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Fran Bow
Fran Bow is for players who would rather follow a dark, hand-drawn story and solve puzzles alone. At ≈ $7.18 from 
GOG, the adventure follows Fran through an unsettling world as she searches for her cat and tackles story-based challenges. It is not aimed at players primarily seeking multiplayer modes; its draw is the narrative and puzzle-solving. At a Steam price of $14.99, you can weigh the offer from GOG against your budget for a story-led solo adventure.
All-time low ~ $3.29across Steam & third-party stores
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Price History
Past 36 months · Updated dailyHistorical Low~ $3.742023-08Current Low Across Stores~ $14.99GOGvs. Historical Low+301%
Prices cover Steam and 39 authorized stores; only legitimate offers are counted. The chart shows weekly market-wide lows and Steam's official price across the past 36 months.
01About Fran Bow
Fran Bow is a hand-drawn 2D horror adventure about Fran, who wakes in an asylum after her parents’ violent deaths and sets out to find her cat, Mr. Midnight. Medication opens a terrible hidden world where she searches for objects and clues to solve story-based puzzles. Steam players rate the game 97%% positive across 20,761 reviews. The Steam PC version supports subtitles in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Russian.
Credits
Developer
Killmonday Games AB
Publisher
Killmonday Games AB
Lowest recorded in 36 months
$3.742023-08-28 · GOGBase game · same records as the chart above; USD history, not a regional Steam low.Language support
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Yes | Yes | — |
| German | Yes | Yes | — |
| Spanish | Yes | Yes | — |
Show 3 more languages
| Language | Interface | Subtitles | Audio |
|---|---|---|---|
| Russian | Yes | Yes | — |
| French | Yes | Yes | — |
| Portuguese-Brazil | Yes | Yes | — |
Steam PC edition data · 2026-10-19
02Before you buy
Gameplay
Fran Bow is a hand-drawn 2D psychological horror adventure built around story puzzles. Medication reveals a hidden world where Fran can search for objects and clues.
Languages
The Steam PC version supports subtitles in English, German, French, Italian, Spanish and Russian. Full audio is not specified for these languages.
03Frequently asked questions
What is the story about?
Fran tries to escape a mental institution and find her cat, Mr. Midnight.
What does the gameplay include?
It includes story-based puzzles, three arcade-inspired minigames and more than 50 interactive characters.
Can you play as Mr. Midnight?
Yes. Mr. Midnight is interactive and is playable on occasion.
Popular Steam reviews
Native-language selection · 10 reviewsSelected helpful reviews in this language show both recommendations and criticisms. This selection does not represent the overall positive rating; opinions reflect the version reviewed.
RecommendedSteam player
This game all by itself renews my faith in the ability of adventure games to be captivating, thought provoking, fun, and creative. It's been a very long time since I've enjoyed a game quite this thoroughly.Show moreShow less
21.1 hours at review164 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
A serious identity crisis Fran Bow bills itself as a psychological horror game but can’t decide if that’s what it actually wants to be. The first chapter of Fran Bow is everything you see in the trailer: haunted mental asylum, children haunted by shadows, uncaring staff, the walls will ooze red slime, etc. By the second chapter, Fran Bow has completely lost the plot. At the start of the game, Fran’s goal is to escape the asylum and go home. By the 2/5’s point, Fran Bow becomes a children’s fantasy occasionally interrupted by spooky ghosts. This crisis only compounds as the mood shifts from psychological horror, to psychedelic, to dark fantasy, to fantasy, to sci-fi, to psychedelic fantasy, and back to horror in the last 5 minutes. Some might call this "challenging our expectations." In fact, it is just being unpredictable. For that reason, the middle portion of the game seems designed for very young children. The dialogue from the fantasy portions of the game onward is insulting. Everyone is overly pleasant, kind, monosyllabic, and constantly repeating themselves. It feels designed for ages 7-8, but is interrupted by random bouts of gore. It’s a serious problem with tone, mood, and intended audience that permeates the entire story front to back. Tone aside, gameplay is quite refined for an adventure game. Arrows on each side of the screen make for quick and easy navigation and all actions are done through a single click, rather than a long menu of actions. However, dialogue is slow, tedious, rarely updates, and doesn’t have many options to exit out of it mid-conversation. Puzzles range from OK to terrible. Each puzzle in an adventure game should, in some way, move the story forward. Fran Bow uses the “gating” method of adventure gaming where you’re always told how to move the story forward, but there’s an obstacle in the way. Obstacles in Fran Bow are usually completed by either scavenger hunt (collect all the items on this list) or fetch quests within fetch quests. A large portion of Fran Bow goes like this: NPC 1: "To pass these gates, you need 5 McGuffins!" NPC 2: “I am the only one capable of using these McGuffins!” NPC 3: “I’ll give you my McGuffin, but only if I can have a Floopdoodle” NPC 4: “I’ll give you my Floopdoodle for a Shimsham!” NPC 5: "I'll give you my Shimsham if you complete a minigame." Rinse and repeat. The frequency of these limited styles of story progression make it feel like Fran Bow ran out of ideas at the start of the third chapter. Additionally, Fran Bow makes extensive use of dual worlds mechanics. The novelty works, at first, because it has a genuine impact and provides insight into characters and situations. After the escape from the asylum, the dual worlds mechanic becomes needlessly frustrating. By the start of the second chapter, Fran is no longer just seeing things in the other world and using that knowledge to progress the story, she’s taking items from them. As a result, the player must explore each location twice: once in the real world and once in the dark world. By the middle of the game, Fran has to visit each location 4 times. This is why we haven’t see dual worlds in mainstream games since 2009. Visiting every location twice gets boring really fast. Revisiting every location four times makes me want to quit. Finally there’s the problem of the overarching story. Fran Bow begins with a strong story and a strong hook. There’s a lot of buildup and although the threads are strained at times, it feels like it’s all going somewhere. By the end of the game, only one of the plot threads have been resolved and even then it’s ambiguous if it was actually resolved. The fate of every other character, including Fran Bow are left dangling. A new character is introduced without any previous mention in the last 3 minutes and an important character we learned of early on is completely forgotten. This leads to the problem of ambiguous endings for atmospheric adventure games. Inside was crippled by this problem, Little Nightmares struggled with this problem, and Fran Bow is a jumbled mess because of this problem. Recently, many adventure game developers have been leaving their endings specifically ambiguous. Regardless of artistic intent, this does one very powerful thing for them: it puts them on the fan theory radar. This added publicity, as we saw with Inside, boosts their sales through the roof. However, I like to think that people write stories because they have a story to tell, something that is important to them. If there is a story to tell, the story should at least be comprehensible. If there is a metaphor, at least some portion of the audience should be able to understand it. Fran Bow, like Inside, has player split as to what it actually means because from a story perspective, reality is completely inseparable from hallucination, there’s no way to tell what is actually going on. This is a common trend with ambiguous games. The writer puts in some fluff dialogue or visuals to hint at a bigger world, but does not actually address what all this means in any meaningful way. An ambiguous ending is OK from time to time, but it has to be an an ambigious ENDING, a interprative ending to what the some of all the parts mean for the characters. When the entire story is a mystery to figure out just what the hell is going on and by the end of the story you have not provided a single answer and your ending only raises further questions, that’s not even ambiguous storytelling, that’s a lack of story. Fran Bow felt like an usatisfying binge watch. You don't care about the characters, you just want to know what the big mystery is and by the end of the season you have no answers, not even a cliff hanger. The series just ends and you feel like you need a shower.Show moreShow less
5.8 hours at review137 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Just finishied this gem. *Beautiful art style *Both cute and creepy *Great score *Story that makes you want to keep on playing and playing *Puzzles are both easy but can also be challenging *Lots of interesting characters *Heavy themes (abuse, abortion, etc.) I really loved this game. 10/10 would play again. I highly recommend this game.Show moreShow less
12.4 hours at review161 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
I don't normally post reviews, but I have to say, this game irritated me to no end. From a gameplay standpoint, there's nothing wrong with it. This is your standard point-and-click adventure, nothing too innovative here. The art is... interesting, but not displeasing. The soundtrack is forgettable but not terrible. My biggest issue with this game is the story. Look, this game is about a child with a mental illness. It is obviously supposed to be bizarre and otherworldly. I understand that parts of it may be vague/confusing/strange/gross/etc to help the player see the world through the child's eyes and to up the horror factor. This becomes a problem however when the bizarre is so overdone that it overshadows the narrative. The 'this child is crazy' bit is pushed so hard that the story gets lost in there. By the time I got to the 3rd chapter, I had no idea what was happening anymore. The ending is extremely dissatisfying and doesn't resolve or explain anything. The things that are explained are far too complex for this sort of game, so they fall short in helping the player understand... well, anything. Now, I won't say this was a horrible game. I enjoyed it for the most part, and I don't regret the money I paid for it. However, I will say this: if you're looking for a complete, comprehendable story this is not your game. If you're looking for an art piece or just generally something to creep and gross you out, then buy it. I, for one, was looking for a story, and as such, cannot recommend it.Show moreShow less
6.1 hours at review108 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
game makes mental illness basedShow moreShow less
17 hours at review149 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
*Semi-Spoilers* I apologize to the creators for not recommending this obvious labor of love. Fran Bow has a lot going for it and earns the (nowadays) rare distinction of being a game I actually played until the end. Which means that amidst all these hundreds of games that fail to hold my attention or engage me sufficiently to be "beaten" this one persevered only to reward me with... nothing. No conclusion, no reveal, no explanation, no closure. Some people enjoy this sort of thing; going online afterwards to discuss their interpretations and theories about events that unfolded. I can even agree with this and relate to it up to a point. I just can't help but feel Fran Bow took it a bit too far leaving _everything_ up to the player. Was it all a dream? Was half of it a dream? 25% dream? Is there one single "fact" in this story anchored to reality or is everything fluid and left to your imagination? When I read a novel I like to imagine that the author had this burning desire to share their story with me; that everything they put into writing was more or less important to the story or the setting or the mood. There will be some ambiguity or some uncertainty - certain facts will be left up to your imagination and make the story better for it. Here, you might as well just grab a cup of your favorite beverage, sit down comfortably and use these following keywords to make up your own story in your head: Little Girl, Insane Asylum, Dead Parents, Medicine, Psychosis, Did you do it? There you go, whatever you made up in your head can most likely fill in for what "actually" happened in Fran Bow.Show moreShow less
7.4 hours at review79 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Very polished game. Fran has different animations when she says something, and it's not random. Her animation reflects the mood of the dialogue. Consider that each interactable object/character also has 3 different dialogue to trigger. I have never seen this level of detail in other point and click games. Also pleasantly surprised by the length of the game. My first playthrough took 15 hours. Great art direction.Show moreShow less
15.8 hours at review118 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
It's admittedly not a bad game. It started out beautifully, but it starts to fall apart at the mid-way point. Then add in the confusing out of nowhere ending and it appears to be less a matter of ambiguity and more that the creators couldn't make up their minds and threw in a twist at the last minute a la M. Night Shyamalan. A twist may be unexpected and shocking, but that doesn't make it good. This is a point and click game that is mainly story-based and driven by narrative, but that only works against it as the mood and narrative ended up all over the place to the point that I had to question what game I was supposed to be playing after a while. The story started out dark and creepy with a little girl whose parents died being stuck in an institution and wanting to escape to find her lost cat. It's a good starting point and the setting and tone of the chapter were perfectly eerie and unsettling enough to draw me in and make me question what Fran and by extension we as the players were seeing. Even with the pills being used as a way to transition between the "real world" and the darker world where you can see shadows haunting the other people in the institution and revealing their pasts and trauma. It was creepy and tragic and a wonderful theme, and overall implied that what Fran may have been seeing in this other reality had a major basis in truth. It was a good premise and would certainly have been interesting to see addressed. Even the second chapter was similar, and even brought up the question of whether it was the house or the well that was actually "real". It was intriguing and left me both guessing and wanting to play more to get these answers. And to find the cat, because he was adorable. But it all starts to fall apart midway through when the story made a leap from dark and horror to magical fantasy in chapter 3 and just kept going from there. It ended up being a serious case of mood whiplash and lost the aspect of the game that had me interested in the first place. The multiple fetch quests within fetch quests didn't help. Plus with the scenes being just as quirky and over the top off the reality-switching pills as they were when on them, that threw the question of "is this real" out the window because there stopped being a difference. And with everyone being unhelpfully vague or close-lipped when it came to getting some actual answers while throwing in a conspiracy in the last chapter, the game appears to be trying too hard to be ambiguous without actually being ambiguous. We ended up going from trying to uncover the conspiracy behind the murder of Fran's parents to having a different conspiracy sprung on us at the last part of the final chapter about the truth behind some doctor we never met and his never before mentioned plans or why those plans involve removing Fran's brain. The doctor and the aunt literally come out of nowhere and nothing that followed made any sense. That's not ambiguity, that's just poor writing. It strikes me as one of those games that's meant to invoke discussion and make the players ask questions that won't be answered. The problem comes in that the only question I have is: What was the point?Show moreShow less
10.4 hours at review39 people found this helpful
RecommendedSteam player
Played this years ago back in 2015, Instantly fell in love for it. I was so stoked to see they managed to finish porting from Gamemaker engine to Unity so they can release it on consoles. As a bonus, they KEPT the original Gamemaker version as an alternative (a prompt appears when you launch the game on steam) AND they also added a bunch of language localizations! So happy to play this game on my local language! And all of this was a FREE UPDATE, FREE, freaking 8 years after the game's release and they didn't charge you a penny for it. Absolutely chads My deep thanks for Killmonday devs, wish you guys great success in your future endeavors.Show moreShow less
9.7 hours at review116 people found this helpful
Not recommendedSteam player
Overall, I liked this game's idea, and the first half of it was awesome. It drew me in quickly, I like the characters in general (I love Fran's chilklike whimsy in approaching the creepiest of dead things), and the puzzles were intelligent and thought provoking... as opposed to other, less directed point-and-click games where you go through your inventory trying each item on a puzzle until it works. The visuals are beautiful (and creepy), and It begins setting up a really compelling and potentially emotional storyline. Which is why I'm mad at the ending. The game leaves way too much unresolved for my taste. I'm fine with a thought provoking and cryptic ending that leaves you guessing (like an allegory or something... Braid?), but this ending seemed more like the writers got lazy and didn't want to do the work of creating any kind of closure. Even if you were to build a good theory regarding what was going on (and the internet is abuzz with this topic if you look it up), there is no good explanation as to why everything happened as it did. There was just too much introduced over the course of the story for the ending as it stands to leave anything but dissatisfaction for me. The story I'm creating about the ending is that they were going to write another chapter, and then for some reason production got rushed. That's the most satisfying explanation of the ending for me.Show moreShow less
9 hours at review38 people found this helpful
Source: original Steam user reviews. Helpful votes are an archived snapshot, not live data. Last collected: 08/15/2026.