything.”
- “Ambient noises, distant echoes, distorted audio textures, and subtle atmospheric music create a constant sense of emotional discomfort without relying on traditional horror mechanics.”
- “For players willing to immerse themselves completely in the atmosphere, this creates a meditative and emotionally absorbing experience.”
optimization
7 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
43% positive mentions, 14% neutral mentions, 43% negative mentions
Optimization for the game is generally poor, with notable issues such as lack of anti-aliasing and inefficient performance compared to similar titles. While some users experience smooth gameplay, especially with GPU optimizations on certain systems, overall the game struggles with technical refinement and could benefit from better optimization and rendering enhancements.
- “Performance is great, ultrawide support is good though I wish there was an FOV slider.”
- “Also I'm running it through Proton (9.0.4) on Linux, so there might be more overhead, or maybe there's GPU optimizations and driver shenanigans that make it a very smooth experience.”
- “Manifold Garden has a lot of similarities in how pronounced the lines and shapes feel with the more flat plane-centric approach to 3D geometry, but that game has a lot more care put into the optimization as well as rendering of the game itself.”
- “The optimization is disastrously bad.”
- “Poor optimization and lack of anti-aliasing.”
- “This game really just misses the high quality performance and tech behind Manifold Garden to elevate the experience further.”
character development
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
50% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 50% negative mentions
Character development is conveyed primarily through clean and effective visual design, allowing players to grasp personality traits at a glance; however, some users find the lack of explicit storytelling and deeper narrative growth limits emotional connection.
- “Great character design - very simple and clean, I feel like I got a lot of her personality just from her looks.”
- “Others may struggle to connect emotionally due to the lack of concrete storytelling and direct character development.”
grinding
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
0% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 100% negative mentions
Grinding in the game is widely viewed as tedious and uninspired, contributing to an overall underwhelming experience.