Overview
This brief guide will instruct you on how to remove that pesky footstep noise that will eventually drive you insane
Where to Look, and What You’re Looking for
When playing the game for the first time, you might notice pretty quickly that the sound of Madotsuki’s footsteps is the most annoying thing of all time and quickly impedes your ability to take in the world around you because of its incessant pitter-patter. Like all sound effects in the game, the default footstep sound is just a .wav file that the game calls whenever you input a direction on a surface that isn’t set-up to have a special sound effect, so removing it is just a matter of finding the specific file that plays the footstep noise and annihilating it.
As the picture indicates, open up your steam files on whatever drive they’re contained in (which is subject to change, as the picture shows–for me, it’s my D: drive) and open up “yumenikki” in the common files. From there, go to “sound” and you’ll be presented with an enormous list of .wav files number 1-500 something, plus some named ones. The specific file you want is 00000440.wav and once you find it, simply delete it and the sound will be gone. The next time you load up the game, your footsteps will be quiet as a mouse as long as you are stepping on “normal” ground.
Consequences
Once you open the game the footsteps will be silenced, but heed that this is only for the default footstep sound, like what you hear on the balcony of the apartment in the overworld. This doesn’t remove all footsteps because honestly none of the other ones are really all that grating to me or seemingly to anyone else who has reported this nuisance before. I presume that this also removes the sound that the bicycle makes, and I have heard from some veterans of the game (prior to its steam release) that removing footstep noises can make some less-than-intuitive areas difficult to navigate when it’s hard to tell where you’re stepping. However, this has no real technical effect on the game and won’t cause any crashes or bugs, and if somehow it sets your computer on fire or something, just smother the fire with sandbags and then validate the game files to put it back in. Very easy fix, very easy to undo as well. I only really posted this because everyone before me who had this problem never had the decency to specify which file was the right one to delete.
No longer!
Enjoy the Fruit of Your Labor
Hopefully this helps somebody in the future enjoy the game a little more without the incredulously loud footstep noises making their autism go wee-woo like it did mine. If it doesn’t help you and somehow the sound of Madotsuki’s squeaky shoes is seared into your memory permanently like you lost a leg to a shoe-related IED incident back in Iraq, have a picture of my dog in a weiner costume to brighten your spirits.
