Finding Frankie is a charming if not short indie horror game with a very specific sort of niche. Just like any other mascot horror, it holds a gimmick that makes it stand from the crowd — the cameras from old Five Nights at Freddy games, the GrabPack from Poppy Playtime, the drone from Garten of BanBan, the assortment of literature-based weaponry from My Friendly Neighborhood, etc. This little horror is no different with its choice of gimmick being movement itself.
It’s a fairly unique concept for a mascot horror, perhaps a bit run-of-the-mill as it follows the same beaten paths of a mysterious group pulling the strings, but that’s beside the point. The way I kind of explain this game is a mishmash of a watered down Mirror’s Edge and Fall Guys with a splash of scares from something like Poppy Playtime with monster designs befitting the description and genre. That is to say — scary yet marketable.
Found Frankie
This confusingly named game follows the player, a down-on-their-luck contestant of a sick and twisted privately-funded game show where you can only compete if you are among the people who find a tape in their Frankie’s Fruit Flakes cereal box. While its story won’t wow you, it’s still nice to go off the beaten path of dead children and ghostly entities and into an arguably more disturbing situation of an evil corporation looking to save itself from bankruptcy by any means necessary.
Quite honestly, this is a fantastic indie horror concept that stands out solely because of its different — yet familiar — setting. As someone who adored shows like Wipeout before it started to kind of overstay its welcome, the brightly colored aesthetic of Finding Frankie is a breath of fresh air. Now, that’s not to say it’s perfect, but that’s for later. The game is very clearly also inspired by Fall Guys, for better or worse, from its catchy beats to the bright colors, spinning cylinders, and movement-based situations.
The broad idea of a parkour mascot horror is intriguing. A select few may know that I loved games like Mirror’s Edge and even its sequel to a lesser extent, there was something so freeing and a game that feels like it should capture a sense of movement is bound to be good, right?
Flawed Frankie
Now, while the game itself has its positives, it has its fair share of flaws, not in the same vein as something like Choo Choo Charles, which was rife with performance-based bugs and bizarre decisions with character models, but rather the movement itself can almost feel like a detriment at times. The controls feel janky, which sure you could argue might be due to me playing it on keyboard and mouse, but nonetheless a tight-knit control scheme is required and I feel like this game lacks that, which is immensely disappointing when the entire game revolves around movement. The entire concept behind Finding Frankie was an indoor parkour park and getting chased by this monster.
Beyond the controls, it feels short and like way too much was just left to the wayside and what wasn’t was bombarded at the player in exposition and not enough subtle hints of the background of this unhinged game show. I’m sure this will all be explained in whatever it is the team has in the works at this time, but as it stands, it feels like a glorified tech demo, and maybe this was what it was supposed to masquerade as, but from its price and marketing, it doesn’t seem that way.
In the end, it just failed to deliver on what I was expecting — solid movement. Instead, what we get a game seething potential only to falter and become yet another mascot horror that will be remembered once in a blue moon for the one thing that it got right yet also wrong. The game that looks like it took pages out of Fall Guys’ book and slapped a horror aesthetic on it.
Final Frankie
Finding Frankie seethed potential but its lackluster broad story and jaunted controls hold it back from being a fantastic game through and through. It’s far from horrible, and I do think there are still plenty of good things about this game to make it worth a play. The entire concept of a parkour mascot horror has weight to it and I would’ve loved to see it executed in a more polished way, perhaps the Finding Frankie Team will produce something more polished later down the line, but I sincerely hope by the time it does, fans haven’t forgotten Frankie.
Finding Frankie is exclusively on PC via Steam.
The Review
Good
