Finding Frankie: a mascotte horror videogame i don't hate!BEWARE: SPOILERS FOR FINDING FRANKIE ALL OVER THIS BLOG!
Wow! This is my first blog!
Welcome welcome welcome!
So, I have always been an avid consumer of gameplays my whole life, and recently I watched caseoh playing a game called "Finding Frankie", a platform horror game with... mascottes.
"Aughhh", I thought, "another poppy playtime? please god no, I had enough"; there has been a crazy amount of mascotte themed horror games coming out in recent years, a fenomenon that I personally think has started from the success of FNAF (Five Night's at Freddy's), another mascotte themed horror game with a crazy amount of following.
I think though the problem with this genre of horror games is not only the surplus of games that came out these years, but the poor writing, the only actually scary thing except for the jumpscares.
Personally I lost interest in following any kind of mascotte themed horror game because everything seemed to be centered around the aesthetics of the game instead of the actual plot, i haven't been following stuff like poppy playtime, but honestly, because of the amount of minors that seem to enjoy the game, I don't feel as "targeted audience".
(Another thing I would like to understand: the amount of poppy playtime gadgets that are still being sold in markets in Italy???? I swear to god, just as Harry Potter themed stuff those plushies seemed to come out of nowhere, and I never saw children buyng them, but still??? Are kids enjoyng that game? Did they ever? I have no idea! But I swear they LITERALLY came out of nowhere and I still see in markets people selling horror themed mascotte plushies of poppy playtime or similar stuff)
In mascotte themed horror games everything feels to be pretty inconsistent, but I can say Finding Frankie is a good mascotte horror themed videogame.
It's a platform, which automatically calls me out of the game because I don't enjoy too much platformers in general, but I can see that the movements and the graphics of this game are truly truly truly well done: the gameplay is immersive and puts in the player a good amount of well required anxiety that any kind of well done horror videogame puts.
The music is another thing i need you all to focus your attention on: it's a BOP! Amazing! I'll put in the right part of the page a link to the final music which is just AAAA so so cool (don't check it out if you don't want spoilers btw!)
Anyway, even if apparently on paper this game presents the same problems most mascotte themed horror games have this one resolves everything by not taking itself still too seriously trying to overexplain itself.
Thank goodness we are only at the beginning of this game, unlike FNAF that seems to have a billion of sequels and prequels, Finding Frankie is an absolutely new game in the scene and seeems tp have sparked a lot of curiosity in the fandom because of the mistery that seems to have in its still unexplained plot.
Briefly: The steam page for the game has a brief explanation of what is the main objective of the game but you are playing as a contenstant who apparently found in a box of cereals a way top participate in the "Finding Frankie" Game show, which grants you, if you win, 5 million dolllars in cash.
The game initially doesn't exactly tell you what you have to do except for the fact that you will have to do parkour: simple, right?
Wrong.
Because apparently there are... animatronics of... AUGH, can I say a thing to the developers of mascotte themed games? No more robots. No more. Give me fantasy creatures. Give fucking talking cute rabbit that can tear your face apart in two seconds and still look stereotipically cute, not THIS
because THIS is in EVERY GODDAMN MASCOTTE GAME
"It's a scary design though!" I think it's reductive. Many things can be scary, but the fucking giant robot armed monster that eats people is everywhere, in every game, give something a little bit different for once, PLEASE.
Okay, now that I said this thank god this game is still in what i would like to call "early FNAF years", it still has a lot of mistery in the plot that is not trying to be overexplained by some christian developer with a thousand other games complicating the plot more and more.
The athmosphere is intriguing and the mascottes are not 970 different ones, but three, with consistent character traits (even deputy duck, my beloved, who is literally just a tool, seems to me to have some kind of personality, he literally seems to have some kind of beef with henry, and seeing his offfice i was like "what on earth do you have against that wanna be sexyman tumblr guy???"), and two of these mascottes will represnt an actual threat to the player.
The start of the game doesn't tell you this, but I love this particular thing.
The shock of seeing monster Frankie eating poeple alive is a good start, shocks the player and completely changes the atmosphere from "cute kids place gameshow" to "wtf is going on" nightmare.
I also love the mechanics of the game because they give you the possibility to feel free to move around the sorroundings feeling like a feather.
The problem I had with FNAF: security breach was that the sorroundings are quite similar: absolute huge big kids place where you feel lost, but curious to look around.
Security breach doesn't give the possibility to move around the whole place freely because of its main mechanic of "don't get caught by those monsters" wich is still present in Finding Frankie, but not in the same stressful way that was in Security breach (Finding Frankie has an automatic saving system which, after you completed a task or got to a certain checkpoint, even in the middle of the gameplay, it saves automatically, and also doesn't make you feel as easily attacked as in security breach, security breach was honestly a serioulsy anxiety inducing game which I truly didn't vibe with, Finding Frankie presents the possibility of being attacked by characters only in certain specific moments, such as in Security Breach, but yeah, as I said, Security Breach made feel way more unconfortable for how long those moments seemed to be and for the complications of having to repeat entire parts because of not being able to save).
To give the benefit of the doubt to Scott, FNAF's creator, probably he just wanted to create more tension in the gameplay by not making it easy to explore, but to me, personally, i just didn't enjoy the game that much.
I personally cannot enjoy the whole FNAF franchise anymore knowing he is literally giving birth to different FNAF games every three moths according to what he wants to make players believe about the lore in that exact moment (absolute L writing man, come on).
Final thoughtsI must say the game presents many cliches that, now that they have clarified it, seem obviusly inspired and taken by nowadays famous horror games.
I think the thing that diversifies though this game from the others are the implications that the ending gives: the insanity of the characters and of the player if he eventually decides to keep playing; it's refreshing, intriguing and very, very scary.
As some people under the post have said "most people who develop horror games are the ones who are most afraid of it, and because of that have a better vision of what is actually scary".
(Take as an example Hideo Kojima with Silent Hill PT)
Anyway these are my thoughts about Finding Frankie: a mascotte horror game which I pretty much enjoyed!
(P.S. Henry call me)
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5/5/2025
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