QCF: Neverending Nightmares

reating a scary video game that's able to not only strike fear into the heart of its players, but subsequently dose them with the adrenaline needed to carry on, can be summed up into being one of the hardest no-brainer endeavors ever attempted within the media, to this very day.

The token element of the package any self-respecting thriller and horror schemed system strives to deliver, is the relationship of interaction with the player themselves.

Every role, from the blood curdling scenery, down to the unsettling instances of terror that haunt you every step of the way, are just a few of the several dealings fueled by the moment-to-moment  bread and butter frenzy, and what to expect out of the ordeal.

Although most developers are ostensibly aware of the importance behind these factors and the respective dynamics of gameplay involved, what sets the memorably traumatic games apart from the cheesy snore-fests, or frustratingly cheap gore-porn, is the calculation regarding the finer points of the scary essentials to the experience itself. The all hinging on the immaculate sense of pacing responsible for the perpetual balancing act in charge of the infrequent, yet engaging moments of agency, and the exchange of horrifying downfalls into helplessness in between them.

Infinitap's Neverending Nightmare is one of the few games of this generation, that manages to effectively nail down every nuance of the immersive horror dogma, developed with a sense of passion for the craft that's capable of leaving behind a few trembles in your hand-even after the screen has moved on to something else.

Sporting some familiar shades of more traditional horror contemporaries like Clock Tower and The Lurking Horror, players will take on the role of Thomas, as he wanders through a series of splintered scenarios in occurrence, progressively more terrifying than the last. While the gameplay is reminscient of those aforementioned titles, Neverending Nightmares is able to achieve something that bridges the direct gameplay and presentation of its experience in a way that out does any title remotely similar to it, both past, and present.

This particularly unique facet in question is the ease of the sequencing in this little indie haunt of a game; the way it uses the aesthetic of its visuals as a means of a subtle, and ingeniously seamless form of direction for players to investigate and lead by. This Avant-garde takes advantage of the unique design choice for stark black and white, cross-stich heavy ink composition used for the graphics, by applying all of the important points of interest and contextual cues behind areas that vividly colored, dramatically contrasting against everything else on the screen.

As another testament to the brilliant art style, the Edwardian-caricature of its visuals animates a varied essence of fear that’s capable of being subtle disturbing at one moment, and gruesomely violent and ghastly the next. Like the proverbial train-wreck, the further I progressed within Infinitap’s spooky campaign, the more and more I found myself wanting to tear my eyes away from the grip the frightening rabbit hole I was sinking into. A lot of that credit honestly goes to the game’s gifted ability of easing it’s players into an immersive state of play that’s genuinely hard to put down.

This mechanic is interesting in instills a sense of allowance towards exploring the labyrinthine architecture of the stages that are abundant within Neverending Nightmares—never feeling overwhelmed with the travel, or any lack of direction in whatever I was doing in the process.

While getting wrapped up in the spectacle of its eerie world is an fortuitously intuitive endeavor, the sense of danger that lurks within every hallway and room that Thomas treads through is situated in a manner that effectively compliments the deliberate ideals of its design.

Sprinkled through the ominous scenes of ghostly, and disturbing demonic occurrences and backdrops, lay an assortment of traps and violent ambushes, and all these incidents contain a distinguishing air of shock and trauma that deliver a variety of potential tragedy that’s never transparent in motion—just authentically staggering instead. Without even realizing it, the anxiety from playing Neverending Nightmares had gradually overcame whatever natural instincts I had originally brought to the game when I first booted it up, and it was all thanks to a brilliant engine that’s gracefully built with everything it needed to legitimately unnerve me.

Although the title is admittedly short, there are multiple ending that can be reach through alternate routes within its stages that elaborate a whole new depth to its madness, all while remaining consistent within its underlying theme of portraying the perspectives and hardships various mental disorders that are still rampant within the reaches of society to this very day.

Neverending Nightmares deserves it place among the precious bytes of any respective gaming storage you’re able to host it on, and to that effect, is easily a staple among the list of must-own titles for the Ouya as well. Pick this one up if you’re looking for a memorable scare, but don’t say that I didn’t warn you—it seriously not for the faint of heart.