Review of Behind the Frame for iPhone and iPad.
Review of Behind the Frame for iPhone and iPad
Just like restaurants offer seasonal menus, the gaming industry wants to immerse itself in one environment or another depending on the time of year. Vikings and snow adventures are for winter, tropical island adventures are for summer, and a great “dish” for fall is Behihd el Marco. The visual style of the trailer and the first images of the game immediately encourage you to think that it would be nice to have a coffee and spend an hour or two of your afternoon with this leisurely story. You will enjoy this story as much as any other reality show or television series.
Download Behind the Frame for iPhone and iPad (App Store)
Anime fans will see similarities in the game’s visual image to the works of the iconic Studio Ghibli and Miyazaki from the very first frames. Perhaps this watercolor style was not chosen by chance, because everything in the game revolves around creation. And to return to the roots will help to evoke the right emotions with the laconic tools.
Our character is a young artist who, of course, dreams of recognition. He is working on a painting that could be part of a large exhibition in New York. But there’s no way he’s going to do it without our help. But inspiration is like that, there is always something that gets in the way.
The color is difficult to choose, the old neighbor and his cat start to distract you, and the tubes are lost. As a result, daily tasks can span several days. Together with our heroine, we prepare breakfast, make delicious coffee, listen to charming music and continue to create a future masterpiece.
And since it’s not a cute cartoon, but a game, it needs something to grab our attention. The authors decided to do it with the help of riddles. The heroine needs to find the missing tubes of paint, which will bring her closer to the end. But there is also a place for mysticism. The girl suddenly discovers that her old neighbor’s paintings are unexpectedly similar to her own, except they’re also finished.
Little by little mysticism grows, a kind of sadness, an almost tragic expectation. And the end of the story, as revealed through the footage and its completion, leaves you with a lot to take in. However, many players wonder what it is. But then again, art is not about the exact representation of details, but about symbolism. And the interpretation of the signs, images and allusions is a personal matter.
Behind the Frame’s gameplay won’t be hard to get used to or understand. We can look around us, some of the objects in our room are interactive. Clicking on them, we perform simple tasks or reveal the story of the heroine.
However, the writers decided not to bother with this particularly: a typical story of a young artist, linear and superficial. And the collected fragments, plans or thoughts are placed in a personal album of the heroine, in order not to lose the thread of the narrative and to understand exactly how to complete the next quest.
The game is divided into six smaller chapters, and the entire walkthrough requires an hour and a half. And each chapter is an uncomplicated set of puzzles. We just have to perform actions in the correct sequence, choose a certain color to draw certain parts of the box (and there’s even a hint as to how the box should end). The puzzles are generally straightforward, even for a typical quest: finding a password, assembling the pieces into a coherent picture, the correct sequence of button presses. Throughout the game you don’t understand what it is or why it’s all there, but eventually it all falls into place. It is a bit tense that some of the daily actions have to be repeated. Of course naturalism is good, but for such a short story more variety would have been desirable.
♥ ON TOPIC: Scream Go Hero – a game that requires you to yell into your iPhone to pass (video).
It is a pity that, despite all the creative entourage, the painting itself remains only a background, albeit an unusual one. Some peculiarities of the artist’s work we never got to know, although we did carry them out. We don’t even have to mix the colors.
Behind the frame has its obvious pros and cons. It is a melancholic autumn story with a hidden meaning. This double bottom is the main source of excitement. And the ambiguity of this line leaves room for doubt and reflection. And all this carefully wrapped in an atmosphere of creativity. The sound line corresponds to the visual elements; it does not irritate, but accompanies and complements the feelings that inevitably arise. The creators can only be reproached for the simplicity of the puzzles and the brevity of the story. However, if you consider Behind the Picture to be a moody fall dinner, its flaws can be ignored.
Download Behind the Frame for iPhone and iPad (App Store)
See also:
