Matt HillMascot horror games are a dime a dozen. It feels like ever since Five Nights At Freddy’s took off, many have hoped to cash in on the genre’s success. Just take a scroll down the PlayStation Network store and you’ll see plenty of horror mascot games just hoping to break out and scare you without doing much new. The question is, does Finding Frankie bring anything new to the table, or is it destined to join the heap of other horror mascots games in the video game basement?
Welcome to the Frankie Games
Finding Frankie is essentially a horror mascot game mashed up with Fall Guys and a small dash of Squid Games to boot. The game’s plot is extremely simple to get the game moving as you play as one of several players invited to compete for a cash prize on Frankie’s parkour game show. Sure enough, all isn’t as it seems, and you’re running around this murderous trampoline park with horrifying mascots chasing you about trying to kill you.
Parkour Horror
For any parkour-based game, movement is essential, and thankfully, Finding Frankie handles really well in that department. Your character can whizz around the map with speedy grinds and slides whilst bouncing between walls. When the level design allows it and everything clicks, the game is an absolute pleasure to play through, but overall, there aren’t too many moments when that happens. Instead, a lot of the time, you’ll be doubling back to get the right spot to progress. There is an element of clunkiness to the movement, and it becomes apparent when you aren’t in the flow. It certainly doesn’t derail the experience, but when you enter an area that isn’t designed as well as some of the better environments, it can be a little too noticeable.
The game isn’t all parkour either. There are several moments where the game dials back the movement and will have you in a more confined and limited space to allow the horror elements to ramp up. Though I never found the fear factor all that high, even when being pursued by the well-designed mascots of Henry Hotline and Frankie.
Flick The Switch
The game time for Finding Frankie is perhaps what many of you would expect, clocking in at a round a few hours, but that’s not a bad thing, as the game is paced rather well and never feels like there’s much downtime between the next scare or environment you need to traverse. The issue is that the majority of the gameplay loop here is being thrown into an area and signalled to ‘hit so many’ buttons/flick switches in an allotted time and move on. It’s certainly functional, but Finding Frankie is at its best when it’s throwing something new at you with chases, battling the environment, or just slowing down to ramp up fear in isolated areas. Too often the game falls back into this flick-the-switch gameplay loop that gets the job done, but doesn’t do much to entertain, and bides time before the next event.
Fear Guys
Whilst Finding Frankie’s Fall Guys approach to mascot horror is a refreshing time, the overall package is a short horror breeze that will delight fans of the genre but won’t offer much to anyone else. There are some memorable moments, but they’re too far between, and you’re often brought back to a tedious gameplay loop inside a story that doesn’t offer all that much either.