Parkour Horror: Finding Frankie hits the playground running

Did you ever play Mirrors Edge back in the day, but wonder what it would be like in a horror setting? If so, then Finding Frankie is the game for you.

Finding Frankie is a horror parkour game set within the walls of a giant indoor soft play, complete with trampolines, parkour rooms, interesting mascots and a rainbow of colours splattered across the interior design. The story set-up is short and brief as four “lucky” contestants find a ticket inside a Frankie brand cereal and win the chance to participate in the game of parkour to win $5,000,000! There’s a catch though. It won’t be other contestants you are racing against, it will be part of Frankie’s murderous crew ready to end you at a moment’s notice. And thus your journey through the twisted playground of death begins.

Right out the gate, the art direction for Finding Frankie is a very vibrant and colourful affair but with extremely sinister twists (such as corpses from previous contestants scattered around the game). The environments you parkour and run around are that of an indoor trampoline park. I was really quite impressed by the level of detail the team used to capture the feel of being in a giant indoor playpark.

The tone of the musical accompaniment shifts between cheery play park and often whimsical before switching up to stress and fear-inducing melodies to keep you on your toes and apply that pressure. Surprisingly the game does have voice acting which while very good does give off animatronic and uncanny valley-ish vibes.

The controls are basic but that’s all you need. You run, jump, slide and interact with some switches here and there to open a door and briefly with a radar/flashlight that is a duck head attached to a monitor. It’s fast and responsive, however, it did feel that the actual mechanics such as vaulting over things/climbing and swinging on bars seemed awkward at times, which caused minor frustrations.

The most often blockades you will find are switch puzzles which you have to click all of before the timer runs out. Some of these were very quirky and had bizarre sequences such as jumping through rings and capturing creatures called noob noobs (that explode into viscera when caught). There’s also a maze sequence where you must ring six phones as you are stalked in the dark by a phone-headed man and finally, a fair few chase sequences where any mistake will cause you to fail and be captured.

The chase sequences were by far my least favourite parts of the game. You need to get through these sequences swiftly and with mechanics that don’t often work or make sense as to why they don’t work. The first few times I didn’t mind, but it became tedious.

When all is said and done, Finding Frankie was an interesting game. It’s not very long – clocking in between two and three hours – with a timer at the bottom of your screen to give it your best shot at beating your time and competing against other players worldwide. I enjoyed the time I had with Finding Frankie, however, having beaten the game and handed in my review, I don’t see myself going back to it.