Neverending Nightmares

I've been excited to play Neverending Nightmares since I first heard about it, and finally made time to pull it out of my backlog here in 2017. I hoping I'd be affected by it in some fashion, as it seems to have personal meaning for the developer-something I'm always thrilled to see in and medium, particularly in games. Unfortunately I personally didn't find any great meaning to it-it wasn't personally affecting for me. Even still, it's a very solid survival horror game. It looks at least as good in action as it does in screen shots. It's a very pretty game with a hand drawn, pen and ink style look to it that's unique and consistent. (Mostly black and white with plashes of color thrown in for effect and often to indicate things in the game world that can be interacted with.) The sound design is also strong, though once I had the music cut out and restart multiple times until I exited the game. Movement is intentionally plodding, but works fine. The game is fairly short, and like in a lot of survival horror games you're attempting to avoid what "monsters" there are in it, rather than confronting them directly. There are a handful of "types" that you learn to deal with in different fashion. Level design is solid, and often relies on a dream-like aesthetic of areas changing after you've gone through them. There are-thankfully-frequent points you restart from if you die-usually you wake from a bed, which happens to be near where you died (it's also a sort of dream-like element to the design). Like in other survival horror games it can be sometimes a bit frustrating, but it doesn't make you replay too much, and isn't too "cheap". You can save and exit the game basically anywhere too, which is nice. I did have to to "cheat", looking up how to get through an area about halfway through the game-which ended up being straight forward, though a number of other people got stuck in the same area. It's not my favorite survival horror game-I like the re-imagined version of Silent Hill for Wii/PSP, the Resident Evil games, Eternal Darkness, and especially Deadly Premonition better, but I'm glad I played it, and glad it got made!

I don't want to be unfair to this game, but it is short and its gameplay mechanics are narrow. It gets repetetive eventually, bland and boring to the degree that once I learned that there are multiple endings I wasn't interested in discovering them. You might as well buy and play a AAA horror title instead, i get The Evil Within vibes from this one. The artstyle is commendable, just like other horror themed indietitles, but it is not enough to make up for the lack of playability, and replayability. LIMBO is a similar game, but it pulls everything off in a small and tasty package, unlike NeN which chugs along and overstays its welcome.

I love the art style and I love the fact that this gaming is about breaking the taboo around mental health issues. There were some bizare moments in the game which I liked, but... It was too repetitive. I got annoyed because of it. I thought there would be more story, more narrative and gameplay. I couldn't interact with things, do puzzles. It was basically a walking simulator and that's a shame, really, because I think there's much potentional in this game. I got this game because I love horror games and it's on discount.

I really tried, but I couldn't achieve to feel frightened or anxious while playing this game (except for maybe two or three jumpscares). Seeing the style and hearing about the misterious story of this game, I actually thought it might be promising. But as it turns out it is just a nerve-racking, and boring walking simulator. Sure, it has some disturbing pictures to offer, but it's far away from causing discomfort like movies as Mullholland Drive. Also, a few more gameplay elements would have been good for this game. Solving 2 puzzles, hiding 3 times, run away 4 times. That's it. That itself resumes prefectly what Neverending Nightmares has to offer. It could have been so much more than that, though. And even though it's supposed to be a horror game, it fails at the most important point: it is NOT scary at all. Good thing is, that this nightmare is over very quick, as it has a very short playthrough time.

http://www.neverreallyawake.com/neverending-nightmares/