Parents' Guide to Neverending Nightmares

There isn't a whole lot really happening in this horror adventure, even with its jump scares and its gory imagery, but that isn't necessarily a knock against it. As it is, Neverending Nightmares is an unintentionally generic horror game where you try to survive the onslaught of slowly foreboding and approaching monsters (like a giant baby, a doll dragging a huge blade, and so on), and the only way you proceed is by patiently creeping around and avoiding detection. It's unfair to count this as a bad game, because there might be others like it that excel at doing the same types of things, but it's easier to scrutinize it because it claims to be about mental health issues. That's harder to discern, since the expression of those issues, such as OCD and depression, really don't bubble up in the gameplay in any noticeable way.

For the handful of hours the story lasts, you skulk in your pajamas. After surprises such as finding a knife and stabbing yourself or suddenly pulling a vein out of your arm, you wake up in another bed in another room. Sequences like these -- and anytime you get killed by a monster -- serve as a "continue spot," or a place where you resume and can try again. Neverending Nightmares isn't brutally hard -- it's intended to be repetitive and succeeds at that, though it takes advantage of things you can only do in games; it occasionally confuses you by making some doorways in halls lead to someplace new. You're meant to think, you're meant to feel lost, and you're meant to be defenseless. The point is to wander, see what's around, and avoid the darkness. But sooner or later, the darkness claims you no matter what you do, which hints that there might have been bigger, bolder things that could have been done here. As it is, Neverending Nightmares is a run-of-the-mill cheesy horror game with jump scares but with nothing all that profoundly different to say or do.