Fran Bow

AMAZEBALLZ GAME WOULD RECCOMMEND EVERYONE FINDS THIS INTERESTING

This game is for those with the ability to tune into disjointed, polymorphic, overlapping narratives wherein possible, unsteady, ultimately unknowable personal truths coalesce and diverge in a story that soon transcends its skeletal plot to conjure a magnificently horrifying, tragic, and yet somehow unexpectedly, wonderfully uplifting experience. It's extremely rare that a creative project nails the very ambiance of psychosis. The art is a joy; there is so much detail to discover, some of it seemingly inserted for its own sake, to further the environmental storytelling, sometimes providing context about the world, sometimes feeding you with more questions. The writing itself is observant, educated, humorous and not seldom poetic. So much heart and insight went into it. They touch on themes such as schizophrenic systems of reality-logic and escapist trauma-transfiguration with a compassionate, believable genuineness that is proof of research done well; it's not another 'woo everything is very crazy for no reason' insanity-simulation. Fran Bow's world is cohesive despite its fragmentation. You're provided with gentle nudges that make you accept and appreciate the wonders of an imagination gone rogue, despite how uncompromising and harrowing such is. If you are or are connected to someone with a tangential set of mental illnesses, you'll appreciate this. As someone with both first- and second-hand as well as academic and professional insight into psychologically altered states of consciousness, I was very moved, touched, and inspired. You won't learn everything there is to know about the story; the amount of information you get to know about sub-worlds and characters is just enough to give you a sense of how things are, of who characters are – but leaves enough obscured for you to muse about what else they might be, unguided, on your own. In case the warning makes you feel alarmed, fret not: Since the game appropriately greets you with an extensive disclaimer every time you start it, I want to assure you that, while the horror is graphically illustrated, the traumatic events that are sometimes subtly alluded to, are not. For that reason, I did not find anything too heavy personally. You need not fear being burdened by harmful detail, but you're well-advised to use your discretion to determine where you're at, state-wise. From my point of view, I would say that the biggest 'risk factor' of this game in terms of possibly triggering altered states, is that you should check in with yourself about how thin-skinned you currently feel / have recently felt to dissociative/reality-detached "moods". There's no way to explain this particular phenomenon in language if you haven't been sucked into any kind of involuntarily-hyper-imaginative shadow-realm yourself before; I think you'll understand, if you understand. Think of things such as: Over the Garden Wall, The Longing, Little Nightmares (particularly the first installment), American McGee's Alice & Madness Returns, The Haunting Of Hill House (especially the 2018 adaptation), the Lenore comics, Emily the Strange, and maybe even Happy Tree Friends. You should enjoy puzzles, and not be too bothered by a bit of back-and-forth backtracking. It is a point-and-click mystery, after all! I took my time and finished the game in two sittings with a total play time of just under ten hours. For every stretch of the landscape, I strongly encourage you to Explore Both Worlds. Sometimes, the madness grants you clarity while consensus reality is the greater source of confusion. The mood and even style changes from bewildered disorientation to enlightenment to hilarity to sadness to absurdity to joy to victimization were on point. The dark monsters in this game are scary, but they aren't evil; they just are, like animals in the wild are all messily but naturally connected via food chain. They happen to share your reality, and you share yours with them. The bad people may or may not be that; ultimately, the focus lands on moving on, with whatever interpretation you make from it all. Fran Bow is a true and rare gem; it made me miss and want to embrace parts of my own self, story and imagination I have become fearful of or disconnected from. This game shows you the humanity of craziness, and that, in actuality, craziness is a healthy reaction to overwhelmingly sized circumstances. If you go with Fran Bow, you lose your mind to find your sense.

peak peak masterpiece

has been one of my favourite games since childhood, might be bias but its really good and i loved it

😍😍😍

I don’t know how I feel about this game. It caught my attention because of its aesthetics, dark spooky mood, deep psychological aspect and Alice Madness Returns vibes. But honestly the gameplay killed the majority of my excitement to play this game. I have finished it only because I hate to quit. For starters, it was unnecessarily difficult to solve some of the puzzles. About half of the game I was confused as to how I’m supposed to proceed. Chapters 1 and 2 were great. It intuitively led you to solutions. It did peak my interest enough to continue. Perhaps because the asylum and the twins house were relatively a smaller scale places, which made it easier to navigate and understand what goes with what. Then came Chapter 3… I think I googled around 80% of the content for this chapter because the game doesn’t really give you any hints with anything. Hated this chapter to be honest. There were a few things where I couldn’t understand how should the player come up with this solution on their own. I spend the most amount of time in this chapter. The whole place was the biggest out of all. Chapter 4 was good. Felt like we’re back to how the first two chapters were. Chapter 5 – again, not a fan of. At this point it definitely felt more like a chore. By this time, I kind of lost all the excitement and just wanted the game to end. What was also frustrating was the absence of hints or direction. You don’t have to feed answers to players, but I have played games where they smartly incorporate hints. For instance, when clicking on an object or using it at the wrong time or place, the character would say: “Maybe I should use it later” or “Perhaps this goes elsewhere” or “I should return here later”, etc. This would’ve been a huge help in Fran Bow, as there were lots of objects to click on or use (I will also cover that later), and if you do that prematurely it doesn’t do anything and you just think that yeah, this is not usable, when in fact it is, but not at that time. For instance, the boat in Chapter 3. I hadn’t yet talked to the character which it relates to, and it didn’t do anything, so I forgot about it. I thought it’s a non-working object in game. When I finally met the character, I literally had to google to find out that you have to use the boat. I was like “But I clicked on it, and it wasn’t usable” … But it became usable later… Why couldn’t there be any kind of clue for that? Another thing which I felt annoyed by is that there were a lot of unnecessary clicking on objects. There were more items that did nothing and were not used to achieve some purpose. You click on an object, it doesn’t do anything, it’s not relevant to the story, it doesn’t provide any substantial information to the story, it doesn’t shape the story in any way, the majority of them doesn’t add any relevant background information (except for a few items, like the photograph in the last chapter). The main character makes some random comment about the object and that’s it. Starting from Chapter 4, I mostly just skipped the comments about these objects, as they did not bring anything useful. Lastly, this might be a personal preference, but I really felt the absence of voice over. It does take away a lot of the soul of the game for me. I would say that if you don‘t add the voice over, then you must have a hell of a good soundtrack (which it didn‘t have) to shape the mood of the game. Especially in games like this, where very strong psychological themes are being explored, shaped by deep emotions. I guess it‘s not bad, but just not for me for the above named reasons.

:)