Nightmare Fuel / BROK the InvestiGator

• The various ways in which any character in the story can die is pretty horrific. In just the first chapter alone, a lone old man can die on the street if he doesn’t get medication, a robot can be taken away and have his personality overwritten and head replaced, Brok can die via a trap by his best friend’s invention, sliced by lasers or murdered by police robots and rats (the Squealers). Of course, you can potentially save everyone…if you can get past the puzzles without a guide.
  • The endings are no better. Several of them involve characters ceasing to exist, one involves being stuck in an alternate universe, another shows mass genocide of the Slums while the stepson of Brok, Graff and his friend Ott survive in complete guilt, our protagonist suffers full wrath and commits horrible atrocities (including murdering the Squealer leader and his own son out of rage) and then commits suicide out of remorse, Brok getting a broken back from nearly being crushed by a robot and Brok accidentally hurting his stepson Graff after an argument and they permanently move out of Brok’s home out of fear. Also keep in mind, the last of those endings is canon. It’s not hard to imagine that many of the time loops can be quite gruesome.
  • The Fall route’s ending in particular was so shocking and disturbing to players, the developer of the game had to put a content warning and an option to outright skip the ending in because it unsettled so many players due to how disturbing it is. It gets too real in the argument between Brok and Graff and the violent end of the characters is downright unnerving despite how cartoonish the graphics look.

  • The two playable nightmare scenes are immensely unnerving and verge into horror territory. The first is the tutorial section, when Brok’s former Drumer house is on fire. Towards the end of the first nightmare, he sees his late wife, Lia trapped under a metal bed. Brok tries to lift it with a crowbar but isn’t strong enough. She accuses him of being a murderer and being an abuser to Graff, his stepson. She becomes increasingly psychotic and screaming at him she’ll never forget nor forgive him. The house promptly collapses as the nightmare ends.
    • The second nightmare involves Brok supposedly walking through an alleyway. He peeks through some blinds. The first one, he sees nothing, just pitch black darkness. The second involves a deceased unknown old cat on their death bed, which understandably freaks Brok out and the third and final blind involves a very young Graff stuck in a cell, crying out for his parents. Brok tries to reach out to him but Graff, freaking out at a random stranger claiming to be his dad, is utterly terrified and screaming at him to get away from him and becoming increasingly panicked, screaming for help. Brok checks the blind after being alerted to “robots” to find the young Graff nowhere to be found. He is able to defeat the “robots” only to find a slightly older Graff surrounded by mines. Graff accuses him of killing the robots and screams to go away. Brok reaches Graff safely only for Graff to call him a monster. He tells Brok he actually killed Dee, RJ and Sin. Brok is horrified at what he did and notices Graff has completely disappeared. The nightmare ends with the dream reality collapsing on itself. It’s the living definition of Nothing Is Scarier.

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