While recognizing the artistic qualities of Fran Bow, I strongly suspect that a significant part of its popularity is caused by its timing. It caught the last train of that trend in the earlier 10's when the first little children who grew up with gadgets found a taste for horror. Why tell creepy stories to each other before bedtime, if you can google interactable ones? Knock-Knock, Sally Face, Five Nights at Freddy's — all of these titles are both creepy and conventionally cute. You can enjoy watching a funny little girl overcoming obstacles just as well as the cutest demon ever killing her parents and everyone she loves. There is an inherent drive to dark stories in children and younger teenagers, so it's no wonder these tales gather such massive fandoms.
But at the same time, Fran Bow is surprisingly, absurdly strong at storytelling. No comparison to Jeff the Killer creepypasta or the vague premise of Slenderman whatsoever. This twisted way of being family-friendly, both engaging and relatable (to some extent) for younger audiences and interesting for adults to think about, this level of keeping the mystery, evading the answers, provoking wild theories and consciously gaslighting the player, was only ever reached by Rule of Rose, from what I've seen (only here the artist was given more than two crayons, brown and green. And red crayons were in abundance). The narrative is calculated and directed very meticulously, and the kitty jumping into the window only to never come back is almost as touching as Betty disappearing from the camera view for good right before Rita opens the blue box in Mulholland Drive (but more, because it's a kitty).
In fact, trying to answer the question "What is real?" is so hard here that you can't help thinking about our usual manner of interpreting psychological horror. "What did this symbol mean for the plot? Wasn't that occasionally a manifestation of the subdued desires and fears of the protagonist? Also, do you realize why the Yume Nikki girl sits in her room and sees creatures of prolonged shapes? What has happened in reality?" — in which one? Silent Hill kinda did a self-ironic secret "dog's dream" ending, but Fran Bow is much more complex in this. Good luck trying to tell when the pills show us the "reality" and when "illness" (and what was even that swapping subplot), what is the ontological status of a kitty in which moment, who and how has killed the parents and why does this little British (American? German?) girl dream of Indian gods, Escher and Finnish dictionary. Ideas grow from each other in your eyes, and that's actually quite logical that the game's iconography is so based on arboreal imagery; it's lively and vibrant roots, berries and leaves that make Fran Bow's promo materials stand out visually among all kinds of modern cruel tales in games; little girls, black cats, keys of all shapes and insects are used much more widely. The game itself actively grows and branches out during the playthrough, and there are less than two hours between the yellow walls of the ward and the eight realities whose names sound like Finnish mythology (but only if you, unlike me, were quick enough to trick the receptionist).
This biological analogy, totally appropriate for a game about mental health, seems very curious to me regarding the whole New Weird's obsession with new worlds, the role of a human in them, the magic of physics, cacti people, and the boundaries between gothic — the fear of the past and the surreal — and weird — the fear of the way-too-real but not yet experienced. Speaking of: Fran Bow actually manages to turn Lovecraft inside out along the way. Yeah, new worlds might be weird, but are you sure that the unknown inhumane, say, the world of insects or living eyes, will be unbearably bad for us and the Frenzy bar will kill us? With its Eastern inspirations, Fran Bow might be a world game in the same sense in which Enigma is world music, which I think is very fitting for a game made by a couple of mixed Swedish-Latin American origins (hope I wasn't wrong here, but I know for sure Little Misfortune is Latina). The mechanic of seeing multiple worlds in one location highlights this message beautifully: between different experiences, there must be a language, be they caused by different origins or different mental composition (Laing's argument for working out a unique language to talk to a mental patient and understand them is basically what the player is constantly motivated to do here).
Or actually even different age. As an older brother, I know two things perfectly: despite the game only being allowed for teenagers and older, it's not that twelve-year-old fans of Jeff the Killer don't know who Fran Bow is, as well as dozens of other horror titles, and it's not that Fran Bow is the most traumatic media they've most probably seen. It doesn't mean every child should immediately be introduced to Fran seeing her dead parents and cutting the beetlepig in half, but it's a perfect modern adaptation for something like The NeverEnding Story and the whole category of fantasy films about clever kids in a scary world (and it's unironically better and more wholesome than Time Bandits, for what it's worth). The way the characters aren't voiced (it's obviously for financial reasons but still) even reminded me of how I've read something about Dickens and his theatrical dialogues; they work the best if read by roles by the whole family. And Fran Bow is that as well! (One tough test for a let's player, I can say that). In our times, the world is scarier but also more open.
But at the same time, Fran Bow is surprisingly, absurdly strong at storytelling. No comparison to Jeff the Killer creepypasta or the vague premise of Slenderman whatsoever. This twisted way of being family-friendly, both engaging and relatable (to some extent) for younger audiences and interesting for adults to think about, this level of keeping the mystery, evading the answers, provoking wild theories and consciously gaslighting the player, was only ever reached by Rule of Rose, from what I've seen (only here the artist was given more than two crayons, brown and green. And red crayons were in abundance). The narrative is calculated and directed very meticulously, and the kitty jumping into the window only to never come back is almost as touching as Betty disappearing from the camera view for good right before Rita opens the blue box in Mulholland Drive (but more, because it's a kitty).
In fact, trying to answer the question "What is real?" is so hard here that you can't help thinking about our usual manner of interpreting psychological horror. "What did this symbol mean for the plot? Wasn't that occasionally a manifestation of the subdued desires and fears of the protagonist? Also, do you realize why the Yume Nikki girl sits in her room and sees creatures of prolonged shapes? What has happened in reality?" — in which one? Silent Hill kinda did a self-ironic secret "dog's dream" ending, but Fran Bow is much more complex in this. Good luck trying to tell when the pills show us the "reality" and when "illness" (and what was even that swapping subplot), what is the ontological status of a kitty in which moment, who and how has killed the parents and why does this little British (American? German?) girl dream of Indian gods, Escher and Finnish dictionary. Ideas grow from each other in your eyes, and that's actually quite logical that the game's iconography is so based on arboreal imagery; it's lively and vibrant roots, berries and leaves that make Fran Bow's promo materials stand out visually among all kinds of modern cruel tales in games; little girls, black cats, keys of all shapes and insects are used much more widely. The game itself actively grows and branches out during the playthrough, and there are less than two hours between the yellow walls of the ward and the eight realities whose names sound like Finnish mythology (but only if you, unlike me, were quick enough to trick the receptionist).
This biological analogy, totally appropriate for a game about mental health, seems very curious to me regarding the whole New Weird's obsession with new worlds, the role of a human in them, the magic of physics, cacti people, and the boundaries between gothic — the fear of the past and the surreal — and weird — the fear of the way-too-real but not yet experienced. Speaking of: Fran Bow actually manages to turn Lovecraft inside out along the way. Yeah, new worlds might be weird, but are you sure that the unknown inhumane, say, the world of insects or living eyes, will be unbearably bad for us and the Frenzy bar will kill us? With its Eastern inspirations, Fran Bow might be a world game in the same sense in which Enigma is world music, which I think is very fitting for a game made by a couple of mixed Swedish-Latin American origins (hope I wasn't wrong here, but I know for sure Little Misfortune is Latina). The mechanic of seeing multiple worlds in one location highlights this message beautifully: between different experiences, there must be a language, be they caused by different origins or different mental composition (Laing's argument for working out a unique language to talk to a mental patient and understand them is basically what the player is constantly motivated to do here).
Or actually even different age. As an older brother, I know two things perfectly: despite the game only being allowed for teenagers and older, it's not that twelve-year-old fans of Jeff the Killer don't know who Fran Bow is, as well as dozens of other horror titles, and it's not that Fran Bow is the most traumatic media they've most probably seen. It doesn't mean every child should immediately be introduced to Fran seeing her dead parents and cutting the beetlepig in half, but it's a perfect modern adaptation for something like The NeverEnding Story and the whole category of fantasy films about clever kids in a scary world (and it's unironically better and more wholesome than Time Bandits, for what it's worth). The way the characters aren't voiced (it's obviously for financial reasons but still) even reminded me of how I've read something about Dickens and his theatrical dialogues; they work the best if read by roles by the whole family. And Fran Bow is that as well! (One tough test for a let's player, I can say that). In our times, the world is scarier but also more open.