Fran Bow

Gameplay

Fran Bow is a point-and-click adventure game. Gameplay involves seeking out various objects in the game world in order to combine and use them to solve puzzles, and speaking with many characters to learn more about the world and how to progress. There are some mini games within the game as well.

Plot

The game takes place in 1944 and tells the story of Fran, a ten-year-old girl struggling with a mental disorder after witnessing the violent murder of her parents. After being found alone in the woods, Fran is committed to Oswald Asylum and separated from her black cat and only friend, Mr. Midnight. Under the care of psychiatrist Dr. Marcel Deern, Fran is administered a strange medication that causes vivid hallucinations of grisly parallel world full of black shadowy figures and strange creatures. Driven to escape her imprisonment, find her cat, and get back home, Fran is able to pass into this world and alter her surroundings so that she might escape.

Along her journey, she attempts to discover who is responsible for her parents' tragedy. On the way home, Fran Bow discovers a strange land named Ithersta, where vegetables and roots live in harmony. After she exits Ithersta she runs into a creature named Itward. Itward is the creature that helps Fran get back to Mr. Midnight. Throughout this game Fran's reality seems to break down, and she cannot tell what the difference is between what she sees on the pills or what she sees off them. Fran Bow is faced with the reality that her parents have died and the person responsible might be someone very close to her.

Development

Fran Bow was developed by Swedish studio Killmonday Games, composed of Natalia Figueroa and Isak Martinsson. The plot of the game includes autobiographical elements from Figueroa's life, and she described the process of creating the game as therapeutic. The game was part funded through an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, raising $28,295 in August 2013. The game was released for desktop platforms in 2015, and mobile versions followed in 2016.^[​2][​3]

Reception

Fran Bow sold 10,000 copies in its first month.^[​1] The game received a score of 70/100 on reviews aggregation website Metacritic indicating a mixed response.^[​4] Adam Smith, writing at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, gave the game a positive review, describing it as a game that "sits alongside Wonderland and Oz – imaginative, strange, unsettling, intelligent and charged with a rare and beautiful sense of hope". Smith felt however, that some plot threads were not satisfactorily concluded.^[​5] Joel Couture, in an article at Gamasutra used Fran Bow to discuss the merits of an ambiguous ending, Figueroa responded that she preferred to "give the answers in a metaphorical way", allowing players to interpret those signals through their own life experiences.^[​6]