Fran Bow

Fran Bow is a very well done adventure game. The graphics are gorgeous, the story is captivating and the setting is unique in it's mixes of existing and new lore. For old timers, it could be a direct descendant of Simularcrum. You play a little girl who lost her parents and finds herself in a children's mental asylum where everything seems off. Things only get wilder from there on, making the player constantly question what is real and not, as Fran meets beings from all corners of the spectre, from gruesome to adorable. The puzzles are fairly easy, which for me was an added bonus. Only towards the second half of Chapter 2 does the game start getting challenging, but even then in mild ways, as there is no way to "fail", helping the player focus less on the game mechanics themselves and focus more on the story and world around. Which is great since the world is magnificent. Beautifully drawn, the game oozes imagination and style! Problems? There are a few. Dialogue choices are useless, for one. You will always have a choice between two reply lines. More often than not one will continue the dialogue, the other is "k thx bye". Even when there are two distinct dialogue paths, they make no difference to the game itself; only different flavour text. The few mini-games between some chapters are also plagued by clunky controls, but they are skippable. Also, my main (yet arguable) grief is with the ending. [SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD] The beauty of the game is the looming possibility that Fran might actually be insane and just imagining things. Similar to Simulacrum, however, this illusion is mostly ruined towards the end and replaced with a more happy ending, out of tone with the rest of the game. Arguing that it is still possible she might be crazy would be viable, had the developers not announced that they are planning a sequel, which will most likely continue proving that the Ultrareality is a real place (or not, it could go both ways).

But its frustrating that you can't save. The game decides when to save, and if you want to revisit a previous chapter you lose all progress. This happened to me and I stopped playing the game because I didn't want to start a chapter from the beginning (You can't fast forward text you already know) after showing a friend the game from the first chapter. That aside the game is lovely. Wish I could put in it more stars. But clearly there wasn't too much testing on this game.

Don't let the 10-year-old protagonist fool you, this game is extremely dark, just like her demented little face suggests. Blood, guts, and everything else everywhere, but not just for shock value; there is a very interesting narrative lying just beneath it all. It uses jump scares, but the reason you jump is because the tension and psychological horror keep you on edge almost all of the time. When things are happy and whimsical for a while... BAM! High-octane nightmare fuel. Even the artstyle likes to lull you into a false sense of security before drop-kicking your brain into psycho land. Beyond all of that, though, the game has a pretty good message about how mental illness is viewed by society, and attempts to view it from the other side of the fence with a sympathetic - if a bit twisted - protagonist. The game gets downright heartbreaking toward the end, and you leave that stigma behind to see a tortured little girl who just needs some love and affection. The story is fairly ambiguous, but I think the reason for this is that when you suffer from mental illness, you don't always know what was real or not, especially back in 1944, when the "treatments" were far more horrifying than anything the patients would actually see in their delusions. The puzzles are generally pretty easy - almost too obvious in some instances - but every now and again, you'll figure out the puzzle, but not be able to actually solve it, because of some dumb, counter-intuitive way in which you have to do what you already know you have to do. I've definitely seen worse. This is maybe not the kind of game that everyone can handle, but if you have a strong stomach for this sort of thing, I cannot recommend it enough.

Fran Bow is easily among the best adventure games released in the past decade. A mystery that unfolds across multiple planes of reality, it weaves an entrancing tale and has a brilliant and distinctive art style that deserves to decorate goths' lunchboxes for years to come. Its plot and characters are truly original, and its handling of mental illness and (possible?) psychosis doesn't feel exploitative. The game's emotional content is finely balanced - moving, dark and sweet in equal measure, it never strays into cliche or cheap emotional trickery. The puzzles all fit together tidily, with only a couple that rely on obscure mechanics, rather than simply requiring a bit of thought, and the rhythm of puzzle solving ebbs and flows alongside the plot. Although it has a lovely musical score and atmospheric sounds, the game is fully text-based, which makes it great to play if you have to do it in silence

I came across this game by accident and bought and played it purely because of the stunning screenshots. This truly is a work of art. The tone of the game is pretty dark and scary, but because of a lovely, innocent main character there's always a light moment. The story stays compelling and making you want to find out what's around the next corner. The game mechanic of using pills to go to an alternate dimension of the same place in which you are, is very original. And this is crucial to solve the puzzles. I can really recommend this original, imaginative game!