The game was released on PC in 2015, and is available for purchase on Steam here.
It was also ported to Xbox One in 2017.
Not to be confused with Nirvana's legendary album.
Nevermind contains examples of:
- Addled Addict: Client #418's level reveals that he has issues with drug and alcohol abuse that started when he was a teen, and which he now turns to as self-medication for his PTSD symptoms — with the middle portion of his level seemingly representing a bad trip with an equally nasty crash to make it clear it's a double-edged sword.
- The Alcoholic: Client #251 notes that her recently-deceased mother, who she loved but was never very close to, was always a big wine drinker. Factor in the heavy implications that she had cancer and that part of why her husband killed himself over money issues was that they were struggling to afford her treatments and she comes off as having been this to cope. Client #418 is also a drinker, but other substances take more prominence in his level.
- Alone in a Crowd: Client #418's intake interview makes it apparent that he feels completely estranged from everyday people, and his mindscape's Ghost City creates this feeling through all its inhabitants being mannequins or ghost-like apparitions, depending the segment. Apart from situations where they inflict damage when bumped into, outside of one specific mannequin involved in a puzzle, they cannot be engaged with and mostly act as environmental decoration and markers of certain important objects.
- Animal Motifs:
- Client #251 mentions she loves cats, and sends the player character a thank-you card with a cat on it after her treatment.
- Client #909 is an agoraphobic woman whose level illustrates her keeping herself busy at home with domestic work and craft hobbies, and she has a pet bird that sings cheerfully in its cage during her activities until her pivotal traumatic experience occurs when her partner kills it in a fit of demanding and possessive rage at her — cutting off its wings, no less.
- Ate His Gun: Client #251's mindscape reveals fairly early on that her father did this, with the rest of her level reflecting her effort to fully process this after the lie she grew up with regarding his cause of death.
- Awful Truth: The premise centers around this trope - each client has some sort of horrible experience that they have somehow forgotten or repressed, and it is your job as the Neuro-Prober to uncover it.
- Body Horror: A few of the puzzles in Client #440's stage revolve around playing instruments fused to the distorted bodies of agonizingly-posed human statues, reflecting her belief that putting oneself through pain is always worth it to become a better performer.
- Cosmic Motifs: Client #909's fear of leaving the house is contrasted with her loving outer space and sci-fi imagery; her mental world starts out in an alien landscape, the player character then stepping into a rocket that takes them to her apartment where her room contains items like astronomy books and a poster that declares space the "ultimate freedom". This represents that despite her claims that being a homebody isn't a problem for her, she does feel trapped and it's in her nature to desire more — the oppressive relationship she's stuck in just makes her feel unsafe doing anything but staying at home, trying to make sure everything stays perfect in a place where she has relative control.
- Domestic Abuser: Experience with one of these turns out to have been the catalyst for Client #909's agoraphobia. The partner who she claims she has a happy and supportive relationship with during her intake interview turns out to have initially seemed sweet on the surface, only to show their hand ever more as a controlling bully towards her, picking apart anything about her they could, including her trans status, culminating in them brutally killing her pet bird with a pair of scissors as "punishment" for a perceived transgression and stalking and threatening her into further submission.
- Downer Ending: Client #251's, in the grand scheme of the game. Every post-stage client interview after hers sees its subject reflecting after their breakthrough on how their experiences have made them feel, with new clarity and an idea of what they may need to start doing to heal. Poor #251, however, leaves off coming to terms with the memory of her father's suicide on the verge of tears.
- Featureless Protagonist: The doctor, who is meant to represent you, is never seen, and the clients are also never directly seen, though vague depictions in the photographs can hint at their appearance.
- Fingore: Client #440, a pianist who holds herself to a high standard of perfection, has a mindscape prominently featuring pained and broken hand imagery. This turns out to be a more specific reference to her key traumatic memory: her parents hired her a very prestigious but very strict piano teacher when she was a child, and he slammed the headboard on her hands in frustration during a lesson one day where she kept making mistakes.
- Ghost City: Client #418's landscape is one, either completely empty or inhabited by posed mannequins depending on the area and time of day, to convey the uncanny loneliness of #418's life scraping by as a homeless war veteran.
- Harmful to Minors: Client #251 is a well-established woman in at least her late 30's who has no idea why she would have any neuroses, as by her account, not only has she been living a perfectly normal life as an adult, she had a great childhood. Then her Neuro-Probing session plunges the player into a child's perspective in a memory of her old family home, quickly revealing that what issues she does have stem from the repressed, scarring memory of having watched her father's violent suicide when she was little enough to need help mopping up a kitchen spill.
- Hell Is That Noise: A blaring car horn pervades the section of #251's mindscape representing her unpacking (or perhaps trying to convince herself to believe) the lie that her father died in a car accident.
- It's All My Fault:
- In Client #251's story, it turns out that her scopophobia stems from her belief that she somehow contributed to her father's death. Not only did her father stare at her just as he killed himself, but being stared at afterward made her feel like everyone who encountered her knew whatever it was she'd done and was judging her.
- In Client #909's, she admits that, like many people in abusive situations, she internalized the idea that her partner's mistreatment of her was her own fault, telling herself that everything would be fine if she would only "do everything right" from their perspective and that if it wasn't, it was what she deserved for being flawed.
- Nice Day, Deadly Night: The section of Client #909's level taking place in her apartment starts off bright and sunny, with the sun gradually setting as the initially chipper notes she finds from her partner take on an increasingly suspicious, passive aggressive cast, then an outright aggressive one, with them finally revealing how low they're willing to sink in trying to assert control over her by killing her bird at nightfall.
- No Name Given: None of the clients are referred to as anything but their patient numbers. They all send the player signed thank-you cards over the course of the game, but the signatures are all of the "super-freehand and impossible to interpret" variety.
- The Perfectionist: Client #440's main issue. She's an older woman developing Alzheimer's, and an acclaimed professional pianist, and she's admitted for severe guilt after an episode freezes her up at one of her concerts. She admits during her intake interview that her mother always drilled the idea that suffering is worth it for perfection into her in a way that makes it clear she took it to heart, and it turns out that sure enough, when she was a kid, her parents hired a horribly strict piano teacher for her who once slammed the headboard onto her hands out of irritation when she made a mistake, officially planting the seed for her own abject fear of screwing up and quite literally underperforming.
- Red Filter of Doom: The sky and lighting of Client #418's mindscape turn a forbidding red in segments representing his negatively-excited states of mind, whether from substance abuse or from his PTSD having been triggered.
- Red Herring: While you find ten photographs in each mindscape, only five of those photographs are related to unlocking each client's Awful Truth. The other photographs do give you more details on each client's full story and context on what they're going through (e.x., it's implied that Client #418 already had emotional issues and difficulty relating to others before his PTSD), but they're not needed for solving each stage's final puzzle.
- Scenery Porn: The set design potential of semi-abstract, symbolic mindscapes manifests in some pretty lavish visuals in areas. Shout-out to the section of #440's mind which sees the player navigating a golden landscape full of gigantic, contorting statue hands and rivers of blood-red liquid under a constant shower of forget-me-not petals.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: One mindscape's story comes together to reveal that Client #418 is this. He joined the military for the advertised heroism of it as a lonely and misunderstood young man looking to do some meaningful good in his life, only for his service to leave him with trauma and even greater sense of alienation from the world for which he wound up self-medicating on the streets.
- Solve the Soup Cans: Due to the symbolic nature of the landscapes, many puzzles become this.
- Trans Tribulations: Part of how Client #909's partner kept her under their abusive thumb was by making her feel like she needed their approval in their relationship to validate her womanhood. Attacking her for being trans, among her other insecurities, ironically also increased her dependence on them through confirming her fears that those qualities made her hard to love and invited cruelty.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Some of Client #418's memory photos note that there was believed to be "something wrong" with him as a kid, that he'd dissect insects for fun, and that he started using drugs as a teenager. These turn out to be Red Herrings where piecing together his main story is concerned, but provide extra context for his feelings of self-loathing and isolation, not to mention his drug abuse as a coping mechanism, in adulthood.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The tutorial "client" (actually a simulation meant to mimic an actual mindscape in the context of the game) is one to Hansel and Gretel, which comes into play when determining which photographs tell the truth and which do not.
- World of Symbolism: Invoked, as each world is the client's subconscious.
- You Are Not Alone: An element of Client #418 and Client #909's respective recoveries - in their post-level monologues, Client #418 states that despite his previous feelings of alienation, he finally feels ready to accept real help from others, and Client #909 mentions having a strong base of friends to help her move on from her insecurities and trauma.