Fran Bow
Fran Bow is a creepy adventure game that tells the story of Fran, a young girl struggling with a mental disorder and an unfair destiny.
After witnessing the gruesome and mysterious loss of her parents, found dismembered at their home, Fran rushes into the woods, together with her only friend, Mr. Midnight, a black cat that Fran had previously received as a present from her parents.
In the forest, Fran goes into shock over the loss of her parents and when she recovers, she’s at Oswald Asylum, an oppressive mental institution for children, and Mr. Midnight is nowhere to be found.
After having a dream about her beloved cat, Fran decides to escape from the mental institution to find him and go back home to Aunt Grace, her only living relative.
Features
- Story driven creepy psychological horror adventure game.
- Unique and peculiar hand drawn 2D Art-Style and 2D animation.
- Self administer medication to open the terrible hidden world that will help solve puzzles and find objects.
- A big variety of puzzles designed with different levels of difficulty and specifically based on the story.
- Three arcade inspired mini-games all with different art style to be part of the transitions in the story.
- Interactive and occasionally playable pet cat, Mr Midnight.
- 50+ interactive unique characters with unique personalities.
- Original Soundtrack.
Fran Bow Review
Fran Bow is the story of the game’s titular little girl who, at the start of the game, experiences the death of her parents and is stuffed away into a mental institution. Fran is determined to get out of the loony bin and meet up with her cat, Mr. Midnight, who she is convinced will help guide her and form a new life with her beloved Aunt Grace. However, some form of shadowy demon warns her to stay in the mad house, for if she leaves he will hunt her down, and do worse things than she could ever imagine. The game’s got clever writing, interesting characters (with Fran Bow’s childish yet twisted thought-process and approach to things stealing the show), mixed with interesting imagery, thoughtful but not entirely too difficult puzzles, a gripping story with themes of psychological horror, satanism, and cult behaviors, the twistedness of children, and real horror ranging from pedophilia to the history of mental care.
Depending on how much you take to exploring and getting through puzzles, I’d estimate the game at around 7-12 hours long. They switch up locales and some gameplay stuff enough to keep things interesting, between the 5 chapters you visit 7 different ‘main’ locales, and four of those locations have two different versions of the location to travel between (and the fifth one has four different versions of itself). In-between main locations, there are often some optional mini-games, which you can skip if you wish but I found most to be a joy. Minor spoiler, but my personal favorite of the mini-games being a nicely timed Frogger reference,
High recommendation if you want a twisted point’n’click. The game isn’t scare-your-pants-off terrifying, but there were a few scenes that made me jump, a few kind of chilling and disturbing moments, a sort of grotesque fairy tale feel that resonates most of the game. While reflecting I think I might like the first half of the game more than the second half, it’s a fairly paced title worth playing through to the end, and can be an absolutely engrossing experience.
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