Webcam-based Biofeedback, Eye-Tracking, and Apple Watch
over 10 years ago – Tue, Mar 01, 2016 at 08:54:08 PM

Hi everyone!

Remember that big announcement I was talking about in the last backer update? Good news! The press release is officially out there so I can finally talk about it! Here is some additional information on what to expect next time you launch Nevermind! 

Emotion Sensing!

Biofeedback response for virtually any Windows or Mac machine with a Standard Webcam 

As you all know, Nevermind has traditionally integrated biofeedback responses through heart rate detection via a variety of specialized sensors. However, with our integration of Affectiva’s incredible Affdex technology, Nevermind can now pick up on emotional data (through facial expressions) via pretty much any ‘ol webcam. 

Affectiva’s Affdex software works a bit differently than the way heart rate sensors have traditionally worked in Nevermind. Affectiva’s emotion-sensing software watches the player’s facial expressions for signs of emotional distress. The heart rate sensors, on the other hand, pick up indications of physiological distress. This difference is actually very cool because it means that, when played with both Affdex and a heart rate sensor, the end result is something greater than when played with only one technology alone (more on that below).

Even though each technology’s approach is unique, we’ve tuned our algorithm so that the in-game results are reasonably comparable for most users! That means that, as of right now, pretty much anyone with a min-spec (or higher) Mac or Windows computer and a standard webcam can experience the biofeedback features within Nevermind!

Affdex + Heart Rate Sensor 

As alluded to above, the really cool thing is that, if you already have a heart rate sensor, you can combine the power of physiological and emotion-based responsiveness to enjoy an even more accurate and reactive biofeedback experience than ever! By receiving input on two separate aspects of your unique response to each in-game moment, Nevermind will be able to be more sensitive and have less false positives (e.g. the game being unable to distinguish the difference between the excitement of, say, clearing a maze from feelings of stress or fear via pulse alone). 

Give it a try and let us know what you think!

Eye-tracking Technology 

For those of you who have never tried it, eye tracking technology is pretty dang cool. At Flying Mollusk, we’re always eager to explore new, cutting-edge technology. As such, we’ve been fortunate enough to collaborate with Tobii to integrate their eye tracking technology into Nevermind, creating some features and exclusive moments that we never thought possible. I don’t want to give too much away, but when played with a Tobii EyeX eye tracking controller, you’ll be able to do things like pause the game simply by closing your eyes (when things get too intense), catch a glimpse of what’s around the corner simply by looking toward the edge of the screen - plus an extra surprise or two in each level! We’ve had a ton of fun playing around with the Tobii EyeX (both in Nevermind and in other compatible games/apps) and definitely recommend that you check it out!

We will continue to tune and enhance the Tobii integration features in our upcoming updates over the next few weeks. As always, please let us know if you have any feedback!

Apple Watch Support! 

We’ve always wanted to support the Apple Watch and, finally, it looks like that will be a reality! Unfortunately it’s not quite ready for this update, but it should be available later this Spring. We’ll be sharing more details on that as we get closer.

We hope you’re as excited about these amazing new technologies as we are and, as always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at [email protected]!

With much excitement!

Erin & the Nevermind Team

Exciting Nevermind Update Next Week!
over 10 years ago – Wed, Feb 24, 2016 at 11:36:40 PM

Hi Everyone!

I know we’ve been a bit quiet as of late. By now, hopefully you know that that means we’ve been heads-down and very busy tinkering away at something special. Rest assured that has, indeed, very much been the case these past several months.

Next week we’ll be launching an exciting update on Steam as well as a press release about some of the very cool things we’ve been working on. Unfortunately, I can’t share many details until that press release goes out (which I’ll discuss in a backer update next week), however, I wanted to give a heads up to keep an eye out for it.

More importantly, I wanted to provide an overdue explanation on how the rest of the backer commitments are going - including development on Xbox One and Oculus Rift - as well as the physical rewards.

Xbox One 

Unfortunately, we don’t have much more news on this front beyond what was shared in our previous update. That’s not to say that things are stagnant or looking hopeless, it’s just that it’s taking much longer than originally anticipated to resolve. We're still actively working with Microsoft as well as exploring a number of other very interesting options (that may also lead to even cooler things down the road). Once again, the team and I apologize for the continued delay - rest assured that we’re doing everything we can to get the biofeedback-enabled version of Nevermind on Xbox One in your hands as soon as possible.

Oculus Rift 

We’re happy to report that Oculus development is going great and we are still on track to release the VR version of Nevermind around when the Rift becomes publicly available (early April-ish). As it stands, we’re basically all done with development on the Oculus version of Nevermind! We just need to finish preparing some final requirements to officially submit it for review and then, once it passes the review process, it should be ready to go!

I may be biased, but I have to say that Nevermind in virtual reality is an incredible experience - especially with the biofeedback functionality. The team and I cannot wait to share it with everybody in just a couple of months!

Physical Rewards 

You guys have been so amazingly patient regarding your rewards. Progress has been made on them, but between the Xbox One complications (and subsequent explorations), Oculus development, and some of the other exciting upcoming improvements, the core game experience has continued to demand most of the focus of our small, scrappy team. As such, progress on finalizing and organizing the physical rewards has been slower than anticipated. They’ll still be ready before too long, however we’re now realistically looking at May for a delivery date.

I’m so sorry for the continued delay but it will all be worth it in the end!

What’s Next After All the Rewards Go Out 

You may be wondering what will be next for Flying Mollusk and Nevermind after the Xbox One and Oculus versions are released and the physical rewards have been delivered to their rightful homes.

First and foremost, like many of you (and Nevermind’s player base at large), we are absolutely dying to add more content (in the form of more Clients/levels) to the game. I think about them every day and have been spending a lot of my time and energy these past few months trying to secure the means that would enable us to make this a reality.

Unfortunately, each level takes a lot of time and resources to craft. A ton of thought, planning, detail, and iteration goes into each Client’s experience to create the unique and nuanced journey that Nevermind has become known for.

Not a lot of people know this, but the core Nevermind team consists of only about four people - me, one producer, one engineer, and one artist. That’s it! When you compare that to other indie studios like Firewatch’s Campo Santo (11 team members) or even SOMA’s Frictional Games (14 team members) in addition to blazing a trail for biofeedback-based games in general, I’m as proud as ever to reflect on all that we have accomplished!

We’ve been incredibly fortunate to be able to partner with an assortment of talented folks, like our amazing Audio Director and our gifted Voice Talent, to help us bring the game to life. But they too require resources (i.e., $$$) to do the amazing work they do.

To be frank, finding those resources has been challenging. Especially in light of all the obstacles facing indies today - not the least of which being the prevalence of Steam Refunds (a frequent topic of discussion as of late, although we haven’t been hit quite as hard as a few other games) and piracy/torrenting. In fact, to provide some context for how bad piracy and torrenting can be for indie games like ours, we did some math the other day and found that, according to our numbers, of all the people who have downloaded and played Nevermind, less than 25% actually legitimately paid for it.

So, it can be challenging to say the least. That said, we wouldn’t have gotten into the experimental game development business if we were afraid of taking on challenges. Despite all these hurdles we’ve had to overcome, I’m still optimistic for Nevermind’s future post-Kickstarter rewards! The team and I are still constantly discussing ideas and options for new levels, we are continuing to work with researchers and behavioral health experts to pursue a version of the game intended for therapeutic purposes, and we’re still always on the lookout for ways to make the biofeedback experience even more accessible via new technologies and platforms. 

Even when times get tough, we continue to find inspiration and motivation in your past and continued support and enthusiasm and will continue to do everything we can to keep making Nevermind bigger and better.

Alright! Sorry for such a long update but hopefully that helps to provide some insight into what’s in store for all of us moving forward!

Thank you so much for your continued support and patience and we’re really looking forward to sharing some cool new stuff next week!

~Erin & The Nevermind Team

Happy Holidays from the Nevermind Team!
over 10 years ago – Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 11:05:32 PM

The Nevermind team would like to take a moment to wish all of our awesome backers a joyous holiday season and a very happy 2016!

I know there’s been a lot of news as of late, but we’ll close out 2015 with one final announcement for the year… we’re pleased to report that we now support a new sensor - the Polar H7 Heart Rate Chest Strap (for Windows 8 and above, priced at around $55-$65). Information about the Polar H7 HR Chest Strap (and all of the sensors we currently support) can be found here:
http://nevermindgame.com/sensors/

While we’re sad to see 2015 go (it has been an amazing year for Nevermind, as you know), 2016 is already looking very bright for the future of the game!

There are so many exciting things just on the horizon. First there’s the Xbox One and Oculus Rift version of the game, as mentioned in the previous update. In addition, as a tease, I can say that we are exploring other platforms, VR systems, and have some very exciting things in the works on the sensor front. Plus, we’re still hopeful that more Clients will be coming your way before all is said and done. I’ll share more information on all of the above when the time comes, but it goes without saying that 2016 is shaping up to be a very busy (in a good way) year ahead!

Thank you for making 2015 incredible and here’s to an even more amazing 2016!

Happy holidays,
Erin & The Nevermind Team

PS: We’re on sale for the next few days on Steam, The Humble Store (via the widget on our homepage), and Green Man Gaming! Please help spread the word and/or pick it up as a great last minute Christmas gift!

Nevermind Oculus Rift / Xbox One Development Update
over 10 years ago – Tue, Dec 22, 2015 at 12:16:20 PM

Hi Everyone!

As promised, I wanted to send an update on how things on the Oculus and Xbox front are going.

OCULUS 

First, Oculus! Things are going great! Nevermind is now fully playable in VR and we’re now just optimizing that version of the game to be as best suited for the VR experience as possible. We’re still on track for it to be made available as soon as the consumer Oculus Rift units are released (which we hope will be soon). We’re also currently exploring other VR platforms… but we’ll save details on that for another update later on down the road.

XBOX ONE 

Many of you have asked about the status of the Xbox One version of the game. On that front, we have both good news and tricky news.

The good news is that we have a solid version of the game running on Xbox One, and recently ran it through an early certification process with Microsoft, which went really well! This means that we’re very close to having a final candidate that we can submit for approval for release.

The tricky news is that the build we submitted didn’t include any Kinect 2.0-based biofeedback data gathering - this is because there are some unforeseen complications regarding access to the heart rate data that we intend to use in Nevermind. Our contacts at ID@Xbox (Microsoft’s program that allows independent games developers to self-publish games) have been SUPER helpful in attempting to get to the bottom of this with the hopes of potentially figuring out some way in which we can find a solution. However, these things take time, and it’s hard for us to gauge exactly when ​(and frankly if) everything will be ​able to be resolved.

That said, we want you to know that all of us at Flying Mollusk and our contacts over at Microsoft are hard at work trying to figure out the best, most effective way for us to get that biofeedback data ASAP. Worst case, we may end up releasing the non-biofeedback-enabled version at least initially and, if/when we do get the biofeedback element sorted out, include it as an update of sorts later on. I’m sure it’s not what those of you who are waiting for your Xbox One keys are hoping to hear, but in the spirit of this campaign, we wanted to be as transparent with you, our backers and closest supporters, as possible. We’ll of course be sure to keep you up to date as things progress. Thanks so so so much again for your patience, and our sincerest apologies for the delay.

Ok! That’s it for now! We hope you’ve all enjoyed last week’s build update if you’ve gotten a chance to play it and look out for a message tomorrow-ish with some more news on the sensor front (for the PC/Mac versions)!

Until that next update! 
Erin & the Nevermind Team

New Nevermind Steam Update: NeuroSpas and Upgrades
over 10 years ago – Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 06:26:24 PM

Hey Everyone!

As a quick backer update we have a new Steam update! 

This build update includes a few goodies, namely the NeuroSpas, that we’ve been working on for a while in-between developing out the main portion of the game. 

While these are not new levels per se, rest assured that creating them didn’t detract from our resources for building actual new levels. We anticipate that there may be a few questions specifically about this update, so we created this FAQ to help address any potential concerns: 
http://steamcommunity.com/app/342260/discussions/1/487877107134746860/

This build update also includes noticeable visual and, for some, performance improvements (both of which were nice side-effects of our efforts in making Nevermind fully optimized for virtual reality). 

Check it out when you get a chance - we had a ton of fun creating the NeuroSpas and we hope that you enjoy experiencing them! 

That’s it for this update. We’ll be sending another one hopefully within the next week or so with some more news on the Xbox One and VR progress. So stay tuned! :)

Best,
Erin & the Nevermind Team