I first wrote about Nevermind last year after reading about the developers’ goals for the game via their Kickstarter campaign. Nevermind was billed as a horror game with a twist: the more fear the player feels, the harder the game gets. The intention here is to help players learn to manage their anxiety levels. Thus, the game promised to be a cross between my favorite genre (horror) and a serious game. Nevermind was released on March 31st via Steam as an Early Access game. I’ve never tried an Early Access game because, frankly, I’m a little suspicious of paying for a game that is not finished. But, in this case, I made an exception.
Nevermind is designed to work with certain biofeedback systems that monitor the player’s heart rate as he or she plays through the game. I was hoping that the game would work with a larger variety of sensors (e.g. the one on my phone), but currently the list is limited and pricey. Even though they are currently limited and pricey, the development team seems to be open to adding more devices, and perhaps, someday there will be an app for that. But, luckily, you can play the game without the biofeedback. (Thankfully, because I had a minute there, after I already purchased the game, when I thought that might not be the case.) As such, in this review, I won’t be able to evaluate whether the game gets harder or scarier with an increased heart rate, but I do hope to try it out sometime.
You play as a neuroprober, which seems to be a counselor of sorts, but one who can access the actual memories of the patient. When the game begins, the player is in her first day, and you must go through training in order to get to the actual game. The training, of course, sets up the gameplay and teaches you to play the game, which consists of locating pictures that represent memories and then trying to sort though the memories to determine which memories are real and which ones are not real (or even which ones are your memories instead of the player’s). The training was fine once I realized what was happening, but I’ll admit at first I was concerned that the game wasn’t going to be very original because the training session very closely follows Hansel and Gretel. Because of this weird Hansel and Gretel-type narrative, I was skeptical at first, but the structure and game play were interesting enough that I wanted to keep play (the training takes a while) until I got to the actual game.
I’m glad I kept going because after you leave training and go to your first “real” patient, things suddenly get real. During training, I found myself wondering when the game was going to get scary or even creepy. (Very minor spoilers to follow.) At the beginning of the training session, you are in the patient’s mind, which is represented as a beautiful garden accompanied by very tranquil sounds. After a while, you are granted access to the darker parts of the patients memory, which changes the scenery to that of a forest at night. I suppose this is supposed to mimic the training narrative of Hansel and Gretel, but, this scene was still accompanied by very tranquil sounds. In fact, throughout the entire training session, I felt very relaxed, and I was wondering when I was going to get scared at all. Once you get to the first patient though, the potential fear becomes more obvious. (I say potential because I haven’t played much into that yet.) But, the monsters in the game aren’t the monsters I was expecting. The first patient has very scary memories reminiscent of the themes in Among the Sleep. This female patient recalls an alcoholic mother, a neglected childhood (at best), and the possible murder/suicide of her father. Heavy stuff, which I suppose is appropriate for the serious aspects of the game and for helping patients learn to manage their anxieties. I wonder how this will play out in terms of the patients that follow. That is, will all the themes be this heavy? If so, I will be needing to learn how to manage my anxieties in different ways than I previously imagined, which mostly involved running from imaginary monsters.
So far, I have only played for about an hour and a half, but I’m very much looking forward to continuing. I like the set up of the game, and I like having to sort through memories to try to determine which ones are real. I think this game has a lot of potential and is still engaging even though it’s still in Early Access. The game is currently $24.99, though, so I’m not sure I would recommend it right now. I would recommend keeping an eye on it, and I plan to write about it again after I’ve had time to play some more (and maybe even after I’ve had a chance to play with biofeedback).
