For those who have finished the game already, what are your thoughts and impressions? The review section on the store page is limited to only 2000 characters and doesn't allow for interaction so if you have a longer review, feel free to share it here.




After playing the demo a couple months ago, it became obvious to me that this would be an awesome game and that I would have to get it. There was only one question: Would the game be long enough to warrant a full price purchase or not? I like supporting indie developers who deserve it but I’m not the Salvation Army so price/value considerations are a factor. Before going into any more detail, yes the game has enough length and quality to be worth a full price purchase at $15. That’s really all you need to know so you can go and buy the game right now if you like the screenshots, enjoyed the free demo and have a remote interest in point & click adventures with imaginative writing and art.

Depending on how long it takes for you to figure out the puzzles, you could get through this game in anywhere between 7 to 12 hours. There are 5 chapters, each taking around 1.5 hours except for chapter 3 which is longer and involves a lot of walking around an area of about 18 screens. That’s a large area for point & click adventures, even if the hotspots are limited.
So in total, you can expect a playtime of around 8 hours if you progress fluently, don’t get stuck anywhere and aren’t rushing through the scenery like a madman. Do yourself a favor and don’t rush things because the scenery is lovely, it’s like being abducted into a children’s book and you’ll want to savour every moment of that. Lots of imaginative details and careful worldbuilding on par with what you can find in a Benoît Sokal game.
Unlike the more realistic looking Daedalic adventures such as A New Beginning or The Dark Eye series which look great on screenshots but awkwardly stiff in motion, Fran Bow’s style of animation is in perfect harmony with the illustrative children’s book artwork. Figures move in the adorably dorky manner of Asian shadow puppet theater and it’s a perfect fit.

Which brings us to the atmosphere. Provided you’re older than let’s say 10-12, Fran Bow is about as scary as Salad Fingers which means not really scary. Salad Fingers is occasionally more creepy than Fran Bow despite Fran Bow having some very gory imagery that could fit right into Harvester and Phantasmagoria. For Salad Fingers fans, there’s a direct reference to the following notorious scene very early into the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p33NkAQ5jCA
Fran Bow feels more like playing through a Brothers Grimm fairy-tale, not the sanitized Disney versions but the original more grimy versions that often include grotesque brutality, albeit in a somewhat childishly abstracted way. Fran Bow’s visuals are so adorable that even the depictions of severed limbs and rotting corpses come across as cute instead of disturbing, and artistic instead of disgusting. There are no crass jump scares so if you’re easily unsettled, have no worries. The gory stuff is not shown in action but in still imagery.
There was only one moment that I found slightly disturbing, not going to give any details but it was an art imitates real life kinda thing, a reference to some of Dr. Mengele’s “finest” work. When you venture into that sort of territory even the cutest art style is going to be at least a little bit creepy. Overall, it’s more of a mind trip like Sanitarium rather than about cheap thrills and shock value.

Whether you want to let your kids play the game or not very much depends on how sensitive your kids are but I’d say most kids aged 10-12 should be able to enjoy Fran Bow without getting permanently traumatized. The cute art style does go a very long way in reducing the horror effect and the general feeling is closer to a pretend-scary Tim Burton movie than to an actual horror movie. If you have any concerns as a parent, you might find comfort in the circumstance that the game designer Natalia appears to be a 100% non-violent and friendly person, someone who clearly has a very lively and creative imagination but isn’t likely to be a danger to society or going to corrupt the fragile minds of your children, or your own mind for that matter. The quirky personality of Natalia really shows in the game, not only in the art style but also in the writing. One of Fran Bow’s highlights is the commentary of the 11 year old protagonist who sees everything in a naive but adorable manner, and many of the other characters have an equally innocent and whimsical nature.

Watch these developer videos to ease your mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uke3qJrVukM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BcnNHI2U4o

How difficult is the game? I found the puzzles to be quite logical, they flow very nicely with the story and don’t come across as cheap or needlessly obtuse roadblocks which would only artificially bloat gaming time.
The only part where the flow of the story is disrupted is during the lengthy third chapter when the accessible area opens up and you have to complete a series of tasks. The world building is amazing in this part with a ton of allegorical qualities but the shift of focus from story to serial task completion makes you more aware of being in a typical adventure game which reduces immersion a little bit. Balancing between gameplay meat and fluent story immersion is a balancing act that virtually no adventure game consistently achieves and Fran Bow does a better job at that than many well known classics.

Of course, they had to include a sliding block puzzle at some point in the game but the one in Fran Bow has a twist to it which makes it a fun little challenge. Apparently, every adventure game has to have at least one sliding block puzzle, must be a conspiracy among game designers. Doesn’t matter whether it’s Gomo, Machinarium or The Neverhood, - mandatory sliding block puzzle is mandatory.
Despite the lack of any deeper challenge, Fran Bow’s puzzles have just enough meat to keep you engaged. There are many overly obvious puzzles but the overall easiness doesn’t descend to insulting levels.
I got terribly stuck on one occasion in chapter 3 where I had the right idea right off the bat but mistakenly thought I had tried it already and as a result ended up spending a whopping 3 hours being baffled and not making any progress whatsoever. During those 3 hours, I became very frustrated and started to come up with all sorts of complex puzzle solutions – none of which I could put into action as the game is a traditional point & click adventure and therefore 100% linear with only one exact solution for each problem. I can’t hold this against the game as it’s a common occurrence that when you get stuck in a traditional adventure game, enjoyment will sink below zero. There is no progress until you finally find the exact thing you had to do and when you finally get it right, the satisfaction most often doesn’t outweigh the frustration of having been stuck, often for the silliest reasons and slightest oversights. This is the bane of the genre and has been so for as long as I can remember.
In that regard, I’m glad that Fran Bow did not have any obtuse puzzles, there are always clues to be found in the game and you never have to take an unreasonable leap of logic. If you get stuck, it’s likely going to be your own fault as it was in my case.

All in all, Fran Bow is among the most enjoyable point & click adventures I have played and I can recommend it very highly, even at full price. The quirky dialogue and commentary, imaginative worldbuilding, adorable artwork and organic relationship of story and puzzles give this game a wide appeal for players of all experience levels. There are many adventures games that provide more challenge but few that have more personality. A well deserved 5 stars!

Technical warning: A minority of players, including myself, have experienced unacceptably long loading times when booting up the game. In my case the game takes 3 minutes to load, other players have reported even longer loading times with a variety of different GPUs and operating systems so it appears to be a problem with the game and not just a matter of me having a slow computer. The programmer is aware of the problem and has said he’ll try to fix it. Since the game is otherwise playable and I didn’t encounter any in-game glitches or bugs, this issue had no influence on my rating of the game (5 stars).

I bought this game on impulse.
I saw it, liked the art style and the trailer showed me plenty of mind screws and otherwise weird moments - so exactly what I like!
I also expected sometzhing similar to "The Cat Lady", another game I adore.

In any case, I'll just say what bugged me about the game.
My biggest problem is, that Fran knows things, a ten year old wouldn't know already.
At one point, she mentions a placenta being like a parachute.
How does Fran knows what a Placenta is?
I also think she mentions Embryo a few timers, like she knows what it is.

Also, after the very weird first two chapters, chapter 3 went too far into "Fairy Tale"-territory.
It still threw weird things at us, but overall, I found this chapter to be weak compared to the other four.

Also, I'd love to have a mind screwdriver.
I cannot make heads or tails about the ending.
since I finished the game, I'm thinking about what the hell happened. And I don't have the slightest answer, yet.
I do ahve some leads, but what throws me off is the intermission between chapter 4-1 and 4-2.
And the ending itself.

Was Mr. Midnight dead and just a figment of Fran's fantasy?
Was he alive and the corpse inside Fran's coffin a random cat?
Did Fran die?
Was everything a Nightmare by Dr. Deern?
Can I invite Itward to my birthday party?
What happened to the dark prince?
What's up with Diotine?
Where the multiple layers of reality real or just a Diotine overdose?
And why was Grace evil all of a sudden?

The ending itself feels so... rushed.
Sadly, I also knew how Fran's parents died. I blame you, Silent Hill 2.

What I did like was how naive fran responded to all the horrors around her.
She did respond with honest naivety. Believing the corpses were merely asleep, talked to skeletons like they were alive.
She cried, but she was never crushed by the horrors. Seeing her own seperated head, seeing illusions commit suicide.
She is an incredible strong character and yet so young.

It's also nice how the included the trope "Dark is not Evil".
Until the very end I expected Itward to be malicious and ly pretending.
The hidden birthday party was my biggest "Was zur Hölle?!?"-Moment in the entire game.
I literally stared at the screen for five minutes.

The developers came up with some great ideas and premise.
It just falls short on chapter 3 and the confusing ending.
A few answers, straight answers, would have been nice.
Bit I guess, the best we can say is "It's just as real, as you want the things to be."

I enjoyed the game and would recommend it - though not for the full price.

It's not unlikely that a 10 year old kid knows that, not every kid is an A.D.D. case and I've met some 10 year old kids that were quite smart, a lot smarter than one would think. I used to read 4 books or more a week when I was 10 so one can know a thing or two at that age.The game takes place in the 1940s but they did have medical books back then so no reason why kids that liked reading couldn't educate themselves if they had access to books at home.

My best friend's daughter was about 5 years old when she started making dozens of drawings of pregnant woman because she was going to get a baby brother soon so that's something that fascinated her. The 3rd chapter was a bit drawn out, yes. Lots of walking from A to B and back. But in hindsight, I don't mind that much. On the contrary, I've never seen the vegetative state of the mind being so creatively and beautifully depicted (at least not in a game), there was a lot of allegorical stuff going on that I found very imaginative. Good questions and to be honest, I haven't yet fully analyzed these. I think the writer might not have a clear conclusive answer in mind, you can always ask her but I somehow feel as if the game is a bit surrealist, like a Salvador Dali painting where people will stand in front of it and try to explain it for hours but the painter himself didn't even think that much about it :)
Same thing with Limbo, the game writer might have had a simple explanation for the game and its ending but people made all kinds of wacky and complicated interpretations. Sometimes, artists just create something the way it felt right at the moment and they didn't have ultra specific explanations themselves. I haven't yet thought about Fran Bow's ending that much, I agree with you that one can easily see from 10 miles who killed her parents, it was the first thing I thought after the intro. But I still can't answer all your questions, for that I would have to play the game a 2nd time. On my first playthrough, I concentrated a lot on the puzzles and didn't reflect extremely deeply on the story. That scene made me laugh out loud, I thought it was ingeniously comical and cute, put a big smile on my face.

I am no big player of adventure games, but I really enjoyed Fran Bow. The dark childrenbooks aesthetics are spot on regarding the theme of the game. Here is a quick review under three minutes made by me:

youtube.com/watch?v=zPcZ-v5C0hk

Nice video review with ideal length for most viewers of today and covers all the basics eloquently. I'd agree with everything you said except for playthrough time, 5-6 hours isn't going to be a representative playtime even for experienced players. It's not only misleading the community but doing a disservice to the developer because potential customers might take those number for granted and mistakenly think that there isn't enough game here for the price once they hear 5-6 hours. Time spent figuring out puzzles is playtime as well, unless one is completely stuck for a very long time in which case it wouldn't make much sense to count that as being part of the game's length.

For Fran Bow, I'd say 6-7 hours for a very fast player, 8-9 hours for average players and easily 10+ for beginners or if one gets stuck badly. Below 6 hours isn't going to be representative even for the fastest group and it sure isn't joyful gaming, on the contrary running through the game has nothing to do with savoring the experience and getting your money's worth. Speedrun attempts can be saved for later once one has already played the entire game, although speedruns make little to no sense for adventure games.

It seems to be a fairly common problem especially with young players in their 20s to see gaming too much as an achievement and to consider getting through a game quickly as a good thing. In reality, you'd be cheating yourself if you spent all that money on a new game and then just ran through it. It takes time to appreciate all the artwork and music and the little details. Once people get older they'll realize that they'll get more playtime and a better price/value balance when they stop running against the clock. Many people aren't even aware of doing that and would most likely deny that they are rushing so it's not an easy subject to address.

Probably makes no sense for me to even make these points but it's something I've been noticing more and more in recent years and I feel rather sorry for the developers who spend years and years of devoted work to complete their games and then some random people on the internet just run through their games A.D.D style and report their unrepresentative short playthrough times in reviews. That effectively undervalues the games because it suggests that the value for price of a game isn't that good. I'd be fairly pissed if I was a developer, fortunately I'm not but I have compassion for them and try to be as respectful as honesty permits..

A car accident, haha that's a good one :D I think it depends on the environment a kid grows up in and what kind of books lie around at home. Sure, It would have been uncommon for a 10-year old kid to know this stuff in the 40s but definitely not impossible, and Fran seems like a very curious and smart kid. I thought it was adorable when she kept proudly complimenting herself on her achievements in the game and I had to smile at her commentary a lot.

Anyway, the concepts of embryo and placenta shouldn't be too hard to understand for a 10-year old if they find it in a book that has pictures. It's not nanobiotechnology or anything advanced like that. When I was a little kid, my older brother and I used to read a lot of science books and David Attenborough was our hero with his nature and wildlife documentaries on TV. My dad used to be a neurosurgeon when he was younger so there were a lot of science and medical books at home that we could rummage through. Of course, I didn't understand a thing about some of the super complicated books we had including the ones my dad wrote but we also had many general medicine/anatomy books etc and those often have photos and cross section illustrations that even a kid can understand, and a 10-year old can certainly read captions and learn what is called what - even if they won't understand the exact functionality in detail.

Even though kids of today have internet and therefor quicker access to more information, it doesn't mean that kids of previous decades knew less stuff. We used to go to science museums all the time and if I look at many kids today, they seem to mostly play around on their tablets etc and don't go to museums and don't read books.

You know, I liked this game up until the final chapter. I also really hated that vegetable chapter. I really liked what this game had at the beginning, and I loved the pill mechanic. I couldn't stop playing... until I woke up in vegetable land and got stuck for three hours on what turned out to be a glitch (lot of that with this game) not letting me use what was the correct item on the correct character at the correct time. You might see that other thread I started asking for help with the fishing rod? I tried that, and it didn't work... until I restarted my PC a few times (and I'm well above the sys reqs for this, mind you) and then it worked. And then for the rest of the game, I would find things that I was sure should work, but didn't, and was never sure if it was just that the game was broken. That's a frustrating experience in a puzzle game. Also, the way the game started taking away the best mechanic and selling point by having you lose your pills or run out of them was aggravating. Sure, the seasons in the veggie tales part kinda acted the same, but they were barely even needed in most cases, and they were far less interesting. In fact, if the devs had just made a time travel device that just had past and present, they could have done most of those puzzles pretty much the same way, and they would have saved on art and development time. And they could have skipped the stupid boat part, which was just there to pad the time out.

OK, I just finished it, and I get the feeling that there is only the one ending, so... that ending was garbage. The fun I've always had in these horror games is making my own hypotheses about what the symbols and riddles all mean about the narrator's reality. Like in Silent Hill 5 (spoilers) when you encounter all those creatures that jump up out of the water and crawl at you, it's representing Joshua's death by drowning in the lake (end spoiler). It took the surreal and made it represent reality in a fascinating way. When I make all these hypotheses, I like to test them, see the true answers.

Fran Bow set itself up from the word "go" as the same type of symbolic journey, and so it is completely fair for the player to expect a satisfying ending, a "wham" line to explain what was really happening, right before the credits roll. If not that, at least giving hints or explanations as to what was closer to reality and what was farther away. You get to the end and the cat stops talking and that tells you "oh, ok, so we're getting closer to reality" and that made sense because it was clearly the final level.

Then Grace throws the cat off the house... sky... cliff... and then the cat is dead, but then five minutes later (less, actually), the cat is back. Dead cat, live cat, cat is still not talking. Completely pointless. It was done just so that Grace could do something evil, and yet the writer decided not to let the horror game with the dead babies end on a sad note, so all the protagonists are magically saved by doctor flying fuzzy dragon ex machina, Fran and her zombie cat fly away, and then, before the player has any time to digest what the hell just happened, ending credits!

I am aware of the difficulties that indie developers face, and so I still give Fran Bow a thumbs up, overall... but not for $15.00. It's worth $9.99, and that's being generous. It had so much promise, so much so that I hope to see what the devs do next, but it just didn't deliver. By the time it was over, I was not sad that it was over. I was sad that the game gave me no closure, and that I can't get refunds on GOG for games that technically function.

Also, four. That was the number of times I restarted the game because the sound stopped working. I counted. That's four too many.

Second edit: Rereading that first post up above, I realized I forgot to mention that the load times were indeed terrible. Which made restarting that much worse.

Not sure what set up you have "pwinbo". I have an old computer running Vista, and had no problems loading, with sound or anything. The game was a joy from start to finish, and worth every penny. Penny, I am from over the pond, white cliffs of Dover, and the home of Alice. Perhaps that colors my view.
I have played many Adventure P&C games. This I feel is the best by far. The story and puzzles mesh so well, everything felt intuitive, if some what odd.
For what it is worth, most of what I see through Fran Bows eyes, is the minds coping mechanism. After all she did witness the mutilated bodies of her parents.
So the game is about recovery. I think she did real good. She stayed true to herself. I am glad she choose happiness. It is something we all should do.
As to who killed her parents, did Fran die and what really happened to Mr Midnight. Does it really matter.
One think I do know Fran was innocent. As much a victim as her parents. Yet against all the odds, she never went under. That is what I take from the game story.
Perhaps "Galaxy Scout" will find a 5th dimension portal and say hi to Fran Bow and Mr Midnight. A nice dream to end on.

As a psychologist, I found this game to be fascinating! I don't mind one bit that there could be lots of different theories about what's going on with Fran and her parents' murder. From the top of my head, these are the theories that crossed my mind :



SPOILERS





A) dream-logic. Think about your dreams. A dead cat becoming alive five minutes after dying would be perfectly logic in a dream. In fact, it happens all the time. Different characters get intergrated into one, dead people revive, the environment changes on a whim ... Fran Bow could just a surrealist look into a traumatized child's mind.

B) Leon's book and several characters hinted at different realities and timelines. Why couldn't all of this be real? Many other stories have done that. A "special" protagonist sees things that others can't see, and get shuned and repressed by society. The Five Realities exist, and Fran can see into them because of her traumatic experience/personality/pills/whatever.

C) The Allegorical explanation. Fran witnessed a very traumatic event, and the chapters are her way to cope with what happened (I guess it's the most common explanation). Trauma, the double personality thing (could be depersonalization/dissociation/derealization, all common symptoms in post-traumatic stress disorder, schizophrenia, paranoia, etc.), the "vegetative" state (coma or catatonia), the imaginary friend, the happy ending ... All could fit into this interpretation. The incoherent elements could be explained as reality intruding into Fran's delirium and being gradually integrated into the hallucinations.

D) Just like you, I also immediately thought that Fran herself killed her parents, but as the game went on, I really started to think that Grace probably did it. The hints could be her explanation at the end (the parents interfering with Oswald's work had to be eliminated), her strange behavior, someone trying to convince society and the newpapers that Fran is dead (would be a way to eliminate a witness to the murder, which Fran probably was), and most of all, the hints in the twins storyline from chapter 2, where one of them is hinted to have killed/tried to kill the other (among other interpretations). Fran's mom and Grace were also twin sisters.

E) On the other hand, the parents might have commited suicide because of guilt (because of participating in Oswald's experiments) or any other reason. Children have this unconscious "magical" world view where they think that they are responsible for everything that happens around them. That's why a parents suicide or even accidental death can be very taxing to small children, because on top of the general sadness and grief, they sometimes unconsciously believe that they're responsible for the death. The whole "Fran killed her parents" hints could be an expression of Fran's guilt and grief, not uncommon in a child her age.

F) The fact that the game supposedly takes place during World War II in an unspecified country (some names, like Oswald or even Fran, could hint at the events happening in a German-speaking country, but then again, "Lucia" or "Grace" sound like anglo-saxon or spanish names. So who knows?) could also be very significant. Otherwise, why state the year it's happening at all, and why reference Mengele's experiments?

Anyway, I'm sure that with time, you could find plenty more interpretations of the story! That's why this game is so awesome :)