Fran Bow

Fran Bow is Killmonday Games’ hand-drawn horror adventure about a ten-year-old who finds her parents murdered, is committed to Oswald Asylum, and sets out to get home to her cat. The game runs in two layers, reality and the nightmare world a pill away, and later in a third. This walkthrough covers all five chapters and all eighteen Steam achievements.

How the game plays

• Controls: left mouse button only. Strictly linear: nothing opens until the step before it is done. Move between screens with the eye icon at the edge of the screen.
• Two worlds: reality and Fran’s nightmare world. Taking a Duotine pill switches to the nightmare; the pill bottle sits in the bottom right corner. Bottle open means you are in the nightmare, bottle closed means reality. You play both Fran and her black cat Mr. Midnight; the game switches between them for you.
• Inventory: the handbag in the bottom left. Items can be used, combined and examined: pick the item first, then the action along the bottom of the bag.
• Dialogue choices change nothing, with one exception tied to an achievement, noted below. Arrows at the end of a line mean there is more to read.
• Saving: automatic. Chapters can be replayed from the menu.
• Achievements: eighteen on Steam, all covered here.

Introduction

The opening film shows Fran’s parents murdered and dismembered, found by their daughter. The shock puts her in an asylum. On the count of three she comes out of hypnosis and the game begins.

Say anything you like to Dr. Deern, who mentions a parcel on the table from Aunt Grace. Take it: it is your mother’s handbag, which will be your inventory for the rest of the game. The large top cell holds what you collect; the three buttons at the bottom are use, combine and examine. There is a note in the bag: click it, then the third button, to read the letter from Aunt Grace, your only surviving relative. The doctor calls the nurse, who brings Duotine, a sedative. Take the pills from her tray and swallow them. Fran collapses and is carried to her room.

Chapter 1: My Sound Mind

Reality

In a dream the black cat Mr. Midnight tells you the medicine will help you escape. Click anywhere and Fran gets up. Go to the window and pull the curtain: it falls, and a HOOK falls with it. Examine the curtain, then look out at the guard in the tower sweeping the grounds with a torch. Eyes have appeared at either side of the screen; click one to move rooms. Click the left eye and zoom out of the window. The bedside cabinet is locked. Look over the clown poster, the diagnosis sheet left of the bed and your drawings right of it. Click the musical carousel on the floor and listen.

Go right and talk to Phil, asking whether he knows the way out. “The office is the key”, he says, and he saw the doctor writing down a secret code, but a monster forbids him to say more, and it arrives on cue. Take the SECRET BOX from under Phil’s bed; use it in the inventory for the KEY. Look at the toys, go back to your room, and unlock the cabinet drawer for the PHOTOGRAPH and the HAIRPIN. Examine both.

Go left to the nurse’s desk and confess to breaking the curtain. She goes to your room; follow her, tell her you have not seen the hook, and while she looks for it, run to the office on the left.

The office

Zoom in on the desk. Take the PLASTERS, read the book on injuries and the prescription sheet. Open the drawer for a GUN in a blue wrapper and a locked MEDICINE BOX. Examine the box: a combination lock, and using it shows the word HIDE. The prescription sheet’s foot has a letter-to-number key, the start of the alphabet numbered in order. H is 8, I is 9, D is 4, E is 5.

Enter 8945, clicking each digit cell. Take the PILL BOTTLE, which settles into the bottom right corner. These are the pills Mr. Midnight meant. Click the bottle to take one and enter the nightmare.

Nightmare

A skeleton nurse in a wheelchair, a ball of wool beside her. Click the wool for a KNITTING NEEDLE; combine it with the hairpin for a lock pick. Go right to your room, where stairs now stand where the bed was. Go down and overhear the doctor and your aunt, who is trying to take you home. Go into Phil’s room, unlock the door with the pick and step into a corridor with four doors. Near right is Phil’s; far right belongs to a girl you have not met yet, and she will not talk yet. Far left is the toilet: on its mirror, “The King loves drawings.” Near left is locked. Close the bottle.

Reality

Visit the far right room and talk to Adelaide, who loves drawing. Ask for one of her pencils and she refuses. Ada cuts her wrists when she cannot draw, and holds them out to be healed: use the PLASTERS on her for a GREEN PENCIL. Go down the stairs on the left. The nurse sends you back to your room to wait for the doctor. No time for that: in Phil’s room you meet Dr. Deern; tell him you are hungry and he leaves. Follow him into the corridor and down the stairs on the left. The mesh door is locked. Go left past the guard and left again. A girl in the next corridor says the doctor ate her brain and yours. In the room on the right, the boy at the television says the paper is not working, so there is no picture. Zoom in on the set, switch to channel 8, zoom out; he holds the paper to the screen and thanks you for the working papervision. Pick up a blank SHEET from the floor. Take a pill.

Nightmare

Take the PINK BELT from the dressing gown on the hook in the bottom right. Close the bottle.

Reality

Leave and go through the door opposite. Take the BUN from the table at the bottom of the screen. Go left to the blond boy eating his dinner. The cane leaning on the wall left of him is his, and he is the King: he will trade it for a castle and a horse. Combine the sheet with the green pencil for a DRAWING of a castle and a horse, hand it over and take the CANE. One screen back, talk to Annie on the sofa. She does magic tricks and can put anyone to sleep; she will not show you, but gives you a MAGIC PILL that teaches the trick. Combine it with the bun for a MAGIC BUN. Go right to the guard. There is a key board on the left wall, but he stops you reaching it. Two ways past him:

• The coffee: offer him the bun and try to talk him into eating it. If he refuses, go to the kitchen and overhear the staff: he is waiting for his hot coffee. Take the CUP OF COFFEE from the table right of the sofa and bring it to him.
• The persuasion: give him the bun and talk him into eating it by choosing only the B answers. Achievement: Sleepy Princess.

Now build something to reach the key. Combine the pink belt with the golden hook, then with the cane, for the GRABBER 2000. Use it to take the KEY, unlock the office on the right and go in. Take the KEY from the hook on the left and zoom in on the notice board right of the door. Take the NOTE ABOUT THE ALARM and read it in the inventory; remember the line at the bottom, “17 December, 25 July”. Try to leave, but Phil appears, shuts the door and locks you in. Take a pill.

Nightmare

A ventilation shaft opens under the notice board. Climb in and keep going left until you fall into an unknown room.

Reality

Come round, look about and climb the stairs. Unlock the door with the key and go on. The creature from the nightmare appears and frightens you; in a dream the cat says he will wait at the end of the labyrinth. Get up, climb the stairs, and go through the open door into a corridor of doors. Near left is the operating room, which Fran will not enter; far left is the basement you came from; near right is locked. Go up the steps on the right into the nurse’s office, where she is on the phone to the doctor insisting she has no basement key. Note the key hooks right of the door; you cannot reach them unseen in reality. Take a pill.

Nightmare

Hang the key from your inventory on the key holder and close the bottle.

Reality

The nurse sees the key and takes it back where it belongs. While she is away, go to the key holder and find the alarm panel above it, wanting four digits. From the note, add each day to its month number: 17 + 12 = 29, 25 + 7 = 32. Enter 2932 and go through. The nurse passes without seeing you. Leave through the yellow door. Go left; the guard catches up, then the monster, and you faint. Come round, keep left, follow the cat into the labyrinth.

The labyrinth

Find the way out while keeping clear of the wandering shadows. If a shadow eats you, you start the maze again. The arrow in the top right skips the mini-game at any time. Achievement: I found my way out, for finishing the labyrinth without using the skip arrow.

Chapter 2, Part I: Signs of Curiosity

Reality

You come out of a pipe into a forest beside a rubbish heap. Search it and take the small WOODEN DOOR right of the piano. Go one screen left, stop at the tree and take a pill.

Nightmare

A key hangs on the tree. Try to take it and heads on the tree come alive: it is theirs. Their hair is tangled in the branches; they used to have a comb for that, but a vain rat stole it. Bring back the comb and the key is yours. Back to reality.

Reality

Go left again to a clearing with a giant ant and a bugpig. The ant, Antonio, says his bugpig recently ate your black cat, who may still be alive and undigested inside. He lets you kill his only friend: you get your cat back and he gets meat for a long while. Go left again and pull the AXE out of the stump. Take a pill.

Nightmare

A well appears in the centre. Hit its lid with the axe and frighten off an owl, which drops a FEATHER. Pick it up and read the sign right of the well, “Build an entrance”, with its arrow pointing at the well. Close the bottle.

Reality

One screen right, try the axe on the bugpig, which runs off. Antonio has fallen asleep; wake him with the feather. Bugpigs can be lured with blueberries, and he has some at home. A signpost to his house appears; click it and you are at a river. Cross the bridge right to Antonio’s house. The door handle is jammed: hit the door with the axe, it opens and the DOOR HANDLE flies off. Take it and go in. A piece of meat hangs over the bench; click the bench, climb up and take the MEAT. Take the SUPERGLUE from the cupboard on the left. Take a pill.

Nightmare

Before you is the corpse of a bug hunter, covered in ants, a bag in his hands you cannot reach. Use the meat on the ants, wait for them to move to it, and take the BAG. Close the bottle.

Reality

Use the bag in the inventory: a RAT TRAP and a BUSINESS CARD reading “Exterminator”. Look into the small house right of the bench: the pinecone family’s home, with blueberries in the right corner. Set the trap on the floor in the centre, then click the pinecone child on the chair on the right and immediately click the blueberries. The child falls, the father tries to help and steps into the trap. If he did not get up, you were too slow on the berries. Drop the child again and take the BLUEBERRIES, ignoring the mother’s protests. Run left all the way to where you took the axe and find the bugpig. Give it the berries, then cut it open with the axe. Out comes the rat. Ask about the cat: vanished. Follow the rat to where the well stood in the nightmare and find that Mr. Midnight has built an entrance. Talk to the rat again and take his COMB, after combing his fur with it. Hurry to the tree of heads and take a pill.

Nightmare

Use the comb on one of the heads and comb their hair. Say goodbye and take the KEY from the tree. Bottle still open, run left to the well. Combine the door with the superglue, then fit the handle. Use the finished door on the well, unlock it with the key and go in.

Chapter 2, Part II: Double Personality

Reality

Wake and take off the frightful hat shaped like a cat’s head. Read the note in the basket you slept in. Take the CAULDRON from the pink cupboard on the right. Zoom in on the utensils on hooks left of the stove: take the SHARP KNIFE and the BAKING POWDER from the top shelf. Note that one patch of floor is black-and-white tile among the red-and-white; examine it and remember it. Take a pill.

Nightmare

You are at the bottom of the well among floating corpses. Top right, a rope holds a bottle with a secret. There are footholds in the wall; climb them and find the gap to the last brick too wide. Something has to bridge it. Close the bottle.

Reality

Go left. From the pink shelf take the PEPPER and the SALT; open the jar’s drawer for a SEED; take the MATCHES from the table edge. Go left to the living room.

Achievement: It tasted fabulous! Zoom in on the sweets table, click the chocolate cake three times and the cupcakes three times.

Take the VASE OF ASHES right of the fireplace. Upstairs, take the BROOM from the right corner and the BLACK CANDLES from the cabinet drawer. In the room on the left, take the TWEEZERS from the front table, then go right to the stairs. Pull the rope in the left corner and climb the ladder that drops. In the dark attic, pull the cord behind you for light. Look in the pram right of the ladder: stitched-together babies. A little further right, click the cage and find your cat. Promise Mr. Midnight a key.

Downstairs by the fire are the mistresses of the house. There used to be two of them, until a creature appeared and stole one body; now two heads share the other. They will give you the cage key if you perform the ritual to recover the lost body. Examine the RECIPE: a frog’s heart, a young virgin’s head, a black cat’s fur and blood, a pentagram of ash, a burnt fox, all boiled in plenty of water. Odd ingredients and an odder ritual. Go right and climb out of the open window. On the bank, the toad says the sisters are not to be trusted, and that the dead girl wandering the house once tried the potion and failed. Pick up the PLANK and take a pill.

Nightmare

Writing on the wall: “Sceptics need the truth on paper.” The bottle in the well, perhaps. Close the bottle.

Reality

Back in through the window, go right and take a pill.

Nightmare

Climb the bricks, lay the plank on the last one and cross right. The rope has to give so the bottle falls. Two ways: cut it with the KNIFE, or burn it with the MATCHES. Achievement: I burn you! for the matches.

Climb down to the bottom and reach for the bottle: a frog swallows it, then floats up with its belly opened. Take the SCROLL out with the tweezers and read the real recipe: the blood of the one performing the ritual, five black candles, a pentagram of ash, salt, pepper, and a hair of the person to be enchanted. Draw the sign in ash on the black-and-white square, a lit black candle at each point, fill the cauldron with water, add everything, boil, and pour it over the target. You already have the candles, the ash, salt and pepper. Still needed: your own blood, a blue moon rose in bloom, and the hair. Close the bottle.

Reality

In the room left of the fireplace, use the sisters’ recipe on the typewriter on the windowsill and type in the sixth ingredient, hair from the head. Go right twice: the sisters have brought you a severed head for the ritual. When they leave, the toad helps you get rid of it. Follow them to the living room and show them their own recipe; they give you a LOCK OF HAIR. Back in the kitchen, climb out to the toad and use the seed on the moon’s reflection in the water; pick the BLUE ROSE that grows. Use the knife on Fran for the BLOOD.

In the kitchen, go right and use the vase of ashes on the black-and-white tiles to draw the pentagram. Use the candles on it and light them with the matches. One screen left, put the cauldron in the sink and fill it; take it back. Right, use the matches on the stove; a draught blows them out. Close the window right of the stove, light the stove again and set the cauldron on the burner. Add everything: blood, rose, salt, pepper, hair. Invite the sisters to the ritual from the living room, wait until they sit in the centre of the sign, and pour the potion over their heads. Say the words and watch them turn to ash. Take the KEY from the top of the heap, go up two floors to the attic.

Achievement: Hello dolly! Look in the pram where the babies were and find a talking doll.

The sisters’ key does not fit the cage. Downstairs in the left bedroom, there is a keyhole in the frame of the big mirror. Insert the key, click the lock again and zoom in.

The gear puzzle

A sliding-tile puzzle: arrange the gears so every one of them turns. The large gear bottom left is fixed and drives the train; the large one top right is fixed and closes it; a third fixed gear sits in the centre. Number the tiles 1 to 25 in reading order and move them in this sequence:

17, 16, 11, 6, 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 12, 11, 6, 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 18, 17, 16, 15, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4, 9, 8, 13, 12, 11, 6, 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 12, 11, 6,

then 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 12, 11, 6, 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 12, 11, 6, 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 12, 11, 6, 1, 2, 3, 8, 13, 18, 23, 24, 25, 20, 15, 10, 9, 8, 13, 18, 23, 24, 25, 20,

then 15, 10, 9, 8, 13, 18, 23, 24, 25, 20, 15, 10, 9, 8, 13, 18, 19, 20, 15, 10, 9, 8, 13, 18, 19, 20, 15, 10, 5.

The mirror shatters on the sisters’ secret cupboard. Look at the skeleton and take the KEY from the top shelf. Up to the attic, unlock the golden cage and hug your cat. Achievement: Find Mr. Midnight!

Down to the kitchen and out to the toad with the cat. Ask to be ferried across; use the baking powder on the toad and receive a PHOTOGRAPH and a BOOK as gifts. In the mini-game you cross the logs and leaves to the top of the island three times; the arrow top right skips it. Achievement: Toad on board! for finishing without skipping.

Alone with the cat, keep left until you fall off the bridge.

Reality, as the cat

Fran’s things are scattered everywhere and she is nowhere. Examine the dress on the log and try to scratch the log, which speaks: Fran has turned into a tree. A boat of strange creatures floats up on the air and talks in a language you do not know. Fran asks you to find her bag. Go right; it floats on a lily pad. A gear mechanism on the tree works a drawbridge. Turn the handle and step onto the bridge, which folds at once. Take a STONE from the bank, turn the handle again and jam the stone into the gears: the stone is in the cat’s mouth, so click it there bottom left, then the gears. Cross and take the BAG. Back at Fran, open the inventory by clicking the bag in the cat’s mouth and give the PHOTOGRAPH to Mr. Vegetable, who loads everyone into his boat and flies off.

Chapter 3: Vegetative State

Reality, as Fran

You arrive in Ithersta and meet King Zjar. He grows a fruit on you, the tree, and eating it tells him everything about you and the cat. Ask how to get home: Zjar will bring you to a door that leads there, but you must pass through it yourself. Eat the fruit and learn Ithersta’s language. Dr. Palontras bathes you in the magic lake and grows you arms and legs. Go left and down to the King, show off your new limbs and learn the plan: to open the door you need the Great Wizard on Mount Kotrem, who holds the stones that unlock it. Take your bag back from the cat and find the pills gone.

Go left; the door guarded by a beetle is the library, open only in autumn and winter. Two screens left, another beetle says Mount Kotrem is in winter time, and you can travel there without waiting, but he cannot explain how and sends you to the clockmaker. Go down the stairs and zoom in on the bench with the map of Ithersta. At the fork, go left twice to the clockmaker: the season is set on the clock on the big tree left of the castle. Left again, play the snail’s board game, three in a row, black and white pieces, you are black, the mechanism on the right showing whose turn. Win for a GOLD COIN; you will need four in all, now or as you go. Achievement: Faster than a snail! for five wins.

Three screens right and at the crossroads take the left path to the big clock tree. Pull the lever left of the tree: a crunch, something has broken. Back to the clockmaker, ask him to repair it and pay a coin. Go with him to the clock, talk, and fix it. Cogwin gives you the clock remote, which now sits bottom right where the pill bottle was. Two screens right and up to the mountain on the left. Set the remote’s arrow to the blue zone for winter. In the cave, meet the Great Wizard: he cannot lend the stones because he hid them and forgot where. He will remember if you solve his four riddles, each answered by an object placed on a point of the star of Ithersta on his floor. To be human again you also need all your belongings back. Read the riddles in the inventory.

The four riddles

First: “Cold I am as a rule, but use me once… and I am very hot.” You have carried it almost since the start: the MATCHES. Each riddle has a symbol beside it matching a triangle on the star, so the places are clear. Click the star and use the matches on the marked point.

Second: “Like the sun I shine, but never burn, I only draw a sour smile.” Leave the cave, set summer (yellow). Right once, left once, to the grasshopper gathering lemons. He will not spare one. Set autumn (orange) and cut a hole in his basket with the knife. Set summer again and wait for him to leave with a full basket: a LEMON drops through the hole. Back to the mountain, winter, and put it on the right-hand triangle.

Third: “Cold daughter, swim, swim… dancing through the stream.” Set autumn, go down and three screens left to the river. Take the FISHING ROD by the tree on the right; it is broken. Set summer and jump into the dinghy. Row left twice to the folding bridge where the cat found the bag, get out and go left: pick up Fran’s things from the ground, no pills among them, perhaps for the best. Back to the right bank and to the market, dealing with the shadows on the way. Show the rod to Prouter the blacksmith: no hook. Pay three coins for a HOOK; win them from the snail if you are short. At the thread stall opposite, show the rod and get LINE for free. Combine rod with line, then with hook. One screen right, cast into the river and catch a FISH. To the mountain, winter, and place the fish at the bottom of the star.

Fourth: “Light and hollow, I carry freedom for birds and write letters for men.” Leave the cave and follow the footprints up the mountain; see a huge dragon in the air. Only then go down to the clock tree, where the dragon has fallen: it is Palontras. He flies off and leaves a FEATHER. Up to the cave and place it on the left triangle.

The stones

The Wizard’s ritual with the match recalls the first stone: in the magic cap on the mountain top. Climb up and try to take the cap off the great rock. This is the fallen star Kotrem, who will only give it up if you bring back his wife, who left him. She wanted an island of her own, and you have seen it. Down the mountain, shadows again, and to the river; set summer, take the boat to mid-river and talk to the little island. She left because he grew cold and dull; he used to grow a red flower for her, and this year it did not come. It grows at the mountain’s foot, and she will come back if she sees it. Back to shore, right three times, set autumn, cut the RED FLOWER with the knife. To the shore, summer, out to the island, give it to her. Follow her up to the top, set winter, click the CAP on Kotrem’s head and take it. Achievement: Dr. Love.

Give the cap to the Wizard. Second ritual: the second stone is in a book in the library, and the password is “Your senses are easily manipulated; switch them off before learning…”. First the market, then the snail’s screen: set spring (green) and talk to the little root Zelma selling vegetables, whose favourite song is “One and one make two! One and two make three! Two and three make five!” Up to the castle, shadows at the door, set winter, one screen right, give the beetle the password and enter the library.

The library

In the pile of books bottom left, take the open book and learn the number system: count the counters on the right, read the numeral on the left. Zoom in on the coded stump in the centre. The counters must follow the Fibonacci sequence Zelma sang, each number the sum of the two before, extended to eight places: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. Convert to Ithersta numerals with the book and set them. A click; zoom out. Set summer: a lever has appeared on the stump. Turn it several times and a skeleton rises holding a book. Push the ladder up to it twice and take the BOOK. Leave, set winter, give it to the Wizard.

Third ritual, over the fish: the third stone is in a dancer’s shoes. Down, set summer, talk to the beetle at the bar door: you need a ticket. Right, talk to the Valokas, who leave after their initiation. There is a hole in the bar wall behind the firewood; move the boards and send the cat in to steal a ticket.

As the cat

In the bar’s right corner, a bee drinks and sets her glass on her ticket. Ask; refused. Set autumn and she falls asleep drunk. Take the TICKET and leave.

As Fran

Praise the cat and go round the bar to the left. The beetle says someone already came in on that ticket, and the handwriting belongs to an adult. Combine the green pencil with the exterminator’s card and hand the beetle the result. Achievement: The kind thief: give the stolen ticket back to the bee.

On stage, a grasshopper dances in the Wizard’s shoes, too absorbed to talk. Set spring and the bar empties. Open the panel under the piano keys: a metronome. Set it to the fastest tempo, the marker on the arm up in the orange zone: press the red button, then the yellow. Set autumn, wait for the grasshopper to tire and fall, and take the SHOES. Up the mountain, winter, give them to the Wizard. Last ritual: bring the magic wand from the old mechanical Valoka doll.

The Valoka doll

Down and right to the doll. The wand is in its upper right hand and must end in the lower left. Levers on the tree move each hand, upper right lever for the upper right hand and so on. Numbering them 1 to 4 by position, pull: 2, 1, 1 (wand to lower right), 3, 3 (to upper left), 4, 4 (to lower left). Take the WAND and bring it to the Wizard with your belongings. After the ritual you are human again. Thank him and run to the King at the castle; shadows, then Zjar arrives. Follow him two screens left. He builds the door and the Wizard sets five stones in it. Zoom in.

Connect the stones into the five-pointed star of Ithersta. Each stone has an arrow that changes direction when clicked, and joins the next stone when right. Point purple at red, red at blue, blue at yellow, yellow at green, green at purple.

Say goodbye and receive the doctor’s gift. Through the door: a running mini-game, a giant troll behind you, boulders and gaps to jump in time. Achievement: A troll… RUN! for finishing without skipping.

Chapter 4, Part I: Imaginary Friend

Reality

Open the wooden door and step out. A pill bottle lies on the ground; click it and it rolls left. Follow it twice and fall into a net. Cut yourself free with the knife and meet the skeleton Itward, your imaginary friend. Follow him left to his flying machine, on which he means to take you home. He asks for fire berries as fuel and water to scare off the Kamalas, and gives you a BUCKET and the PILL BOTTLE, so the nightmare is open to you again. Note that Ultrareality can only be entered at 2:35. Three screens right to the cliff edge and take a pill.

Nightmare

Talk to the head in the tree: not stuck, just growing the longest hair in the world. Use the bucket on the head and ask the spirit to tie it to her hair and draw water from under the cliff; click the hair and haul up a BUCKET OF WATER. One screen left, click the elk skeleton and talk to the death-worm, who lets you climb the elk to the fire berries. Douse the berries with the bucket first so they do not burn you, cut them with the knife, click the elk to get down. Back to the flying machine and close the bottle.

Reality

Give Itward the BERRIES and the water and climb aboard. He hands them straight back with two jobs: fix the pump and fix the fuel synthesis, with the instructions in the room on the left. Take the TAPE from the table at the bottom.

Achievement: Oops! You crashed the game. Click the computer behind Itward for the Kamala Hunt: a cannon fires at intervals, clicking left or right of the red lever moves it, and the aim is to kill every Kamala without being hit; hearts top left are your lives. Play all three levels through three times, then beat the chick.

Through the door opposite, press the button left of it and read the pump instructions on the far wall. Zoom in on the boiler on the right. Open the tank lid (1), pour in the water from the bucket, close it. Tape the split in the hose (2). Push the green lever (3) on the tank top to the left. Turn the orange valve (4) horizontal to feed gas to the heater. Push the heater’s switch (5) fully right. Light it with the matches at the opening (6). Zoom out. At the table of flasks, study the poster to its right with the chemical formula. First, enough hoses: zoom in on the table and take the PINK and BLUE HOSES. Take a pill.

Nightmare

From the table at the bottom, the GREEN HOSE WITH A CONNECTOR; from the pipe left of the dead girl, the OCTOPUS HOSE. Close the bottle.

Reality

Zoom in on the flasks. The poster calls the berries AFM and they come first, so put the BERRIES in the top left flask. Achievement: Check! Use the pencil on the sheet top left to tick AFM. From the shelf on the right, pour the chemicals into the flasks in the poster’s order, left to right: hold the left button on a jar until the test tube appears on the cursor, then carry it. Second flask A18, third 2PF, fourth R15, fifth N166. Hoses per the poster: blue into the second flask; green with connector into the third; pink into the second, its other end onto the green’s connector; the octopus into the three empty lower flasks. Light the burner under the far right flask with the matches. Under the sheet on the left, turn the red lever left and the blue lever right. A gurgle confirms it.

Itward arrives, afraid of a rabbit, and asks you to get rid of it. Follow him left, through the door on the right, then the door on the left, to a room with a white rabbit on the shelf. Click it: the skeleton takes your cat and locks you in. Press the blue button by the left door; a metal arm appears at the front of the screen, and you must quickly pull the BATTERY out of it, pressing the button again if you miss. Take the WRENCH from the table at the bottom. In the right corner a tree grows, and left of it an electrical box: zoom in, use the wrench on each of the two top bolts and turn them anticlockwise, remove the cover, and put the battery in the empty upper compartment. Go left and pick up a CARROT. Sheets with numbers are stuck up all round the room; examine them all and remember their order. Take a pill.

Nightmare

Look at the same sheets in the order they had in reality. Sheet 1 now shows 8 and an arrow right. Sheet 2 is behind a mechanical rabbit: give it the carrot and, while it bends for it, read the sheet: 5, arrow right. Achievement: Feeding the robot rabbit: pick up two more carrots and feed it three in all. The rest:

• sheet 1: 8, right
• sheet 2: 5, right
• sheet 3: 8, left
• sheet 4: 6, right
• sheet 5: 9, left

Close the bottle.

Reality

Turn the big valve left of the box and the mechanical arm lowers. Press the blue button on the door again and climb to the level above. The hatch has a combination drum with arrows either side and a reset button above. Turn it: right eight, right five, left eight, right six, left nine. Go down and switch the light on with the blue button left of the ladder. It is your birthday: Itward and Mr. Midnight have baked a cake and wrapped a present. Use the PARCEL in the inventory: a toy cat that will take you into Ultrareality. Blow out the candles and the autopilot breaks. Itward asks you to deal with a Kamala aboard. Take the passage left of the ladder, then the door on the left, and a pill.

Nightmare

A big black Kamala. Go right to the standpipe and zoom in; take the tape off the hose, catch the drips in the bucket, tape it back up. Douse the Kamala; it slips away to the roof. Left, then right and up the ladder to the machine with the big valve. Turn the valve until the kettle on top points right, pull the lever and douse it. Kettle to the far left, pull. Turn the valve twice more, pull. Kamala beaten. Down and close the bottle.

Reality

Tell Itward and watch the film.

Chapter 4, Part II: Doctor’s Prescription

Surviving the crash, get up and talk to the cat. The bottle is empty. Take the path left and along Misty Street left again to your own house, locked. Zoom in on the pots left of the door and lift each; under one is Fran’s note saying she took the key. Click the pot right of the door and send the cat up the plant to get in. Try the door again and talk to Dr. Deern, who has driven up. He puts you in his car and drives. Talk to him and read the cuttings claiming Fran froze to death in the forest. At the cemetery, follow him right and agree to find shovels to dig up your parents.

Achievement: Memorial. Light the candles on your parents’ grave with the matches.

Take the CROWBAR from the car. Two screens right, prise open the wooden door and meet the pinecone Sebastian, who needs leather for his wedding rite. At the car, cut a piece of LEATHER from the seat with the knife, bring it to him, and search his store room, which has nothing useful. Back at the grave, take the SHOVEL from the doctor and dig. Three coffins: prise each open with the crowbar. Talk to the doctor and follow him to the car.

Chapter 5: The House of Madness

Reality, as Fran

You wake at home, chained to the bed. Talk to Aunt Grace and, when she leaves, click round the room. Soon a second Fran appears from Ultrareality.

Ultrareality, as the second Fran

Open the wardrobe on the right for a BOX OF KEYS. Use it on Fran’s chain and try keys until one fits. Free her and give her the sheet Palontras asked you to pass on. A nurse comes and leads the second Fran away.

Reality, as Fran

Get up and look in the wardrobe: BALLOONS from the cardboard box, the SCHOOL BAG from the lower left shelf. Slide the pink dress aside, then the green; cut the big pink BUTTON off the blue dress with the knife. Zoom in on the doll’s house. Take the CLOTHES PEG with piano keys, move the pinecone and the clock from the left shelf to the right, and where a key’s outline shows on the back wall, cut the wallpaper with the knife for the KEY. Look out of the window and talk to the tree a Kamala is eating; promise to help. Examine Palontras’s box: an eye in the centre of the front and an ear either side. Read the sheet the doctor sent via the second Fran and press: left ear twice, right ear once, eye twice, left ear once, eye once.

Inside, another KEY and the assembly instructions for the Ecog clock. Examine the toy black cat and open the pocket on its belly: a keyhole. Insert the cat-headed key and the cat gives you back the bedroom door that had vanished. Go out into a corridor of doors set at odd angles. Take the small KEY from the round table and unlock room 105. The skull on the wall holds a key in clenched jaws. Go left, talk to the boy in the bath and take his SOAP. Back in the corridor, unlock 104 with the only key you hold. Talk to the eye Oculo, who says your cat has gone down into Mabuka’s dungeon. In the arch on the right, click the switch and take a BULB from the column left of the eye. Take the COMB from the table and pull the rope left of it. Climb into the painting with the steps, go left and take the BOTTLE from the table. Zoom in on the organ grinder, put the button in the slot on the right and turn the handle on the left for PLIERS. Take the BLACK CABLE that powers the organ. Back to 105, pull the KEY from the skull’s mouth with the pliers, go left, turn on the tap left of the bath, fill the BALLOONS and the bottle with WATER, turn it off. To your bedroom, look out of the window and throw three water balloons at the Kamala. The freed tree gives you a TWIG. Unlock 102 with the skull’s key. Cut the rope round the cat’s neck with the knife and take the ALARM CLOCK. Pull the lever on the right and cross the cat’s tail to the right-hand island; take the GLOVE from the tree. That is everything for the Ecog clock.

Back over the tail, open the lid on the cat’s back and put in everything the clock needs: school bag, bulb, alarm clock, bottle of water, soap, glove, black cable, piano keys. The ECOG CLOCK emerges from the cat’s mouth. Take the lift up, talk to the hanging head, comb Lucifern’s hair, and reach the KEY with the twig. Unlock 103: Mabuka’s enormous face. Click it and talk to the tree, use the Ecog clock on her, talk again. Down the stairs, click the device on the left wall for a TICKET. Left into the waiting room and talk to everyone; the queue is glacial, some have waited a month.

The goat-like creature holds ticket number 2, next in. Use your ticket on him and offer to swap; he agrees if you diagnose him. Up to 104 and ask Oculo about the patient; cry into the little bottle, bring the tears to the goat. One screen right, hand ticket 2 to the nurse: no appointment, no entry. She gives you the clinic’s card. Up to 105, dial the emergency number on the telephone and book. Back to the nurse, talk, into the room on the right, talk to Remor. Come round and take the only open door. Talk to the cat in the cage.

Achievement: The old story. Try to leave; the door slams. Examine the black-and-white photograph behind it.

Achievement: This is Electroman! Dr. Deern sits in an electric chair with a lever on the left. Pull it three times.

Take the SYRINGE from the table on the right and inject Dr. Deern. Talk to Aunt Grace and follow her left. Watch the ending.

Achievement: The end.