Fran Bow Review

This game is built around very serious and sensitive subjects. It deals with mental illness, psychological trauma and abuse. On top of that the game is a, sometimes quite gory, horror game. That being said Fran Bow is a remarkable game, worth it’s praise and high ratings. The visuals of the game are exquisite, unique and really sets the tone. The game revolves around a young girl of ten years old, set in 1944. At the start of the game Fran Bow, the protagonist of the game, we see Fran get her pet black cat Mr. Midnight. Whilst playing with her cat an evil figure lurks outside her window. She hears the screams of her parents in the next room, rushing in to find them dead and cut into pieces, with a satanic circle inbetween the corpses. Fran runs into the woods where she is later found, and is then admitted to the mental institution Oswald Asylum. In this process she loses her only friend Mr. Midnight.

Oswald Asylum is a place housing children working with them to recover from extreme trauma. Fran goes through therapy combined with taking pills called Duotine. Whenever Fran takes these pills however, she sees an alternate reality made of pure horror. The pills serves as a game mechanic where whenever taken, the current room changes to it’s horror counterpart, essentially creating two different worlds to visit. Fran’s aunt Grace comes to the asylum trying to get custity of her niece, but is told no. Fran then wanders the asylum meeting the other children, helping them with odds and ends. Whilst doing so Fran again sees the figure that was present outside her window the night her parents were killed. He introduces himself as Remor, the Prince of Darkness.

Fran wanting to escape her situation uses her pills in order to enter the parallel world, and read blood-written messages leading her to her escape. Almost, Remor grabs hold of Fran and pulls her back to the asylum, but Fran is saved by a toy cat riding on a single wheel (Mr. Midnight), that leads her through a hedge-maze connected to the asylum, and out into the forest. Within the forest Fran meets many strange creatures, ranging from a giant ants, a pinecone family and the Liciferns – a tree with severed heads, their hair entangled into the tree. Learning that Mr. Midnight has been kidnapped, Fran travels down a well where several dead children lies at the bottom. Taking her Duotine pill she is teleported to a nice, little house on an island.

Going through the house, it seems that a couple of identical twin sisters lived there. When exploring the house, she finds a corpse of one of them – and something far stranger, a siamese twin-baby with it’s two heads sewn together. She also encounters the twins who used to lived there, or rather their ghosts. She finds Mr. Midnight locked up in the house, and learns that the key is with the twin sisters Clara and Mia Buhalmet. Fran learns that these two twins hate each other, but have been forced to live as one since a mad doctor stitched them together as part of an experiment. The twins tell Fran that she needs to do a ritual in order to end their suffering, and in return get her cat back. Encountering a talking frog, Fran learns that the twins are planning on screwing her over, killing her and Mr. Midnight as part of the ritual.

Fran then discovers an alternate ritual, which she performs. This ritual cleanses the souls of the twins, making them able to move on to the afterlife. Mr. Midnight is thus safe again. After a cutscene with Fran being back in the asylum she wakes up in a new, more colorful world called Ithersta. Here Fran is reborn as a tree stump, unable to move. She is rescued and brought to the king of Ithersta, King Ziar. Ziar promise to help Fran gets her humanly body back and get her back to her own world. Being and inanimate object, first order of business is to be able to move. So Fran meets Palontras, a flying monster-doctor, who takes her to his healing pool in the sky. Now Fran can freely move around on her own, talking to the weird residents of Ithersta – roots, beetles and wooden creatures.

Fran meets the wizard of Ithersta, who tells her to collect different items for a ritual that can help Fran move on to Pandora (the human realm). During this, Fran’s mental health deteriorates further, and she sees visions of her death mother telling her to join her, sees herself jump to her death and a clone of herself dressed like a princess, who takes a knife and cuts open Mr. Midnights stomach. In the end Fran leaves Ithersta through the created portal.

Having lost her Duotine, Fran is caught in a trap trying to retrieve them. Luckily Fran is rescued by a huge skeletal man with a tophat called Itward. He offers to help her find her way home, and she joins him in his space-craft, designed to travel between worlds. Itward, although looking malevolent, is quite the contrary. He serves as a figure presenting himself to children in need, having visited children at the asylum through their dreams, watching over them. Whilst travelling on his space-ship, they are attacked by Remor’s creatures, black ghostly figures, who makes the ship crash. When she awakens from the crash Itward is gone, but she finds herself close to her aunts house. Sadly nobody is at home. Whilst Mr. Midnight is checking out the house through an open window, the psychologist who was overseeing Fran at the asylum drives up to her, and asks her to come with him.

The psychiatrist then tells Fran that he was fired from Oswald Asylum for learning the truth of the place – the mad doctor has been experimenting on the children (for example the one whi stitched the twins together). Afterwards he tossed the children down into the well we were in earlier. His plan was to use Fran for his newest experiment. We also learn that the medicine Fran has been taking was an updated version, this one causing heavily hallucinations. Fran also learns that authorities has thought her death, as a newspaper article tells how she had frozen to death after escaping to the woods. The psychiatrist then gets Fran to help him dig up her parents grave, to uncover what the mad doctor has really done, and expose him to the world.

When the coffins are opened Fran stares at the corpses of her parents. In her own coffin lies a dead cat. On the way back to the car, Remor comes and abducts the psychiatrist, and mindcontrols Fran. When she wakes up Fran is in her old bedroom, being chained up. In front of her is her aunt. Aunt Grace tells Fran, that Mr. Midnight must take the blame for everything that has happend. Here Fran uses the power of her mind to slip into another reality – the Ultra Reality. Here she meets an alternative version of herself, which tells her that she came into this world because her mind is broken.

Fran’s double then unchains Fran before a nurse calls on her. Fran then goes through the door, slipping into another world. Here she finds Mother Mabuka. Mabuka is the mother of Remor, and she represents anguish and despair. She learns from Mabuka that the Duotine pills was the cause of her slipping into the evil realm, connecting Fran to the darkest area of the human mind. This, in turn, lead Remora to being able to lead Fran into Mother Mabukas domain. Makuba, although also looking malevolent, isn’t so, and seeks to explain to Fran who she really is. Fran learns, that she was selected by the Five Realms of Essential Existence to become the Keeper of the Key. This Keeper is prophesied to be hunted by Remora.

Now knowing her purpose Fran leaves to confront Remora, where she learns the truth to what happend to her parents. Remora had taken control of Fran, and through her body murdered her parents. Having learned this disturbing news Fran leaves through a door, and ends up in a broken world, floating in the nothingness. In it she sees the psychiatrist strapped to an electric chair and her kitty locked in a cage. In this room hangs a picture of Dr. Oswald, and on this picture Fran sees her own mother and her aunt, former patients of Dr. Oswald. Fran unstraps the psychologist from the chair, but whilst doing so his aunt and Dr. Oswald comes into the room.

Oswald starts to explain everything to Fran. We learn that Dr. Oswald started his career with great interest in twin siblings. Later he chose to work with the human brain, especially those who were mentally ill. Oswald had then contacted Remor, and made him infiltrate Fran’s mind, causing the death of her parents. This shattered Fran’s mind, and in turn made her the perfect patient for Dr. Oswalds improved Duotine pills. He orchestered the fake death of Fran, and used her aunt as a trap, making Fran trust her. Fran pleads with Dr. Oswald and her aunt to release her and Mr. Midnight, but instead aunt Grace throws the cat off into the nothingness, killing him. In her anger Fran attacks her aunt trying to strangulate her, but is soon stopped by Dr. Oswald who shoots her point blank.

The psychiatrist has as this point escaped his straps, and comes in trying to revive Fran, but is told by Dr. Oswald to leave her, he wants to use her brain for his research. In this very moment Itward ascends from above, using his powers to kill aunt Grace and Dr. Oswald. He calls upon the monster-doctor Palontras, who ressurects Fran. The psychiatrist is then consumed by one of Remor’s dark shadows, Fran pleading for them to help him. They do, removing the evil spirit and returning him to the human world, although he will have lost all recollection of what has happend and who Fran is. Fran then climbso n top of Palontras, and rides with him and Itward onto the world of Ithersta, ending the game.

So what happend to Fran now? The open ending leaves a lot up to your imagination. Was it all in her mind? Was any of it real? What we did get, was a haunting story of a young girl going through her struggle with her mental health. But what a story it was. It does not function in the same way as other horror point-and-click games, although there is a jumpscare here and there, the psychological horror shines through. It leaves you with a different experience, but still a creepy one. It is very well written and even better showed through the art style.

Almost everything I can say about this game is pure praise, the art style, as mentioned, is fantastic, the music score is great and the puzzles are interesting – especially with the combination of the double-world induced by the Duotine. Some of the puzzles can be a bit hard to figure out, but nothing that will break your mind. Certainly, if you are a fan of either point-and-click games or horror games, this should be right up your alley. It does not dissapoint, and is worth every penny.