Fran Bow

Let me first say this game is charming, the artwork is original and lovingly done and there are many unique scenes and environments to explore. The music is unobtrusive and goes well with the game but may be too banal to listen to by itself. The characters are quirky, bizarre, horrifying, cute, adorable and disgusting, sometimes all at once. the story is very intriguing and at times too obscure to enjoy. Its like reliving Twin Peaks with many unanswered questions, especially the ending. If you like clear cut conclusions then you may find this one unsatisfying. I bet you will hit the forums to see what others thought had happened, I know I did. Game mechanics were simple mainly, point and click, with dialogue trees, some inventory combination. To me this is where the game fails, the dialogue choices had no impact at all and seemed rather to be used to fluff out the game length and give an illusion of player activity thru the story telling aspects. You also could not skip the dialogues and this was maddening when you were attempting to solve puzzles and inadvertently clicked on a char that had lengthy conversations. Using inventory was also annoying as you had to open inventory, select the item then apply it to the item in the room, every.single.time. In a point/click puzzle game this was beyond belief, where using different inventory combinations on hotspots are normal. worst aspect of this game was the save game mechanic, or lack of one. It uses one save feature, where you stop the game is where you pick up. Works great in theory except for the fact that game saves are often corrupted. This happened to me, during play i accidentally pressed some random key on my keyboard and found that the game had skipped an entire chapter and gone to the next. My only recourse was to start over. I have no idea why someone would design a game to use this , it stunk really and ruined my experience. Forums were full of people with corrupted saves, inexcusable.

If you like the art style, enjoy atmospheric adventure games and don't mind a "open to interpretation" story or even prefer those you should buy this game. Don't buy if you dislike disturbing imagery/situations. Music is great, puzzles are logical and you almost always know what you are trying to accomplish. The game does a great job with small hints IMO; I suck at adventure games and could finish this without any problems, so veterans will likely find little to no challenge. Story is interesting and not as dark and "edgy" as you might expect from the beginning or the promotional material. No bugs or crashes, game feels polished. First playthrough took me around 10h.

This game is a beautifully dark adventure. The characters, artistry, sound and music made for a beautifully crafted tale well worth hours spent solving its wonderfully challenging puzzles. The game mechanics are very interesting and unique as characters frequent other realities and perspectives putting a unique spin on the game. I was looking for a puzzle game similar to The Room from Fireproof Games and this did not disappoint, I am looking forward to more from Killmonday.

I started playing this game since I was looking for something horror-ish. I wasn't looking for jumpscares, heart-racing scenes and fear: what I wanted was a game with a mysterious storyline, secrets to find out and obscure yet peculiar and interesting art style. Fran Bow was exactly what I was looking for! During the whole journey you're left wondering what is real and what isn't, while exploring different realms and solving riddles and puzzles. The reason why I'm giving it 4 stars instead of five is related to my personal taste: the first half of the game is quite twisted, the themes are dark and sensitive and the characters' stories are pretty obscure, which I actually loved. The second half of the game is more similar to a dark fantasy game, which I didn't mind but didn't adore either. Still, I really enjoyed this game and I would probably play it again!

Beautiful graphics, as well as a very immersive plotline! Great click and point game.