Like Mystery but with exposed bloody bones
First, a quick announcement —Lone Survivor: The Director’s Cut is out now on PSN and it is incredible. We should have a review for you soon.
Like Lone Survivor, Neverending Nightmares is a 2D horror game. More importantly, both work to impart real emotional experiences from the developers directly to the players. Matt Gilgenbach nearly lost it all when he made Retro/Grade. A long time sufferer of obsessive compulsive disorder and depression, Matt’s symptoms were severely triggered by all the emotional, financial, and profession risk that came from developing and self-publishing his own game. He stuck it out for years, eventually releasing the game in 2012, suffering financial loses and intense anxiety.
He took all those horrible psychological experiences and made them into a videogame.
Neverending Nightmares looks benign on the surface, with a quaint-but-creepy Edward Gorey inspired art style, only to seamlessly shift into being extremely violent and disturbing. It’s a simple game to control, using the direction/analog pad and just one action button, but not everyone will easily be able to see all the content the game has to offer. They’ll be too freaked out. If this and Lone Survivor are an indication of where Horror games are going, color me excited (and appropriately uncomfortable).
The game isn’t quite funded yet; it’s getting close, but it only has five more days to make it happen. We’ll have Matt on The Core, our new live stream show, this Thursday at 3pm, so make sure to tune in if you’d like to know more.
Neverending Nightmares [Kickstarter]