Dungeon Nightmares II : The Memory

This game...I've pushed through Outlast, Slender, Amnesia, Penumbra, and a number of other horror games...but this one does such a good job at capturing the realism of the human subconscious, and the unequaled horrors of night terrors and sleep paralysis, that it makes me extremely anxious. To the point where I can only play a few minutes at a time before an anxiety attack. Never has a horror experience been so captivating for me as this one has. I warn you: if you have major anxiety, a fear of the dark, claustrophobia, or anything like that, be very cautious going into this game, because it is very effective at making you feel as helpless as you are in a dream.

Holy crap, you ready for this? A new horror game...made on the Unity engine...which is not only really good, but really, really SCARY! I, for one, am gobsmacked. Great graphics, INCREDIBLE sound...though I'm not 100% sold on the rogue-like or permadeath elements, especially with a 50/50 chance of returning to THE START OF THE GAME if you just happen to choose the "wrong door" in Limbo-land after you "die"; and the fact that you'll sometimes spawn right near the power switch to the Exit elevator, and other times several MILES away...sigh. But it still works...mostly... So okay, there's isn't that much "story" per se - though the "recurring nightmares" premise is always a nice one - but it's pretty clear on the whole that this game is pig-headedly dedicated to the cause of SPOOKING THE LIVING ♥♥♥♥ out of you, and that surely can't be a bad thing for the "horror" genre. An almost relentlessly oppressive atmosphere, genuinely effective jump-scares, tension aplenty...this game, if nothing else, certainly has all of those. It also has quite a bit of repetition...especially if you keep dying (and somehow living, in spite of the aforementioned door thing), and have to keep redoing levels over and over again (procedural generation be damned, it's still much of a muchness to me). But even if you don't have the patience to ever "beat" the game, you can be confident that even a few aimless hours spent exploring THESE dungeons will surely put the slick into your slacks. Sure, it all does seem a tad tawdry and b-grade around the edges, even with the rather spiffy production values, but you can rest assured that it's mostly in a GOOD way. We horror fans are beggars at best, so how choosy do you wanna be? Nine bucks isn't asking much for a full colonic irrigation, is it now? And it's not like there isn't a significant sale on Steam every four to six days anyway, right? Buy it, and support some dev with a stupidly cute name and sickeningly adorable avatar in their noble pursuit to give us all the heeby-jeebies. With a bit of luck they might even make a Dungeon Nightmares 3 and give us a NON-ROGUE, NON-PERMADEATH game which doesn't lower itself to throwing insanely cheap deaths at you by the last couple of levels. Yeah, right...keep dreamin', RJ... Verdict: 9/10.

I like to think of myself as someone who is immune to fear, at least when it comes to horror films and games etc. But this game manages to put a genuine sense of fear into me, even when I am "expecting" it. There's not much to game itself, it could be called repetitive. There is enough to keep it interesting as you move forward, although the levels themselves are procedurally generated, the found items unlock new vignettes as you finish the levels. The story is about a person stuck in an endless cycle of nightmares and waking state, so the repetitive aspect fits. Despite that it is a fairly simple concept, I still want to keep playing it regularly, even after long breaks. When I saw that it was on sale for the price of a dog's breakfast, I thought it would be "meh" but it's actually quite good.

[h1]You only get one opportunity with me if you're using the cheap jump scares[/h1] And this game tapped out all those opportunities with me. PROS: + Rogue-like levels promise every game run to be unique + Graphics look decent for a budget indie game + A few well-done spooky moments CONS: - Jump scares galore quickly outstay their welcome and impact - Bad use of sound effects that additionally dull the atmosphere - Game shows you everything it's got in the first couple of levels Dungeon Nightmares II The Memory (needs longer title, ffs) tells a story about the kid stuck on the hotel floor and constantly having day-nightmares. When you are in the hotel, your room is a "safe-space" where you can take a break, discover more of the ongoing story, gather your thoughts and think why you're wasting your time on crap horror games, before you enter the elevator and go into basement/dungeons where all bets are off. To leave a basement level, you have to find and activate the power box, find at least one note of importance and exit by locating another elevator room. All basement levels are randomized mazes made out of bricks, just with different color and texture as you reach deeper levels. Majority of sounds are intentionally subdued and quiet, except for every screech, scream or attack that is purposefully loud to scare you. There are a lot of random "gotcha" jumpscare moments that aren't really threatening. Your stamina is signalized by the rhythm of your heartbeat, and health by the blurry redness of your vision, You only have one real threat that will occasionally chase you and will kill you quickly if it's nearby. You have unreliable candles to push this active threat away for a short time, but you have to find them first, there's too few of them and they might not activate on your first try when you need them. When you manage to leave a level, you loose all your spare candles, you keep the keys of other hotel rooms that will progress the story. If this sounds like Spooky's Jump Scare Mansion knock off to you, that's because it probably is. The amount of cheap jumpscares in this game is through the roof, they feel lazy and effortless, there's no momentum nor build up to the scare. It's all instant-gratifying and bland scares that will spike your adrenocorticotropic before your brain acclimatize and start ditching these cheap moments of horror. There are a handful few well made horror moments: the eerie images on the walls and the thing that is chasing you are really unnerving, but everything else is forgetful. The sewer like design of levels that have no atmosphere nor personality also does not help in leaving a chilling, memorable gaming experience. Avoid it unless you want to jump out of your chair in the first 3 minutes and then uninstall it.

I've never really reviewed a Steam game before but, I've had such a great experience with Dungeon Nightmares II that I wanted to stop and appreciate it. I initially played the first game on another website for free, and wanted to delve deeper into these horrific dungeons so I went for the sequel. Was not disappointed. I must note that I have yet to experience this game to it's full nightmare-ness. PROS - Your experience is not entirely monotonous; the dungeon maps change, so things are not always where you expect them to be. - Legit jumpscares and creepy 'things' await you in the dark. - The dungeon grows stronger so the game becomes increasingly more challenging just as you think you're getting the hang of it. - Great atmosphere with a dark aesthetic that is chillingly pleasant. - Cohesive elements and fluid, simplistic mechanics. CONS - I don't really think you can pause the game which leads to the next con... - You'll poo your pants. 10/10 would curse violently through my Twitch stream again.

I really wanted to like this game because it had some fairly original ideas and some very good scares, but unfortunately this game didn't have the same spark as the first one did. To get into detail, I like games with a few jumpscares, chasing, and some unforgiving mechanics like what Getting Over It did. But the whole horror experience of this game goes away once you realize that that is all there is to the game. The same things over and over again, repetitive jumpscares that just get annoying after a while, and you having to redo hours and hours of work to only lose the progress AGAIN to something you could do hardly anything about at all. I thought the game would get better until the timed levels come in. Who the actual hell would want to play a game where you only have 10 minutes to search EVERYWHERE for a lever and elevator and have to start from the very beginning if the 10 minutes is up? I think the idea of permadeath is a good idea for video games, but the way it was placed in this game was something that would cause someone like me to jump off a cliff. Complete permadeath in a game like this is a perfect lesson on what not to put in a horror game because it completely ruins the horror experience and is just pure agony. Of my 2.6 hours played, I have spent over an hour just getting back to where I was. This might just be the most overrated horror game I have ever played in my opinion. Period.

I've definitely played and beaten well over a hundred horror games, and none of them come anywhere close to being as frightening an experience as this one.

Dungeon Nightmares 2 The Memory is a very well made randomly generated horror game. It is surprisingly very effective at maintaining a constant feeling of tension and fear from start to finish. The game is a roguelike, but the developer added something in the game that was a good idea: If you die, you are taken to a “Pick A Door” room where one door lets you continue, and the other door is Game Over and you start over from the beginning. You don’t know which door is which. So you get a 50/50 chance at being able to continue whenever you die. Another thing that is really good about the game is that this is not another roguelike game that is insanely hard. The difficulty of the game is more tame compared to most other roguelike games. Which is a major plus. It’s nice to see an indie game developer that understands that just because you’re making a roguelike game, that doesn’t mean that you have to make it insanely hard. Just because Edmund McMillen made some insanely hard indie games (Super Meat Boy, The Binding Of Isaac, and The Binding Of Isaac Rebirth) that turned out to be very successful, that doesn’t mean that you have to copy what he did and make your roguelike games insanely hard too. Super Meat Boy, The Binding Of Isaac, and The Binding Of Isaac Rebirth are good games and I do like them. I just wish that more indie game developers would understand that it isn’t necessary for you to make your games insanely hard in order for them to be successful and popular. Dungeon Nightmares 2 The Memory is an excellent example of this. The only flaw of the game that I think is worth mentioning is that the game is too dark and there’s no brightness/gamma setting. You may have to turn up the brightness and the contrast on your monitor to be able to see anything. I get that it’s a horror game and darkness in horror games is expected. But there’s a difference between dark and too dark. This game is too dark. That’s the only flaw that I think is worth mentioning. But it’s not a deal breaker to me. Dungeon Nightmares 2 The Memory is definitely a very well made horror game. It’s tense. It’s scary. And I highly recommend it to horror game fans

I love this game. I've supported K Monkey since the original Dungeon Nightmares. I can't give this a positive review however, because my very first experience into the game, although atmospheric and scary, was quickly killed by an inability to find the switch. Why game developers think it's fun to find the objective only to be turned away to find some other meaningless thing before you can use it (in this case a power switch for an elevator) is beyond me. I wandered around the tiny starter are for 15 minutes searching up and down every wall for the damn switch. Looking at my map, I retraced my steps in every room 5 or 6 times over. Still never found the switch. Goals should be difficult but achievable. This is especially important in horror games because if you lose your audience and they get sucked out of the atmosphere, they are no longer invested and the horror doesn't work anymore. This tedious searching, (at a painfully slow walking pace mind you) killed the game for me. Please make the switch a more obvious feature or just remove it. It doesn't make the game any more fun in the slightest.

Time limits and an absolutely broken stamina mechanic, especially when there is random generation AND a possible permanent death mechanic (which is based on a coin flip)... this game just has all the components to be a frustrating experience for no real apparent reason. There were levels where you have a 10 minute time limit (tied to instant death - see the above permanent death chance) and the hallways generated were so long and convoluted that even without the absolutely ridiculous stamina mechanic, it would have been impossible to find the movie reel, the elevator, AND the power switch, all within the time limit; especially when you have to backtrack because you just so happen to take the wrong path to begin with (not even listing the low character health and BS enemy spawns). This game has so much potential that is just wasted on some BS mechanics.