Nevermind: Horror Game

Horror isn't our greatest love at the best of times, because it always takes advantage of our aversion to blood and murder and creepy children. Nevermind has all that and more. And, even worse, it sees you.

Thanks to Kinect’s underused biofeedback tech, the game can sense how afraid you are as you play, and it will use that against you like a sadistic older brother, twisting your arm behind your back and taunting you: “Awww, are you scared?” The more frightened you are, the harder and scarier the game will become.

Each level sifts through the memories of a trauma victim, disturbed and contorted by their fear, nightmarish to begin with and worsened by your own reactions. As the victim’s mind struggles to cope and lashes out at your interference, memories become horrendous and surreal, rapidly mounting in tension and building to disgusting crescendos.

It began as a thesis project: an attempt to teach players to control fear. Creeping round shadowy dioramas of houses with bloody walls, the eyes of paintings following you across the room, screaming, twisted faces staring out at you from the wreckage of a car it’s pretty tricky to stay calm in the face of such an onslaught of horror tropes. Who needs therapy when you can just be terrified into tranquility?

Nevermind when it releases in June, 2015.