FRAMED - spies, jazz, noir

Another game that has left a significant mark in the history of mobile game building is FRAMED, an indication of what happens when an unusual idea falls into the hands of talented developers. For background, FRAMED is a multiple winner at various events in the categories of "best design," "flawless design," "best game," "best puzzle game," and so on. In 2013 and 2014, the game was incredibly popular, received the highest ratings and was the leader in paid apps. And, unfortunately, no one has released similar games or even clones after it - it seems almost impossible to copy such a game.

FRAMED doesn't have a specific plot, just a "plot" - two spies have stolen some very important documents, and now the whole police (and other interested parties) are after them. We play as one of these spies, a man who had the misfortune to get caught in the act and now has to flee. It is at this point that we take over and begin to develop the storyline ourselves - as you understand, our task now is to save this spy's life and hand over the case with the documents.

And this is where the fun begins. Each level is like a page from a comic book, with picture blocks in a certain sequence (from left to right and from top to bottom). From the very beginning, these blocks with pictures on each level are arranged in random order, our task is to make up a certain story, which then you will need to play. So in fact, it turns out that the blocks with pictures are not really pictures, but a little action, and after we place the blocks, we need to press "play" and see how the story ends. If we put everything in the right order - our spy will cope with all the difficulties and overcome the next stage. If not - either he will be caught, or he will fall from the roof, and so on, and then the level will have to start from the beginning. This is the difficulty - you need to determine from the pictures in what order the actions will occur, because there may be a lot of options, but only one solution.

The FRAMED developers did a great job, because for each level you had to come up with several endings - one successful and several unsuccessful, because players sometimes deliberately put the blocks in the wrong order to see what happens. And many of the levels themselves are challenging puzzles - imagine having 5 blocks that can be placed in different orders, and only one solution is the right one. Of course, there's nothing super-complicated, but some levels make you sweat, because the solution is not obvious. But the work was done titanic, for which the developers from Loveshack deserve a special thanks.

In addition to the unusual gameplay that makes almost the entire game, the graphics are worth noting. To some, it may remind one of Apple's iPod commercials, and that will be the simplest association one can make. Indeed, there are similarities - in both, black silhouettes with white objects move around different locations. But all the sprites are well-designed, even retaining a realistic ragdoll, which is nice. And the music here is great - a kind of atmospheric jazz that is also associated with gangsters, the mafia and things like that. The game is dynamic, interesting, not very challenging, but addictive. Obviously, after such a success, the developers took up the development of a sequel and released FRAMED 2. It has a slightly different story, but the gameplay is similar. Loveshack didn't come up with anything obviously new, and just repeated FRAMED - that's why the sequel has a slightly lower overall rating and number of scores.

All in all, FRAMED is an amazingly distinctive game with awesome gameplay and great atmosphere. You definitely haven't seen such projects and probably will never see them again, so we strongly recommend you to download and try it!