Tags
adventure game, adventure games, cats, dark fantasy, depression, fran bow, grief, let's play, mental health, mental illness, morbid, streaming, video games, youtube
Just finished up another Let’s Play and uploaded it all to YouTube! Fran Bow is a dark-whimsical (think Tim Burton but less self-absorbed and twee <small>I am not a Tim Burton fan</small>) adventure game in the traditional style–meaning ‘let’s solve arbitrary number and switch/slider puzzles and combine really random things to create strange tools to accomplish complicated goals.’ That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though! I played enough adventure games back when they were the Big Thing (ye heady days of Sierra) to know my way around the good old ‘combine items’ button…
I enjoyed this game, even though it rushes its conclusion and falls apart at the end. The art direction and creature/character/environment design are rough and brush-work-y and incredibly appealing, the writing’s solid (it gets a bit overly morbid-whimsical now and then, but not too often), the characters are surprisingly warm and supportive, Mr. Midnight is a talking kitty and you get to play him twice (hooray!), and the literary references (to It, The Neverending Story, and Alice in Wonderland) are thoughtfully integrated instead of just cute shallow aesthetic nods.
Note that the game touches on just about every content/trigger warning possible, so be warned going in.
You can watch the full Let’s Play on my YouTube channel here. To see live streaming Let’s Plays from me, follow my Twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/waldweg. I’ll be playing Child of Light next.
(As always, if you like anything that I do, and want to help my recently diagnosed currently unemployed ADHD self survive, please do leave something in my Ko-fi account or check out my Amazon wish list!)
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