Neverending Nightmares First Impressions.

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.