Framed Preview

What if you woke up one day to find out you’d been framed for a crime you didn’t commit? This is the exact situation the protagonist of Framed found himself in. And rather than give up and hope the legal system deemed him innocent, he decided to run like hell and hope for the best.

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Only you can help an innocent man evade the law

What if you woke up one day to find out you’d been framed for a crime you didn’t commit? This is the exact situation the protagonist of Framed found himself in. And rather than give up and hope the legal system deemed him innocent, he decided to run like hell and hope for the best.

Framed is a hard game to place in a genre, but puzzle would probably be the most appropriate. Each level in the game begins with a brief action sequence that takes place across several comic panels. Things go wrong for our hero every single time, and it’s up to you to move around the panels until he manages to either get away or avoid death.

I had a chance to both play Framed and speak with one of its developer’s at this year’s GDC. Though my time with the game was brief, I managed to rescue the main character multiple times, and help him escape the clutches of a pursuing policeman. I also messed up a few times and caused him to die, but that wasn’t quite as cool.

In any case, developer Loveshack Entertainment intends to make Framed a “movie-length” experience, with somewhere in the ballpark of 50 levels. Given how much the noir style of film clearly inspired it, that seems pretty appropriate. Loveshack also hopes to change up the mechanics in some of the later levels, with the inclusion of things like rotating panels and other such brain-benders.

Framed

And despite the story being linear, I was told it leaves room for interpretation, largely thanks to the player’s relationship with it on a mechanical level. After all, they’re the ones shaping it and helping it come to a close.

Framed will ship on tablet, PC, and Mac, although a smartphone version isn’t entirely out of the question. If you want to be alerted when it releases (and if my time with it is anything to go by, you really do), be sure to click the “Follow” button atop this page.