Oh my. Alice overload doesn't actually begin to describe it. First, I stopped playing the game and finished by watching CJU's Let's Play videos, and I'm actually glad I did that. The game isn't really that difficult, although it is absolutely beyond weird, and that turns out to be the major reason to play it, not to figure out the pretty easy puzzles. I stopped because:
I found that my new 65" curved smart TV has an app for Steam. So I tried it, found my laptop, connected it, and voila! My game appeared on the TV screen! Cool beans!
However, this copy of Fran Bow has always had issues. I've never been able to take screenshots of it, so that was the first clue. Something is missing in the video overlay. And, unlike the other Steam games I've tried, the game runs on Steam, but the laptop shows a black screen. Normally you just get a mirror of what's on the laptop, but this completely took over the laptop. I still used my mouse and was able to reach the main menu via the escape key, but other than that I had to play on the TV.
The problem was that I couldn't get any visuals in the game even when I tried to play it on the computer with the Steam app completely turned off. The screen was just black, and I had to "end task" to get out of it. So the only option became to play via the TV Steam app, and that posed a problem.
I have guests. This game often, quite often, is deeply disturbing. I didn't want to expose my guests to that. So, I stopped playing and just watched the videos while I was alone in the house.
Up to that time, however, I was doing just fine. Really, if you look around the screens effectively enough you can pretty easily figure out these puzzles. As always in games like this, you really only get stuck if you miss something somewhere.
Still, as we get ever deeper into the game things just get ever stranger. Really, seriously stranger. The art work is so deceptively simple, but the storyline and dialogue are super sophisticated, bringing up all kinds of alternate reality scenarios and just ever stranger stuff.
Did Fran kill her parents? If she did, is she in Hell (one screen seems to say so). Is she in some kind of purgatory? Is she alive or is she dead? Is she mentally disturbed or some kind of supernatural heroine, as is also suggested. Is her Aunt Grace the villain, or is the Asylum director, or is it the supernatural being that might exist only in Fran's mind? Is Mr. Midnight real?
Is there a sort of happy ending? The game lets you think so if you want to think so, so I think so.
I really enjoyed the whole relationship with Mr. Midnight, the cat. I like cats, and it was great to see how much Fran and her kitty loved each other.
But wowzers, this thing is strange. Absolutely worth playing, because you don't want to miss this weirdness. Absolutely worth playing. If I hadn't messed up my game with the Steam streaming app I would have finished it on my own, but I also wanted to get it done because I've been interrupted too many times and spent much too long on it. I want to get on to other stuff.
So. Fran Bow. Yeah. Play it. But fasten your seatbelts before you do.
Seriously wow.
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