Neverending Nightmares

As anybody in the middle of a serious drug bender will tell you, life can quickly spiral out of hand when you don't get enough sleep. It's hard to concentrate, emotions are out of order and you begin seeing things that aren't there. This is proving to be a major problem for the star of Neverending Nightmares, who finds himself stuck somewhere between reality and a horror-filled dreamscape. It's hard to tell if he just needs a good night sleep or a few years' worth of extensive theory.

It starts when Thomas sees his sister stabbed to death. Thankfully, it was all a dream, but it was enough to startle the sleep-deprived hero into making sure everything is all right. Spoiler alert: Everything is not all right. He's confined to a creepy old mansion filled with scary dolls, disturbing paintings and monsters around every corner. Thomas will spend most of the game praying it's just a dream.

This sets up a really interesting set of brief vignettes for Thomas to puzzle through. He'll explore the spooky mansion picking up items and looking for clues, following the path until something horrible happens and he wakes up from the terrible nightmare. But as the title suggests, he escapes one nightmare only to wake up in another. It often feels like an endless maze of disturbing images and heavy atmosphere.

Neverending Nightmares doesn't give Thomas much to do. He'll spend most of his time just sleep-walking from one room to another looking for colored objects to interact with. He'll occasionally pick up a candle or axe, but Thomas doesn't have much use for items or an inventory. He's mostly content just wandering the halls with a blank expression on his face.

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I was immediately won over by the stylish look and creepy atmosphere. Neverending Nightmares has a strong start that made me curious where it would all lead. Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for the adventure waned as I realized how little there was to do. If often felt like I was stuck on a linear path just waiting for something scary to happen. And while there are certainly some well-earned scares, the experience is undermined by the shallow and repetitive gameplay.

Much like Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Gone Home, Neverending Nightmares fits neatly in the "walking simulator" adventure game sub-genre. The big difference here is that we aren't given much story to grab on to. While there's certainly a resolution and explanation to the madness, I wish there were more story beats scattered into the 90 minute game. Too much of this game feels aimless and predictable.

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The striking visuals helped me get beyond some of the pacing issues. I'm a big fan of the hand-drawn graphics and I was excited to see where the artist would take us next. It's a shame that we're stuck in only a couple locations, but the developers make the most of the limited area. There are some real unnerving details in the backgrounds, and I wouldn't spend too much time thinking about the mansion's painting selection.

While it never fully lives up to its potential, Neverending Nightmares does have a few great horror moments and several satisfying endings. It's also drenched in atmosphere, giving off the impression that something big is about to happen at any moment. It's a tense experience that could have used a few more story beats and a little more puzzle solving. It's not bad, but Neverending Nightmares wears out its welcome quickly.