In the world of psychological thrillers, your greatest enemy is often your own fear. But what if the game itself could sense that fear—and use it against you? This is the chillingly brilliant premise behind Nevermind, the groundbreaking game from Flying Mollusk.
The Vision: A New Frontier in Interactive Experience
Flying Mollusk, a game studio dedicated to creating entertaining and impactful games with emerging technology, set out to push the boundaries of player immersion. Their goal was to create a game that didn’t just present challenges on screen but reacted to the player’s internal state. The result is Nevermind, a thriller that uses biofeedback to create a truly responsive and deeply personal experience.
The Technology: Emotion as a Gameplay Mechanic
To bring this vision to life, Flying Mollusk integrated Affectiva’s emotion-sensing technology directly into the game engine using the Affdex for Unity plug-in. Through a standard webcam, Nevermind reads a player’s facial expressions in real-time, searching for signs of emotional distress like fear, stress, or nervousness.
When the game detects these feelings, the environment itself responds, becoming more surreal and challenging:
- If you can’t manage your fear, a room might suddenly begin to flood.
- Lose your composure, and spikes might jut out from the floor.
- As tension builds, the screen can fill with increasingly dense static, obscuring your view.
Conversely, once Affectiva’s biofeedback algorithms determine that the player has calmed down, the game world relaxes. The challenges become easier and the environment more forgiving.
The Impact: Beyond Entertainment to Empowerment
The goal isn’t just to scare you—it’s to teach you not to be scared. By making the game dynamically respond to stress, Nevermind indirectly teaches players applied techniques for managing their own anxiety. To succeed, you must learn to stay calm under pressure. These are real, tangible skills that players can carry with them to help manage feelings of stress and anxiety in their everyday lives, transforming entertainment into a powerful tool for personal growth.
A Developer’s Perspective
The seamless integration and potential of the technology were key to the project’s success.
“As both a gamer and a developer, I could not be more excited about Affectiva’s Affdex emotion-sensing technology. Not only does it let players interact with games that are capable of providing incredibly personalized emotion-based experiences, but also, as a developer, working with the Affdex SDK could not have been easier. It is an incredible time to be creating emotionally responsive interactive experiences and I see nothing but limitless possibilities on the horizon.”
— Erin Reynolds, CEO and Creative Director of Flying Mollusk
In the Spotlight
Nevermind‘s innovative approach has captured the attention of major media outlets:
- Fast Company: What Happens When Video Games Can Read Your Face
- The Week: This innovative video game can sense your emotions and respond accordingly
- Forbes: Gaming: ‘Nevermind’ Reads Your Mind And Adapts To Your Emotions
Learn more about the game and face your fears at nevermindgame.com.
