Endless Nightmare is a series of Survival Horror / First-Person Shooter games made by the Chinese Indie company, 707 INTERACTIVE (based in Hong Kong) for Android phones and Windows computers. Like the title implies, it's a horror game, though the sequels adds plenty of action in every new entry.
Every single game tells a different story, which can be easily followed even without completing previous entries. While the first two games have the player assuming the same character, the sequels are standalone and unconnected.
Present in all games:
- Artifact Title: The first game is themed around "fear" (and is actually scary at times), hence the "Nightmare" in the title. The second game is still occasionally scary, but ramps up the action. By the third game, you're shooting enemies left and right and kicking ass, and the scare factor is no longer there, but the title remains for branding purposes.
- Boom, Headshot!: While the first game averts it (your only weapon is a taser who does the same damage regardless where it hits) in the sequels shooting zombies in their heads kills them instantly.
- Bottle Episode: The first game is set wholly in James' empty house, the second a hospital, third's in a pyramid while the fourth is a prison. The last game finally averts this trope.
- Everything Fades: Onscreen enemies simply disappears once they're killed.
- Finishing Move: In the sequels, if you cripple an enemy while battling them, you can perform an instant-kill move from close range (either via Neck Snap or Slashed Throat). You'll need to wait for an indicator to appear on your target to do so, however.
- Genre Mashup: Survival Horror + FPS action. The first game subverts the trope for being mostly survival horror.
- Hell Is That Noise: Expect plenty of moaning zombies every game, from weeping zombie nurses in the second game to moaning zombie wardens in the fourth. They can be heard from a whole room away, echoing through every corridor of an empty hospital, prison or house. When one is heard, expect to be attacked within entering a new area.
- "Hey, You!" Haymaker: Most of the games allows you to sneak up on enemies and execute them from behind. It kills basic, weaker enemies in a single move, though some of the Anubian mooks from Shrine actually gets up after a takedown.
- The Lost Lenore: James from the first two games and Scott from the fourth are both widowers, and their deceased spouses are constantly name-dropped throughout the game.
- Nightmare Face: In each and every game, getting killed by a zombie / monster will end with a close-up of the creature's face sneering at your player character, filling up the whole screen before it goes black.
- Throwing the Distraction: A feature in every game, you can pick up items (rocks, porcelain cups, coins, etc.) and throw them to distract enemies. It helps if you're trying to pull the "Hey, You!" Haymaker move on them.
- The Undead: Zombies, ghosts, mummies, you name it.
- Undeathly Pallor: All the zombie enemies are pale-skinned, as are some of the human-turned-demons in the fifth game.
Tropes Applying to Individual Games
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Endless Nightmare: Home
Endless Nightmare: Home: James, a police inspector and the Player Character, wakes up from a long coma after the murder of his wife and daughter prior to the game's events. In the process of investigating the reasons of their demise while working under grief, James is suddenly alone in his own house, in an empty neighborhood. And why there are spectres coming resembling his deceased family after him.
- Ate His Gun: In the ending, James is ultimately unable to accept his family's deaths. Retrieving his Glock, we see him staring down the barrel from a first-person POV, and then the game ends. The sequel however shows him still alive.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: The kitchen have the words "Happy Birthday Aimee!" written in blood. With the birthday cake of James' daughter, Aimee, on the dining table and untouched.
- Creepy Basement: One of the stages leads to James exploring his house's abandoned basement. It's as spooky as you'd expect.
- Creepy Child: James have to contend with the ghost of his daughter, who is somehow after her own father.
- Creepy Doll: James' daughter, Aimee, used to have a favorite toy, a doll in a red dress. Now that Aimee is dead the doll seems to have a mind of it's own, randomly appearing all over the house despite not been seen moving - as if the doll is watching James' every move. In the ending James sees a vision of his wife and daughter, and Aimee is holding that very doll.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Even for the series' standards, the first game is unusually short (20 minutes of gameplay...) and feels more like an "experimental" prototype. It's also entirely in the Survival Horror genre with barely any weapons, enemies in the game countable on one hand, and James spends most of the game actually fleeing from supernatural creatures rather than fighting them.
- Gainax Ending: James escapes!... except he doesn't. He then found a doctor's report on an unrelated character called Nick, and then his Glock, and suddenly decide to blow his face out and the game just ends.
- Mind Screw: The whole game. As if the random appearance of undead and visions of being haunted by his family isn't enough, at one point James re-visits his daughter's bedroom... and finds a huge fish randomly flopping on it. It's NEVER explained.
- Mooks, but no Bosses: There's zombies, vengeful ghosts, but no bosses to fight. The sequels averts this.
- My Little Phony: When investigating the bedroom of James' daughter, her bedsheet has a MLP-knockoff unicorn cartoon on it.
- Room Full of Crazy: The very first area, James' room, have a bulletin board in the side wall pinned with dozens of photos, connected by red threads and scribbled crosses as results of James' (unsuccessful) investigation.
- Room Escape Game: The plot of the first game inexplicably went from "James investigating his family's deaths" to "James escaping his house", for some reason. From what we see in the end credits, it didn't work.
- Static Stun Gun: The ranged taser is James' sole weapon for most of the first game. It's surprisingly effective despite lacking bullets.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: For the entirety of the game (and its sequel) we're seeing events unfolding from James' POV, a man driven borderline insane with grief and agony after losing his family. It makes sense that nothing actually makes sense in-game.
Endless Nightmare: Hospital
Endless Nightmares: Hospital: Continuing where the previous game left off, James is the main character and player protagonist again, this time waking up in a hospital. There are tubes and wiring inexplicably attached to him, and after a brief struggle he makes an escape. Unfortunately, the entire building is devoid of life, but it is filled with the undead - including a fiery, spike-covered demonic creature coming after James.
- Abandoned Hospital: Where the entire game was set. It begins with James' Abandoned Hospital Awakening and keeps going from there.
- Actionized Sequel: James now can use his trusty Glock (he obtained at the previous game's end) to repeatedly kick ass, besides obtaining shotguns, rifles and the like. There are more enemies (which James can actually kill rather than flee from), more areas to explore, and a boss fight. All later games follows this template.
- All Just a Dream: The ending FMV implies the entire game is merely fragments of James' consciousness fading away as a result of his grief.
- Battleaxe Nurse: The nurse zombies. They're depicted as weeping if left idle, but the moment they see the hero they attack by lashing out and clawing James apart. They're also far more durable than the patient zombies.
- Brown Bag Mask: The lowest-tier patient zombies all wear paper bag masks over their heads, probably to hide their disfigurements.
- Couldn't Find a Pen: As with the first game, here James comes across his name written in caps - "JAMES" - on a wall. With blood.
- Evil Is Burning Hot: The Fire Demon is shrouded entirely in flames, and is the ruler of all the undead in the hospital. It's also the difficult final opponent James need to kill.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: The half-zombies are undead without their lower bodies, save for a bloody, severed spine. They're surprisingly fast however, crawling all over the place and moving towards James at lightning-speed to chew him apart.
- High-Voltage Death: One area in the hospital has a puddle of water in the middle of a corridor thanks to faulty sprinklers, and a collapsed electrical panel submerging a wire in it electrifying the puddle. Stepping in it roasts James instantly, and he'll need to find a rubber glove in the zombie-infested ward to move the wires.
- Implacable Man: The Fire Demon, an abomination haunting the hospital, who eats up bullets as it pursues James. Shooting it slows the demon down a bit, only for it to continue attacking after a few seconds. James' first encounter with it is a Hopeless Boss Fight, and when he faces the same demon in the hospital's boiler room he'll need to shoot the sprinklers to momentarily weaken the demon, before shooting it a few more times.
- Knee Capping: Shooting zombies (both patients and nurses) in the kneecaps will cripple them. James can perform a quick execution with his knife before the zombies recover.
- Noodle People: The nurse zombies barely have any flesh left on their exposed arms and legs and their limbs are effectively garden-hose sized tubes, to ramp up the creepiness factor.
- Shout-Out: Zombie nurses? In an abandoned hospital?
- Strapped to an Operating Table: The state James finds himself in after awakening in a hospital ward in the opening scene, with a snake-like mechanical probe poking at him. But he automatically breaks free leading to gameplay.
- You Can't Thwart Stage One: The first area players have access to James have him killing a few zombies... and suddenly attacked by the Fire Demon. Who beats him back into unconsciousness in a Hopeless Boss Fight. It seems like a Game Over, but then a cutscene later James is in another area.
Endless Nightmare 3: Shrine
- Adventurer Archaeologist: Carlos, an Interpol agent and expert explorer who battles mummies and monsters from Ancient Egypt in a haunted pyramid.
- Charged Attack: Carlos' Tech Glove can be energized to deliver a magnified punch on enemies, even bosses. He's vulnerable to attacks while charging though.
- Intrepid Merchant: How Jessica is depicted in-game - she mysteriously appears in front of Carlos, effortlessly bypassing mummies and Anubians, at random locations to sell Carlos new weapons and tools. Try to attack her though and she'll leave via Grappling-Hook Pistol.
- Fake Ultimate Mook: The Anubian Warrior enemies, despite being one of the largest, scariest-looking enemies in the game (they're nearly twice the height of Carlos, for starters), turns out to be quite the pushover. The "Hey, You!" Haymaker stealh kills works perfectly on them, for starters, and in a direct fight they tank less than ten bullets from Carlos' default pistol, hardly any different from the mummy enemies. Subverted however when the game throws Elite Mook version of the same enemy (wearing different armor) - the Stealth Kill only stuns them, but they get back up almost instantly, and their upgraded counterparts can take over a dozen shots to kill.
- Indy Escape: An early stage have Carlos outrunning a rolling boulder down a corridor and escaping by leaping into a pit. He survives, but was disorientated from the fall and momentarily beset by two Egyptian zombies, when Jessica makes her debut and saves Carlos by shooting the undead.
- Lighter and Softer: Pretty much the entirety of Shrine, compared to it's two predecessors and the fourth game. The dark storyline of the hero having his entire family murdered is replaced with the hero being a badass adventurer, the psychological horror elements were written out, all instances of violence runs on Bloodless Carnage (as the undead enemies are ancient Egyptian corpses or mummies, their blood were long dried-up), Carlos has an on-off ally Jessica who regularly supply him with weapons ensuring the player won't be running dry of ammo, and anything remotely scary can be pummeled to a pulp thanks to Carlos getting a high-tech Power Fist. The fourth game went back to the previous two game's Survival Horror elements however.
- Mummy: Because of the change in setting, mummies are introduced as a go-to undead enemies Carlos battles throughout the game.
- Power Fist: Carlos obtains a Tech Glove right at the start, which allows him to deliver supercharged, electrified punches capable of breaking rocks and ripping apart undead. Unlike James from the previous games who uses knives, Carlos' Finishing Move have him pounding enemies to a pulp.
- Regenerating Health: Carlos' health recovers on it's own after a while, thanks to the juice from his Tech Glove.
- Sequel Goes Foreign: Shrine is set entirely in Egypt, inside a haunted pyramid.
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: The game ends with Carlos defeating Anubis and obtaining the Heart of Pharaoh, only to be knocked out by falling rubble. And then Jessica arrives to pick his pockets, but eventually decides to save Carlos, again. Carlos eventually wound up outside the pyramid, sans Heart of Pharaoh, the same way he was at the beginning and Jessica nowhere in sight.
- Shield-Bearing Mook: Egyptian zombies carrying shields are another recurring enemy type.
- Shout-Out: The Anubian warriors looks exactly like the ones from The Mummy Returns, without being referred by name. Dog-headed giant brutes wearing Egyptian armor, using two-sided spears and all that.
- Stationary Boss: The second and last segment of the Anubis boss fight, where Anubis is confined in a pit in the middle of a room, throwing energy projectiles everywhere and Carlos runs circles around him while firing his shotgun.
- Sword Beam: The Undead Pharaoh boss can unleash a spear beam on Carlos.
- Taking You with Me: In a moment overlapping with Cutscene Incompetence, after Carlos defeats Anubis, the boss then slams his palm on Carlos and automatically knocks him out (there's no way to avoid getting hit regardless where Carlos is). Carlos didn't die, but was knocked out and left in a Collapsing Lair until Jessica, hiding in the boss fight the whole time, reveals herself and saves Carlos. And pickpocket the Heart of Pharaoh along the way.
Endless Nightmare 4: Prison
- "They call me a murderer. But all I remember is, I was a soldier..."
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Scott gets to explore the prison's sewer system halfway through. It's a maze-like structure he needs to navigate across, with a few segments where he wades through waist-high sewage.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: One of the new zombie enemies has gigantic claws in place of arms.
- Blade on a Rope: Colonel Jason, one of the bosses, uses a razor-sharp blade on a chain as weapon against Scott.
- Body Horror: The previous three games have some deformed enemies, but Prison really ramps it up - from the blade-armed zombies whose faces are nearly skinless and have crustacean claws grafted into their limbs, to dog-monsters whose head splits apart into a mess of tentacles, the Human Blob who's a mess of human flesh with dozens of faces still intact...
- Body of Bodies: The Human Blob is... a Blob Monster made of multiple human bodies fused into a big ball. Who can perform a Rolling Attack on Scott.
- Brown Bag Mask: The bag-head zombies from the second game, which makes a come back in this one. Instead of bag-head patient zombies, this time Scott have to deal with bag-head prisoner zombies.
- Death Row: Scott was a disgraced US Army Marine turned death row inmate in the backstory, and was supposed to be executed via electric chair. But then the zombie outbreak happens.
- Family Man: Scott seems to be quite a dedicated husband and father before his family's deaths. Cutscenes depicts him bonding with his son Daniel and loving his wife, but then the pandemic happens.
- Guns Akimbo: Scott can retrieve a spare pistol from the prison armory and use two guns to kick ass.
- Shout-Out: The split-head dog... thing enemies, who appears to be a canine until it's head splits open to reveal a mess of tentacles. Seems like the designer is a fan of The Thing (1982).
- Sunny Sunflower Disposition: Sunflowers are the favorite plants of Scott's wife, Viola (a gentle Nice Girl dedicated to her husband and son). Happy Flashback moments with her have Scott giving Viola sunflowers or Viola decorating her bedroom with sunflowers in vases, and anytime Viola appears onscreen expect to see a sunflower in the same frame (including a shot in a morgue where Viola's blanketed corpse has a sunflower on it).
- Tap on the Head: Scott's Finishing Move have him picking up bricks and smashing undead in the craniums. It effectively finishes off most lower-level zombies instantly.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Like James in the first two games, the protagonist Scott may or may not be entirely sane; the whole thing seems to be the product of a deranged man insane with grief over losing his family.
- Troubled Backstory Flashback: Cutscenes between levels depicts Scott's past, from happy times with his spouse to his family's deaths and his Sanity Slippage and killing of eight police officers.
Endless Nightmare 5: Curse
Endless Nightmare 5: Curse: The fifth installment went back to the distant past, instead of the present. Set in Ming Dynasty China, you assume the role of a Taoist priest-in-training in the fabled Xuanqing Temple. When your sister is abducted by the forces of the underworld, you set off on a quest in some sacred mountains with your trusty holy sword.
- Badass Preacher: Instead of a cop or a secret agent, the fifth game sees you playing as a badass priest who hunts demons.
- Big Brother Instinct: Your mission this time involves you trying to retrieve your kidnapped younger sister from the forces of evil.
- Faux Action Girl: Your sister, who's introduced in the opening prologue kicking the ass of some lesser demons... only to be defeated by the Vengeful Soul of Shen-Ping, the demon leader, and abducted. She spends the remainder of the game as a Damsel in Distress.
- Flaming Sword: Your Holy energy charges your default sword into one of these. Naturally, it's an Absurdly Sharp Blade who slices up the undead like butter.
- Flying Face: A floating, severed Oni head serves as one of the bosses.
- Later-Installment Weirdness: The fifth game is the only one set in ancient times, without firearms (since no such things exist yet) and in a world where magic exists. There's also an abundance of dialogue compared to previous entries, a far wider universe to explore, and the horror elements severely downplayed (to the point that it hardly feels like a Survival Horror game anymore).
- Mana Meter: Your Taoist chi energy, the one thing allowing you to launch projectiles and land further devastating attacks on undead and demons. Casting spells depletes them, and meditating refills it.
- Paper Talisman: You can summon flaming Taoist talismans as projectile attacks, which you generate automatically using your chi. It's a replacement for the ranged attacks due to the sequel's lack of firearms. You also have a Finishing Move where you instantly kill an undead by pasting a Taoist talisman on them.
- Power Floats: The demons in this game can float everywhere, and you'll need to use projectile attacks to damage them.
- Sequel Goes Foreign: Curse is set entirely in China, and everyone in the game comes from the Far East / Asia.
- Sword Fight: The Vengeful Soul of Shen-Ping, the game's last boss, who use his sword against yours. The entire battle have you two trading blows until one gets cut down.
- Wuxia: The action-horror Genre Mashup now contains this as well, being a fantasy set in Medieval China.
