Fran bow is a great point and click adventure game. It has a great art style and a creepy sound scape. The central plot revolves around you trying to find what caused a family tragedy and find your cat, Mr. Midnight. While this sounds simple it belies that brilliance of this layered game where every room has a dual purpose due to the game mechanics involving medicines. Several times I jumped as the game managed to shock me but what engaged me were the interesting and varied characters who felt like real all be it slightly off kilter people. I made a video of me playing the first 20 minutes for those who are interested in seeing more: http://youtu.be/A-NmgBw74QU
After an hour of playing the game I began to feel like I was actually getting somewhere, and this I think is the biggest problem with the game. It starts slow, with an empty house and doesn't give you any help to get started. Yes it is an exploration game but even then there has to be some kind of goal or aim. For a long time I felt directionless and wandered, almost stumbling through the game. Then after a while playing I began to feel like I was making progress. The game looks really nice, the music really is lovely and the concept and ideas behind it are really nice. I like what I have played, (a lot more than an hour now) and look forward to getting further. I did a short video showing the first 20 minutes of gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki-vBjEhl0o
Released initially 20 years ago, this is now available for the the first time in ages. The action switches between a top down view and a 3D first person view, this is initially confusing and the art styles to tend to jar but stick with it because it is really great. The story follows a crashed space ship and a man who is having strange dreams. I don't want to say more as the story is really great. Go on buy it, it's cheap. I've started to play the game through if you want to see it before buying it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbhq97uVvw8
3 stars for this game. It is good in places, the story and the overall mystery was good. I enjoyed finding the recordings although the "twist in the tale" is easy to figure out. It is more than just a science experiment gone wrong as a previous reviewer suggests. However, the controls are fiddly, sometimes you select the magnifying glass or hand and you find the actual item is not selected, it feels less like the controls are designed with a mouse and more like a controller. The puzzles are often straight forward bar a couple. The final puzzle is very frustrating in the way it is set up and the objects used to reset. However the main issue I have with the game is a puzzle involving monkeys. Without giving anything away there is an issue seeing the transparent red, the graphics do not stand out and it made the puzzle so frustrating and difficult that I had to look it up! Yes it is short, I don;t feel it is too short, it is long enough that it doesn't outstay its welcome. Would an extra area to explore have made it better? Maybe.
I completed this game in roughly 3 hours. While I understand it will have a different outcome if I play it differently (2 of my characters died), I have little desire to do so. While it is reasonably nice to look at graphically and the sound is nice too, there are a few bugs, some NPCs seem to wobble on the spot rapidly, there is often about 1-2cm of the right hand of my screen blurry and the clicking on a person can often be hard as the cursor doesn't recognise you have selected a person. The idea behind the game is good but the choices you make can often leave you with no option. I said to a merchant I would do something later and the option to speak to him further was removed. Often times you ahve no idea what the consequence of your decision is, at one point the game backed me into a corner of marrying someone or death, there was no option to get away from my parents when they said I would be headed to see someone, I just appeared there. Combat is terrible, I ended up in combat at one point. I tried to block, I tried to turn and I tried to attack but the controls were unresponsive and my character was it twice and there was no indication if that was it. To sum up, Nice to look at, interesting concept. Riddled with bugs which make the game unplayable at certain points. Not clear what is going in in the decision making process. Too short for the price. Perhaps if this game was about £5 then I would rate it more highly, but for the price this is over priced tat.
This was a good game that I enjoyed playing. The story ahd me interested until a moment near the end that seems to contradict certain moments earlier in the game. The game is odd. characters walk slow, shuffle around, at one point my character was shuffling around in circles trying to get to a hotspot and kept shuffling until I quit the game. Yes, you can double click to get off a screen but this only works sometimes. I found the inventory frustrating, IF I move the mouse to the bottom of the screen it is supposed to come up, sometimes! Sometimes when I'm trying to navigate off the screen the inventory comes up and I can't navigate off the screen. The first chapter is the strongest. The 2nd middle and the third chapter the weakest. I would recommend it for those who like point and click adventures, voice acting was enjoyable (though the models can look creepy when talking) and the story was good. All together the good outweighed the negative
