Maybe! I promised to wind down, but I keep having things that I feel like are worth announcing. I’ll switch to my blog soon. I promise!

Firstly, we are really excited to announce that the brilliant soundtrack by Skyler McGlothlin is available for purchase if you didn’t get it as a campaign reward. (If you did, it should show up in your Humble page under the “audio” platform for the game download) You can get it here on bandcamp. 

As always, if you’ve played the game, I’d love it if you could leave your thoughts in the form of a Steam review and on metacritic’s user reviews. Earlier this morning, our metacritic number turned from yellow to green, which I’ve found feels much better, but now we are back down to yellow. It’s crazy what an effect that color can have!

We also showed Neverending Nightmares at IndieCade last weekend, which was fun. It’s always great to see people’s expressions at the scary parts, so demoing the game is always rewarding. I also got to chat with to the extremely talented OUYA team (Kellee, Jared, Bawb, etc), which was fun. I met up with some indie developer friends from around the world, so all in all, it was a good weekend.

We are continuing to update the game in our effort to squash bugs and improve compatibility with old hardware. We also released a Turkish fan localization, which is pretty cool. :) We are still hard at work on the rewards. We are making some progress on the art book and are figuring out how to do the painted backer portraits.

Now that I have some small amount of free time (I’m still doing press outreach and other stuff), we are starting to give some serious thought to the next game. I think we have some really exciting and unique things planned, but we want to hear what you think. We started a brainstorming thread on the forums, and want to hear from you! While we want to keep a lot of details secret at the moment, we are interested in making something along the same lines as Neverending Nightmares but improving on our shortcomings. How do YOU think we should make the next game better? If we use your ideas, we’ll give you credit in the game! For more info, check out the forum thread.

On a personal note, I am VERY excited about our next project. I personally learned a ton of what worked and what didn't from Neverending Nightmares. I am anxious to apply my new knowledge to the next game. I have a great resource as well - the Neverending Nightmares community! I can't wait to see what you guys come up with in the brainstorming thread or any suggestions you offer. We will be kickstarting this project sometime next year, so hopefully I can count on you all for support. :)

I’ve continued to do developer diaries talking about things we could have done better in the game and other stuff. Here are my uploads:

• In this video, I talk about how interaction worked and what we could have done better. 
  
• Here, I talk about how I felt the branching worked in Neverending Nightmares. 
• Taking a break from analyzing Neverending Nightmares, I recorded a video talking about my first impressions with Alien: Isolation after playing the first hour or two.
  

As always, thank you so much for your support! We couldn’t have made the game without you. I hope you are enjoying it!

Your friend,

Matt Gilgenbach

We’ve been busy and have made some progress on the game. Firstly, DRM-Free builds are available for all 3 platforms on the Humble store! :) I’m sorry it took us a little extra time to finish them, but we were swamped doing the game on 4 platforms – not to mention the DRM-Free versions. We simplified our build process, so it’ll be easier to do patches.

Speaking of patches, we’ve done a few already fixing some of the stability issues and fixing compatibility issues on old graphics hardware. We also patched in our first fan translated language – Finnish. We also got volunteers for Russian, Ukrainian, and Japanese, so hopefully we’ll be able to add those languages as well. If you speak a language that isn’t represented and would like to localize the game, we’d be happy to add it. Send me a message if you are interested. :)

As I mentioned last week, we have a lot of work to do with backer rewards! We’ve been making progress on those as well. If you got the $25 and up tier, the soundtrack is now available on your Humble account. I finished the designer’s notebook as well as the developer’s commentary. If you ordered either add on, I’ll email you the Humble gift codes for those. Also, if you ordered extra game codes as add-ons, you should have those. Send me a message on kickstarter if you didn’t get when you ordered them.

We started work on the art book, which is going to be a big task. Joe has to go through a ton of images, find the interesting ones, and arrange them on a page. Once we have an idea of the amount of interesting concepts we have, then we need to get quotes for books and decide what our page sizes will be and all that. Unfortunately, we did a lot of early concepts at low resolutions, which mean we can’t make an enormous coffee table book because everything would look very pixel-y. I think we’ll still be able to put together something really neat though. It’s crazy looking back at some of the early concepts and seeing what changed and what stayed the same.

The reception to the game has been a little discouraging. Maybe I’m just a little too sensitive, but our metacritic score dropped a few points today, and I took it pretty hard. :( It seems like we created a game that is harder to appreciate that I had hoped. A lot of people (but not a ton of game reviewers) absolutely love the atmosphere. Others don’t appreciate the atmosphere and want more jump scares or more game mechanics. If Neverending Nightmares sells well enough to start development on a next game, I want to try to make a game that can hopefully win over some critics. Perhaps I was too focused on atmosphere.

Will we be able to make another game? I hope so. Right now, it looks like there are going to be some challenges. Will Neverending Nightmares continue to sell at a good pace? I hope so. Sales are definitely slowing, which is terrifying. If you like the game, feel free to spread the word on twitter or tell your friends. Neverending Nightmares makes a great Halloween present. (Too bad no one actually gives out Halloween presents. Haha) Don’t forget to leave a review on Steam as well. :)

I can tell from the shape of things that we will definitely have to do another kickstarter. I wanted to do a kickstarter because as I’ve mentioned, it’s been hugely helpful to me, but it’d be nice to be in a position where we didn’t HAVE to do a kickstarter. We may have to ask for an even larger budget since there is no Free the Games Fund this time. :-/ Hopefully having delivered successfully on a kickstarter (and only being 1 month late) will allow us to get more backers the next time around. I may have to scale down my plans for the next game, but I hope not.

As I’ve mentioned, I take all feedback about the game seriously, and I’m looking analytically at the game and what we could do better. If you didn't enjoy the game, feel free to discuss what we can improve on our forums. I've been giving it a lot of thought as well, and I’ve made some developer diaries focused on looking back on what we did right and wrong on the game:

• Here are some of my general thoughts to the reactions of the game
• In this video, I talk about the success and failures of the enemies in Neverending Nightmares
• Finally, I discuss the link between tension and game length and why we wanted to make a short game.
  

Thank you so much for your support! I really appreciate everyone for helping make this game possible.

Your friend, Matt Gilgenbach

Hello everyone! I hope you are all enjoying the game. If you don’t know how to get access, please check out last update, which has detailed instructions. If you are still having problems, send me a message on kickstarter. The most common issue is a misspelled email address on the survey. :)

As far as game sales, I think it’s doing okay. I was hoping for a bit more sales, but perhaps my expectations were unrealistic. It seems like the game is a bit more alienating to players than I expected judging from initial reviews some press and on Steam. Speaking of - if you enjoyed the game, please leave a positive review on Steam. While you are looking at our Steam page, feel free to down vote the negative reviews if you disagree! :)

Perhaps that may seem petty of me to ask, but I think what bothers me is not that people don’t get the game. I expected the game to not to be everyone’s cup of tea, but my worry is that people who don’t “get” the game might be scaring off people who would. Maybe I should just stop worrying and accept negative feedback as a thing I can’t change. At least our reviews on OUYA are positive. (4.5 stars, and we are #1 in O-Rank at the moment)

As I mentioned before, the sales are doing okay, so hopefully we can keep this momentum in order to earn enough to start development on the next game. It’s tough to say if Neverending Nightmares has enough legs to get us to where we need to be, but I am hopeful. As far as what the next game will be, I’m not quite sure. Some of the lukewarm reception of Neverending Nightmares has caused me to rethink the direction I was going. Did I create something that was ultimately alienating to a lot of horror fans? Was the focus on creating an immersive atmosphere above all else not the right choice? I’m not sure.

Ultimately, I think I succeeded in creating what I planned to create. Was what I planned to create a good idea? Is it something I should continue with? I don’t know. These are all difficult questions to answer. There are definitely areas I want to improve moving forward, but maybe I have to rethink my approach. Perhaps creating a game that only appeals to a limited audience is okay. I guess that all depends on how large the audience is. I think only time will tell in that respect. 

As I mentioned in the title, I’ve still been working hard. I foolishly thought that I’d make the game live on Friday and take my first weekend off in a while. Unfortunately, it didn’t pan out like that. Perhaps releasing on a Friday was a bad idea. There were some big embarrassing bugs that I tried to fix this weekend. Some of them I’m still trying to fix. They mostly revolve around out of date and bad drivers, but I’d like everyone to be able to play the game who has the necessary hardware. They may be a nightmare to track down. If you have an issue where the player appears without a texture (just black), first try the advice here. If it still doesn’t work, send me an email at help@infinitapgames.com, and hopefully you can help me get to the root of the problem.

Besides that, I’ve been responding to a bunch of inquiries from press and streamers to cover the game. This is definitely a good thing, but it is a time consuming one. Instead of relaxing the entire weekend playing D4 (which I am loving) and the rest of my video game backlog, I mostly spent it doing email. I was hoping to take some time off this week to unwind, but I have a feeling that’s not going to pan out.

I am really happy that we’ve been able to ship the game (mostly) on time, but my responsibilities as a project creator are far from done. I still have a ton of work ahead of me. Here’s my to do list:

1) DRM-Free builds on the Humble Store – We are hoping to get a few more bug stomped out before we do the other builds, but many have asked for DRM-free versions, so we hope to get those out tomorrow or the next day.

2) The soundtrack – One would think that releasing this would be easy, but I have to figure out the best formats and pass it along to the Humble Bundle. What formats do YOU want? I was thinking MP3, but we might be supposed to pay for patent rights. Is M4A acceptable? Do you guys want lossless flacs? 24 bit waves? Or am I the only one that cares about those things?

3) The art book – This is going to be a big task. I think it’s going to be awesome, but we aren’t going to release it for a while.

4) Designer’s notebook - I have a lot of it put together, but there’s still more work I want to do.

5) Developer’s commentary – This shouldn’t be that hard to put together, but I am feeling a little discouraged at the moment, so I’m not sure my commentary would be that good. Give me a week or so to try and get my confidence back.

6) Backer portraits – these are going to take a while.

7) Physical games, posters, t-shirts, pins, postcards, bookmarks, etc. – Again, these are going to take a while to find the right vendors and all that.

That sounds like a lot, and I honestly probably forgot some things. I hope you will show patience with me because we have to fix problems on the game and perhaps have some time to start pre-production on the next game, but my goal is to get all of the rewards out before the end of the year.

Some wonderful backers have expressed a bit of sadness that they’ve enjoyed experiencing the Neverending Nightmares journey, and it’s over. Awwww. I love you guys! Personally, I think the journey will continue. While I probably will try and reduce the amount of kickstarter updates I do, I’ll try and put more info on our blog, and I plan to still stay heavily involved in our forums. I am planning on continuing to do youtube developer diaries, so you can follow me on youtube if you’d like.

Speaking of, here are links to the latest batch:

• In this video, I talk about my goals for the project on release and what I hope to do moving forward.
• Here’s my thank you video that I embedded in Friday’s update. It’s a good one, so if you missed it, I’d recommend checking it out! 
• Finally, I get a lot of questions about what is never for Neverending Nightmares. The short answer is that I don’t know. The long answer is in this video.
  

As always, I can’t thank you enough for your support that made Neverending Nightmares possible. I only hope you enjoy the game as much as I enjoyed making it for you!

Your friend,

Matt Gilgenbach

Firstly, I’d like to apologize for anyone who tried to play yesterday and couldn’t. Humble mixed the early access keys with the ones that only work once the game launches, so many of you received access to the game, but Steam wouldn’t let you download it. I’m really sorry about that! My goal was to NOT bungle the launch for kickstarter backers since you guys have been so supportive, and I failed. :*(

You should DEFINITELY be able to play the game now! In case you missed the instructions in the last update, I’ll repeat them:

1) Go to the Humble Bundle Store Key Resender

2) Enter the e-mail address that you put in the survey for the Humble Bundle account, and it will e-mail you a link to the download page. Right now, the download page just consists of a Steam key and an OUYA key. If you already use your humble account, the keys should probably be waiting in your game library. If they aren’t, try the resender.

3) To use the Steam key, in the Steam client, go to Games->Activate a product on Steam…

4) To redeem your OUYA voucher, go to Manage->Account->Payments->Redeem Code. Enter the code that the Humble Store gives you. You can click here to queue up your download of Neverending Nightmares on your OUYA. Otherwise, you’ll have to find it on the OUYA store. Then when you run the game, it shouldn’t prompt you to purchase the game.

Since the game is done, I thought I’d record a developer diary to thank everyone so much for making this game a reality.

It feels like now that the game is out, only half the work is done. The next step is promoting it. I hate to ask for more help from you guys because you’ve been amazing, but would you help spread the word that the game is out and worth playing? Tell your friends! Tell your twitter followers! Tell your worst enemies and scare the pants off them! There are other ways to help too! Would you consider writing a positive review on Steam? Maybe write one on metacritic too?  f you have a youtube channel or twitch account, perhaps you’d consider playing the game? If you have favorite youtubers/streamers, try suggesting to them that they check out the game. I’m not sure if anyone is doing the new Steam curation thing, but feel free to add Neverending Nightmares to your list of recommended games.

If I want to stay indie and keep making horror games (and I really want to do both of those things), the game needs to be successful enough to at least fund development of another game to get to the point where I have enough to show to launch a kickstarter. We spent 9 months on Neverending Nightmares financing it from other projects, and now we’ve gone for broke. Hopefully with your help, we can make this game a huge success, which in turn will help us fund future projects! :)

Anyway, why are you reading this? You should be playing Neverending Nightmares. :-P

Thank you so much for all your support, and I really hope you love the game!

Your friend,

Matt Gilgenbach

Edit: There was a mix up with the keys at Humble, so currently, it's not giving you early access to the game. I sincerely apologize, and we are trying to sort it out, but with 19 hours left, I'm not sure how feasible that is. :( (Also, only $10+ backers get the game. Sorry for the confusing title)

I was hoping to get you guys the final build of Neverending Nightmares earlier, but unfortunately we didn't finish on the schedule I was hoping for. The final build is up on Steam right now, and you can get it! (OUYA still has an almost final build, so you might want to wait for tomorrow if you are playing on OUYA)

Here's how to get the game:

1) Go to the Humble Bundle Store Key Resender

2) Enter the e-mail address that you put in the survey for the Humble Bundle account, and it will e-mail you a link to the download page. Right now, the download page just consists of a Steam key and an OUYA key. (If you already use your humble account, the keys should be waiting in your game library)

3) To use the Steam key, in the Steam client, go to Games->Activate a product on Steam…

4) To redeem your OUYA voucher, go to Manage->Account->Payments->Redeem Code. Enter the code that the Humble Store gives you. You can click here to queue up your download of Neverending Nightmares on your OUYA. Otherwise, you’ll have to find it on the OUYA store. Then when you run the game, it shouldn’t prompt you to purchase alpha access!

If you are planning on doing a Let's Play video, twitch stream, or review for a gaming website, I'd ask that you wait until 9 AM Pacific Time tomorrow to post it. The reason for that is that I'm hoping Let's Plays, reviews, etc will generate much needed buzz for the game, and I'd like people to be able to act on it. In fact, if you could include a link to our Steam product page that would be super. (We don't have our final OUYA page up yet unfortunately)

If you have any problems, send me an email to back@infinitapgames.com.

I would like to thank you all for your support over the past year. I'll write up more tomorrow for the actual launch, but I just wanted to let you know that I couldn't have made this game without each and every one of you. 

Your friend,

-Matt Gilgenbach