When a mysterious young man moves into an apartment shared by another and his special needs dog, the two strangers quickly become caught up in solving a mystery. Such is the premise of Frank and Drake; a new, narrative driven puzzle game from both the Appnormals Team and Chorus Worldwide.
We first meet Frank — a bald twenty or thirty something, who resides in a paid for apartment in a building that is seemingly only accessible through a well maintained alley. Employed as the building’s superintendent despite seeming to have little in the way of experience or credentials, he’s supported by a woman who he knows little about. Still, it’s a good and stable life for the man and his dog, Underdog, who requires a special wheelchair of sorts.
When Frank returns home from running errands, he receives a letter stating that someone else will be moving into his two bedroom apartment. That person is Drake; a hippy-ish lost soul of around the same age. The letter asks Frank to clean the second room for him, and to make it so that the window doesn’t function, because Drake doesn’t like windows. This creates the first bit of player choice, because you can only do one of two things per each character’s day. This time, the choice is between cleaning the room or doing your superintendent duties.
One of the unique facets of Frank and Drake is that the two main characters never meet. Frank lives and works during the day, whereas Drake is a night owl who only surfaces after dark. Thus, the two communicate and share their findings through yellow sticky notes posted on the refrigerator’s door. The tone, content and type of message you choose to share from your day or night’s findings then dictates their relationship, through a meter that can go up and down. By the end of the game, they may be close, could just be acquaintances or what have you.
As you’ve already likely surmised, this is a game where player choice dictates everything. What you choose to do or pursue each in-game day (and night) helps dictate which parts of the narrative you’ll see, what you’ll uncover about their situation and strange benefactor, and the ending you’ll get. I got ending number one during my play through.
Each choice will take you somewhere different, be it Drake’s place of employment, a graveyard, the benefactor’s yoga studio/office, or somewhere else. There, you’ll explore and discover things through a point and click style system, eventually leading to a puzzle or two. There’s often even a choice as to which puzzle to undertake.
Going into Frank and Drake, I was admittedly unaware of how puzzle focused it would be. To be transparent, I’m not a huge fan of puzzle games or many in-game puzzles, as I often struggle with obtuse and challenging ones, and generally just don’t find them enjoyable. This admittedly affected my enjoyment of this game, especially since I got stuck more than once and had trouble with several puzzles, so much so that I quit out and tried other choices. Some of the puzzles were straightforward, but others were obtuse and overly complex, including an annoying one where I had to place individual frames of animation in the correct order.
I admittedly sought some help with certain puzzles, and did so by emailing the development team. They were quick to respond, and were both very nice and incredibly helpful.
The controls sometimes also didn’t help, as they were occasionally difficult in their own right. For the most part, though, the game was accessible and controlled decently well.
Moving on, Frank and Drake is an impressive looking game, thanks to some really nice hand drawn environments, a neat art style and some really good animations. Its text is quite small, though, and that can become problematic when you’re trying to write in the characters’ journals at the end of a day or night cycle, because their entries are tough to read unless you’re close to the TV. Furthermore, having to look through the journals for areas where you’re supposed to write new content (which is highlighted by a small symbol featuring three dots within a circle) can be cumbersome and annoying.
The same is true of the audio, which isn’t up to the same level as the visuals, but does a good job in its own right and suits the game well. There’s nothing to really complain about regarding its original music, expected sound effects and limited, but pretty good, voice acting.
If you’re someone who loves replaying games to see different scenes and endings, you’ll likely enjoy Frank and Drake. This is especially true if you like games with involved (and sometimes obtuse) challenging puzzles, featuring pattern recognition, mathematics, geography and more. It’s something I enjoyed, but honestly respected more than I had fun with. That said, I’m generally not big on puzzle games and maybe wasn’t the best audience.
This review is based on the Xbox Series S version of the game, which we were provided with.