I’m not much of a gamer, so some of the big-ticket items didn’t really excite me. However, what really did was some of the indie games. I had a chance to play with Framed, developed by Melbourne-based independent studio Loveshack Entertainment; and I simply just can’t wait for it to come out so I can download it immediately.
The story is told through several frames, and it does look much like a comic book. The mechanics, however, are very limited. Here, you don’t move around and control the character; instead, you control the story. There are fixed points at the beginning and end of the level, but what happens in the middle is up to you. The goal is that you help a fugitive escape the police – one frame in the wrong position, and you could get caught.
Framed doesn’t give you explicit instructions on how to play, you simply jump straight into the game. However, the very first moments when you hit play, you can easily pick up what you have to do and what the main objective is.
And I think that’s why I loved it so much – it is simple to pick up, but has some complexity in its level design.
The game was developed by three former developers from Firemonkeys; and the nature of the Framed requires them to develop each level, or ‘chapters’, on paper before coding and designing so they can determine the many possible sequence of events.
The game expected to come out by the end of the year for PC, Mac and iOS devices.