Neverending Nightmares First Impressions.
I first
came across this game about a year ago when it was on Kickstarter, and several
YouTubers were playing the demo. After watching them play the demo and getting
thoroughly creeped out, it really caught my interest because of its art style
and general scariness. After playing about an hour of the full game, I can
easily say it is very creepy and extremely tense.
The
creator of the game, Matt Gilgenbach,
has said he’s drawn inspiration from his real-life struggles with
obsessive-compulsive-disorder and depression which gives this game a much more
personal feel, this really helps with immersing you as you know this is
something he’s had to deal with, and not just a story based around it. The
actual story of the game is revolved around a man named Thomas who has
nightmares, and keeps waking up into another nightmare, hence the name of the
game. It’s this perpetual thought of ‘what’s going to happen this time?’ that
kept me going forward, regardless of whether or not I was scared. Thomas will
‘wake up’ once you reach a certain part of the area or when you get killed, the
latter meaning you’ll have to play the area again. Thomas can’t really do much
either’ he can walk, run for a small period of time, and interact with certain
objects. You’ll spend most of the game walking however, as when Thomas get
tired from running, you’ll have to stop to catch your breath which will leave
you vulnerable.
The most striking feature about this
game when you start is the ultra-simplistic black and white art style, which
looks as though it’s been drawn with pencil strokes. The only things in the
world that have colour are items you can interact with, like a candle, or the
very red blood. Because the art style is so simple, it makes the little details
much more prominent when you notice them. While the simple presentation is
certainly memorable, the sound design is arguably even more so as it sets a
tone of suspense and dread throughout. While the games soundtrack isn’t really
conventional, it works amazingly because of subtle tones and sound effects;
like a crying child or someone whispering your name. The entire time I’ve
played this game, I’ve been on edge almost entirely due to the sounds. The game
has a dedicated ‘headphones mode’, this supposedly enhances the sounds made to
make the experience a lot more tense, but sadly when I tried to activate it the
game crashed; but that’s probably because my MacBook is quite old. Either way,
the game is definitely best played with a good pair of headphones for the best
experience.
To
summarize then, even though I’ve not played a lot of Neverending Nightmares, it’ll
certainly be a game I’ll see through to the end because of it’s premise, presentation
and stellar sounds. If you have even a fleeting interest in the horror genre of
games, then there’s no excuse not to pick this up.
Neverending
Nightmares was developed by Infinitap Games, and is available on Steam for
Windows, Mac and Linux. The price is currently £9.89/$13.49 for its opening
week, then £10.99/$14.99 after that.
