Nevermind- Review

Intro

The human mind is a strange, wonderful, and scary part of our existence. It shapes us based on the experiences of our lives, our dreams, our traumas, and our monumental figures. It is no secret that broken minds and mental illnesses have been a focal point of horror and thrillers, often as crude stereotypes and monsters without humanity. This has been changing, however, with games such as Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice and Nevermind, which isn’t just about exploring the minds of trauma victims but also weaponizing your own emotions against you. Nevermind is an intense psychological experience that does not reach the emotional heights of Hellblade but is still strong nonetheless.

Writing

I think the biggest problem with all five patients is that, aside from their unique situation, they do not have much personality. Such as one is a famous concert pianist who suffers from self-destructive tendencies due to an abusive tutor, and another revolves around the trauma of seeing her father commit suicide. They all end up being somewhat one-note as characters, people whose woes are linked to one major trauma that gets resolved at the end of the level. The most in-depth we get is in the final story, where a trans character is stuck in a physically abusive relationship while being treated by society like a creep. It’s human on a level that the others only rarely reach. Don’t get me wrong, Nevermind is still very scary in its pacing, imagery, and atmosphere, but it doesn’t stick with you as Hellblade does.

Gameplay

The gameplay itself is relatively simple, to be honest. You either wander around increasingly disturbing environments along a specific path or sometimes solve puzzles within said environment. The puzzles themselves are on the more accessible side; you have to sort items into particular boxes or play something in a specific order. The challenge is how to make it through the level without getting scared. And it will try to scare you every step of the way.

Nevermind uses biofeedback to manipulate the game environment to become more hostile to you. This is achieved either through an attached heart rate monitor or your webcam, I used the latter for this, and it is very good at picking my emotional state. If you start to get scared or distressed, the music will change, and the room begins to fill up with water; for example, the screen starts to spin around. None of this is new; Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requiem have been implementing sanity effects in their games. But none of them used your emotions against you to implement a game over. The gameplay might be simple, but keeping control of your emotions while watching your dad kill himself is anything but easy to manage.

Maybe the gameplay needs to be fundamental for the primary challenge of emotional stoicism; what do you think? Consider leaving a comment on this.

The art style and graphics

You will not find photo-realistic graphics, and I think it works. The plastic textures add to the dreamlike surrealist of everything; the emotions have molded and bent memory into a nightmarish parody of real life. The uncanny valley is used very well with the few human characters to make them look like the impression of a human told from the memory of an alien.

Performance

There is a moment freeze upon start-up and exit but asides from that:

Perfect

Conclusion

Nevermind is ambitious and terrifying in its own right. Still, it is over too quickly, and the patents are too shallow to be memorable or very interesting after the game is done. I would have liked to have seen a single patent explored thoroughly or offered more character for each patent. The gameplay is okay, but it could have more of a challenge.

Acknowledgments

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