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Last month I wrote about Retro/Grade creator Matt Gilgenbach's upcoming title, Neverending Nightmares, a psychological horror story based on the developer's battles with obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. Now Gilgenbach has launched a Kickstarter to fund this ambitious, personal project about a man who wades through an endless onslught of nightmares, never being sure what's real and what's in his head.Intriguingly, the game will feature branching narratives based on your performance. If you fail a section you'll sometimes simply be set back a ways in the same nightmare, but sometimes you'll be deposited in an entirely new scenario. "Depending on what you do, when you wake up, it'll be into a different nightmare and the narrative will branch," Gilgenbach explained. "Most games' branches converge back on the same story line quickly. In Neverending Nightmares, we keep the narrative branches alive, and they lead to several completely different endings that dramatically change the reality the main character will be waking up into.
Gilgenbach noted on the Neverending Nightmares Kickstarter page that he was inspired by Silent Hill 2's storytelling, but wants to eschew its more conventional bits like a limited save system, inventory management, and puzzles. "In that series, all the horrific images have meaning and reveal more about the characters. The developers masterfully tell a story through the subtext and horrific incarnations of creatures that occupy the otherworld. This is one of the main goals of Neverending Nightmares," he explained. "Every aspect of the game reveals more about the psychological state of the main character, Adam, and ties back to the idea of creating the feelings I've struggled with as someone with mental illness."
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