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The husband and wife team that makes up Swedish indie developer Killmonday Games successfully crowdfunded their vision for “a very creepy point-and-click adventure" called Fran Bow back in the summer of 2013. The game officially launched on PC in August of last year to a positive reception, and following its release on Android just a couple of weeks ago Fran Bow is now available on iOS as well. In the game you play as Fran, a ten year-old girl who witnesses the grisly murder of her own parents. She is discovered traumatized and alone in the woods, and taken to an asylum where she’s separated from her only friend in the world, her cat Mr. Midnight. Due to the medications administered to her at the asylum, Fran hallucinates an alternate reality filled with gruesome monsters and death. Desperate to escape the asylum and horrible treatments, Fran utilizes the ability to jump between the two realities in order to solve puzzles, find Mr. Midnight, and hopefully discover who was behind the murder of her parents.

I’ll tell you that I don’t keep very close tabs on what’s happening in the world of PC gaming, mostly just because the firehose of new releases on mobile day in and day out don’t afford me the time to do so. I’d never heard of Fran Bow until it arrived on iOS today, but I’m incredibly interested in the dark premise behind the game and its wonderful art style. Killmonday says that the entire game didn’t run well on mobile as one single game, so they’ve split it up into five separate apps which sell for two dollars apiece. Altogether the game is still five bucks cheaper than it is on Steam. I’m not sure why they didn’t just do in-app unlocks for the additional chapters, but at the same time I kind of like this approach since I’m constantly having storage space issues on my iPhone and at least this way I can delete each chapter as I go. Also if you play through the first chapter and you’re not really feeling it, you’re only out two bucks!

So if you dig point-and-click adventures and very dark premises (Dexter anyone?), then consider giving Fran Bow a try, and leaving your thoughts about it in the game’s forum thread. I’ll definitely be diving into this one myself over the weekend.