Fran Bow Preview

Crowd-funding is one of the best things that could have happened to the somewhat stagnated gaming market, sites like Indiegogo and Kickstarter transform publishers into a thing of the past for the projects that are able to succeed in getting the funds necessary to develop their title.
Not having to play by a predetermined set of rules gives developers the opportunity to create what they actually want, instead of what will bring more money to the publisher, this means developers also have a bigger responsibility when allocating money to specific areas of development, thankfully games like Shadowrun Returns and FTL are more than enough proof that it can be done.

Fran Bow hopefully will be another one of those shining examples of how crowd-funding can work when the development team is competent and dedicated, this peculiar looking point and click horror game is currently being developed after a successful funding campaign in Indiegogo, we finally had the opportunity(and time) to play the demo, it's safe to say that this is one of those games that would be very hard to exist before crowd-funding, at least in its current form, publishers would quickly trim a lot of the more bizarre and brutal aspects of the game, probably making it a lot less interesting to play.

The game begins with a very slick and stylish black and white introduction that tells the sad and horrific tale of Fran, a lonely, yet lovely, little girl that finds herself terrified after having found her parents brutally murdered and dismembered. Scared and traumatized for life she runs, she runs as fast as possible, she runs as if her own life depended on it, her cat and only friend Mr.Midnight follows her into a forest where Fran quickly gets lost and passes out.
Recovered she now finds herself trapped in a mental institution called the Oswald Asylum, none of the treatments seem to be working as Fran more and more frequently hallucinates about the "monster with the mask".
She will escape, no matter the cost, she wants to go back to her aunt Grace and find her cat Mr.Midnight.

The gameplay for Fran Bow is pretty straightforward for a point and click game, pick up objects, examine and combine them so that you can put them to good use and hopefully escape the asylum, the biggest difference here is the alternative world that Fran conjures (imagination?) after taking some pills.
Puzzles (at least in the demo) have moderately easy solutions to them, nothing made me get stuck too bad, I actually was able to complete the demo in maybe 20 to 30 minutes, still, most of the puzzles were very interesting and clever, sometimes even combining two or three puzzles into one.
The game's Indiegogo page also mentions some mini-games, unfortunately they don't appear in this preview version of the game, but hopefully that will be another element that distinguishes Fran Bow from the competition when the full game gets released.

Visually the game designer and animator Natalia Figueroa did an amazing job, the 2D scenarios and characters are well animated, Fran in particular is super expressive and can be sort of creepy with her huge blue eyes, yet the game made me care for her even though I only played a few minutes of the story.
Fran Bow gets pretty disturbing and surreal when you pop those pills that I talked about earlier, when accessing the alternative world that Fran imagines, things get "psycho crazy", from headless animals to haunted little kids with their eyes missing, everything can be expected from Fran's scarred mind.
The music and sound department still need a bit of work, but combined they can already convey the "nice" feeling of dread and despair that the game developers seem to be going for.

The demo ended with Fran going through the "yellow door", personally I can't wait to find out what will happen to our little protagonist, the main question that was left lingering in my mind after playing the demo was if what just happened was real or just Fran's imagination at work? Heck, maybe her parents are still alive, maybe she just imagined the whole thing, or maybe...maybe she killed them herself, who knows?
A game that leaves me so curious about what actually happened has to be doing something right, let's hope that the final product is as good as this sweet and surreal sample.

Fran Bow Greenlight: Link
Download the Demo: Link