Neverending Nightmares Kickstarter wakes from funding nightmare to funding success

Neverending Nightmares, the semi-autobiographical horror game about depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder from Retro/Grade creator Matt Gilgenbach, has been funded on Kickstarter, but not before a financial mishap caused a fan to pledge $9,000 more than he intended.

During the campaign's final hours, Gabriel Pinto, a backer from Brazil, wanted to raise his pledge. Brazil denotes cents with a comma instead of a decimal point, so when Pinto raised his pledge to "$95,00," the Kickstarter system interpreted it as "$9,500."

This boosted Neverending Nightmares across its $99,000 goal, but Pinto would not have been able to pay off his contribution. Unfortunately for Pinto, Kickstarter rules stipulated that he could not withdraw funds if doing so would reduce the campaign below its goal. Pinto reduced his contribution by what he could, but was still several thousand dollars above what he had intended.

"I felt terrible," Pinto told Joystiq. "Moments later I was on the project comments crying and breathing heavily."

This caught the eye of fellow backer Thomas Davis, who decided to help out. Davis raised his own pledge amount by $3,000 so that Pinto could reduce his. Davis wasn't keen on donating $3,000 more than he originally planned, but in an email to Joystiq, he explained that he wasn't too worried.

"I don't mind helping out. I did not do much though," Davis wrote. "I knew it was going to fund anyway and I did what I did mainly to change the attitude of the comment stream. Everyone was panicking and poor Gabriel was confused and stressing out. By fronting a little funds for a short time, it kept the experience a positive one for everyone."

Davis argued that the bigger story was how quickly the community acted in response. After Davis fronted his money, other backers increased their own pledges, eventually allowing both Pinto and Davis to be back at their intended pledge levels. Pledging will remain open until 10 pm EST, but the game is now funded, and is planned for release next fall on PC, Mac, Linux and Ouya.

In an email with Joystiq, Pinto explained that, like Gilgenbach, he had experience with depression. Neverending Nightmares, Pinto wrote, could help people understand. "Every time you talk to some one, you see in their eyes that they don't understand how [depression] is," Pinto wrote. "Things like this project make people really see what we feel, what we think and how horrible this is."

Gilgenbach told Joystiq via email that he was "humbled to be associated with such great people." To thank Davis and Pinto for their contributions, Gilgenbach wrote on the game's Kickstarter page that he would "strongly consider" naming the main characters Thomas and Gabrielle.