First off: Let me start with saying that you will passionately learn to hate this game. It will be hard to keep avoiding puns including the word "nightmare" during this review, because it would just fit to gameplay, design, story and to one main feature of the game brilliantly, but I will try my best. You'll read this pun in other reviews to the game often enough.

Adam Raichl wakes up in a barrack on an island one day, which surprises him particularly with regard to the fact that a few minutes before he just drove his car into a tank truck, so he actually didn't count on ever waking up again. There are other cabins on this island with other persons in them, and they all seem to have escaped their death somehow. Some of them are talking about other people who suddenly vanish from the island and most of them suffer from terrible dreams during the night. This sleep is not controllable. A bell tower on the island will let its bell ring every day, and after the third blow everyone is fast asleep. This is definitely what you would call a weird setting. It's definitely not normal. And if I was on that island, I would definitely ask myself: "Is this heaven? Is this hell? Holy Moses, what on earth am I doing here?" Adam Raichl will find his very own answer to the "What am I doing here?"-part after very few minutes in the game: Collecting stones and branches.

Collecting stones and branches will take some time. Everything takes some time in Reprobates. When Adam is climbing a tree/a hill/ a [add some specific place of your interest here] you can go and grab yourself a coffee. You at least could. But there are stages in this game where Adam has to climb some rocks to get from the left end to the right end of the screen. And instead of clicking only once and then watching him doing some imitation of Reinhold Messner you will have to give him instructions after every single damn rock he needs to get over. Six or seven times. There is no use to this. It's just boring. So forget the coffee. Adam needs your attention, so take care that you don't fall asleep.

It is, however, very unlikely that you will fall asleep. The bugs will keep you awake. You want to live through the amazing moment of being stuck on a screen for a lifetime because the trigger that should show you the way out just decided to go on holiday forever? You want to live through this amazing moment not only once, twice, but three times a day? Want to get stuck in a dead end, with no way out? Book a trip to Reprobates, it's all there.

Phew! All this hatred. Which is strange, because: I still like Reprobates for its first chapters. They are promising, interesting and they are something of a rarity. The root idea of having to overcome typical adventure problems with only the most basic tools has something to it and kept me playing till deep into the night at first, although the solutions for the tasks the game gives you are never really complex. The only complexity consists of the fact that you sometimes have to search every square millimetre of the screen to find an object with which to interact (like a tree trunk hidden under grass). You didn't like this in Sherlock Holmes - The Silver Earring? You won't like it in Reprobates either. It is quite easy to forgive in the first instance, but it will accumulate during the time-frame of eight days in which the story takes place. And it's not the only accumulation.

Let's skip to the characters, an element of utmost importance for every adventure, but especially for an adventure like Reprobates, which touts on being a game dealing with near-death experiences using realistic characters as announced on the official website. To cut it short: Future Games, known for developing Black Mirror and Nibiru, crash-land this plane. Or would you expect people living on an island, isolated from the outside world, to deal with it in doing nothing of importance, not even trying to escape, not even talking about the surprising fact that they all stranded there apart from standard sentences like for example: "Oh, it's strange we've stranded here. Leastwise it doesn't rain."? The picture opening this article shows you quite clearly what the realistic characters do instead: sunbathing. When you find yourself in a very dangerous situation in the end of the game, this behavior will find its climax in the fact that one character accompanying you can't think of anything else than of her shoes that she unfortunately left in a place she can't get back in now. Do I really have to say more? Oh yes, indeed: The voice-acting is of very variable quality.

But, although this might sound strange after all this criticism: There are also rare moments with a very engaging atmosphere. And these are mostly the dreams that you will live through in the nights, in which Adam has to deal with his worst fears. The tasks are much more demanding than the ones you have to deal with on the island and these situations are therefore the most well thought out part of the game. However, this is also far from perfect. Some ill-conceived minigames are stumbling blocks on your way, and there is only one strategy with which you will get through these games: trial and error. Error means death. This would not be too bad, because the death animation mostly tells you what you did wrong, if it wasn't for the fact that the automatic save points of the game are in some situations very unfair.

This is why, although I really tried to like this game, I can't help but being very disappointed of how it all turns out in the end. The story does a u-turn from being quite interesting to becoming simply farcical at a moment's notice during the last third of Reprobates and I spent the very last chapter with only following a walkthrough to get over with it as quickly as possible. I really had enough of all the half-baked elements by then.

The graphics are quite nice, by the way. But: Does it help? I don't think so. Because when you have a nightmare and the surroundings really look amazing, with anti-aliasing, high resolution and good texture quality; will you honestly feel more comfortable with the dream you have? No. It's a nightmare. Graphics don't help.

Ah, finally, a pun with the word "nightmare". Sorry, I couldn't resist.

And if you can't resist buying the game: Maybe you'll like parts of it. Grab the demo first.

But honestly, I tried my part. It hurts. Because you want to like it. And then it turns on you and stabs you in the back. Repeatedly. Laughing while stabbing you. You get the idea?