About Nightmarens

Nightmarens, the colorful animal-like enemies in NiGHTS into Dreams... stages, are programmed differently from nightopians and mepians and aren't directly part of the a-life system. Despite this, they play a crucial role in a-life, as predators in their ecosystem and the source of nightmaren DNA for creating mepians and in turn king pians.

In terms of lore, there are technically 3 "levels" of nightmarens. Only the 3rd level are involved in the a-life system. 2nd level nightmarens refer to all the bosses except Reala and Wizeman (who is not a nightmaren), and 1st level refers to NiGHTS and Reala only. 

In each level except Twin Seeds, three of the ten 3rd level nightmarens shown above inhabit the stage. The nightmarens found in each stage are as follows:

Spring Valley: Hollow, Kircle, and Shleep

Splash Garden: Hollow, Party, and Mamu

Mystic Forest: Party, Kircle, and Crewle & Pole

Frozen Bell: Hollow, Gao, and Snip

Soft Museum: Party, Gao, and Verol

Stick Canyon: Kircle, Gao, and Cuttle

Each stage has one unique nightmaren not seen in the other stages, while the other two are shared with two other stages.

Role in A-life

Nightmarens present a threat to a-life because they will chase down and eat them if they get the chance. Nightmarens will start hunting a-life when their "lifespan" value, which functions more like hunger for them, drops below the maximum. If the nightmaren succeeds in eating an a-life while hunting, it will gain up to 10 "lifespan" or hunger points back, capped at its maximum value. Being eaten is a bigger problem for mepians than nightopians, because mepians lack a natural fear of nightmarens. There are two ways to defeat nightmarens. The first is paralooping them, which removes them from the stage immediately. If a nightopian sees you paralooping a nightmaren, its mood will increase by 2 points. 

The second is touch dashing them. This rolls the nightmaren into a ball and throws it in the direction you dashed, where it will bounce on the ground a few times before it finally stops. The bouncing nightmaren is dangerous to your a-life, as it will kill any of them it touches except certain mepians with an exceptionally high lifespan value. Nightopians' mood will instantly lower to 1 if they see a nightmaren ball. However, the nightmaren will also generate an egg with the a-life, creating a mepian, or in rare cases a full blooded nightopian depending on what genes passed down.

Getting hit by a nightmaren ball is is the usual way that nightmaren DNA passes into the a-life population, but it's also possible for mepians to breed with nightmarens willingly. This usually fails due to the nightmaren eating it on contact, but if both were off-screen at the time, it will succeed. In the E3 version, mepians will always survive breeding with a nightmaren if the nightmaren was not hungry (and the mepian had enough lifespan left), but this mechanic was removed in the final version.

Nightmarens have DNA , but they don't use it in the same way as a-life. For instance, although their lifespan decreases over time, they cannot die of old age. Their genes' only purpose is so they can be passed down to mepians.

All nightmarens have certain base genes in common. They all have flight height 3, flight modifier 0, flight patterns 1 and 6, and genetic behaviors 0 and 15. However, their speed, vision, and lifespan vary depending on the type of nightmaren. Nightmarens of the same type all share the same DNA, with one exception being the dominance property of their body part genes, which is random between A, B, C, and D. Dominance values are out of the scope of this article but I cover them in more detail here.

Speed, vision, and lifespan are "linked" genes, meaning they are always passed down together with a body part. Speed is linked to legs, vision to head, and lifespan to body. For instance, if a mepian inherits its body part from a Hollow, it will also inherit 80 lifespan. If a mepian inherits its leg part from a Shleep, it will also inherit 1 speed. 

This means it is not possible to breed a full blooded nightopian with 80 lifespan or 1 speed (the starting nightopian population in all stages has 30 lifespan and 4, 5, or 6 speed).

In the final game, nightmarens cannot reproduce with each other. But interestingly, there is evidence that the developers considered a nightmaren breeding mechanic some time in the past. There are leftover sprites of eggshells for each nightmaren type (except Crewle & Pole), along with an unused animation showing the egg hatching. The following image shows mepian eggs in the top row and the corresponding unused nightmaren eggs on the bottom. From left to right, they are Party, Verol, Kircle, Cuttle, Hollow, Gao, Mamu, Snip, and Shleep eggs.