Framed was one of the games I got in the first Android Humble Bundle that I bought. I can’t remember the game that drove me to buy that bundle but the trailer for Framed had me interested so I decided to give it a go.

Graphics & Sound:

Framed is quite simply made out of comic book frames. Each frame looks like it was ripped straight out of a noir detective comic with characters being black and white while everything else has a washed-out effect. All of the frames have a black border except the first and last frame. I really like the colour pallet used. The animations are fluid and look good, so be grateful as you will see them a lot.

Sound gets annoying, there is a great instrumental jazz like track playing but being on a loop wears out its welcome. It gets swapped for another more active track when the character starts moving but still sounds very similar. There are hardly any other sounds in this game except the occasional action sound like a gun firing or a surprise effect.

Gameplay:

The gameplay of Framed is simple. There are a bunch of frames laid out when each puzzle starts that have to be rearranged so that your character, a detective, can get from the first to the last frame (which cannot be moved). Once you lay your frames in the order you want you can hit the play button and see how it works out in a well animated flow, if it fails you can rearrange the frames to try again. There is no limit to the attempts you can take and there are little hints in the look of the frames to help you out.

I really like the way the game shows how bad the default layouts are by hitting the play button on the first load of each level and watching your character fail.

The main problem I have is the occasional hardly visible item which leaves you scratching your head for a while till your character accidentally interacts with them. An example of this is in one of the early levels where there is a hook at the top of a frame that your character can use to swing but I didn’t notice it till my character used it to pass the level. Thankfully these are few and far apart.

Conclusion:

Framed is a fun and simple head scratcher with a great look, solid animation and a great soundtrack that gets ruined because it has to do it’s job solo. It is a decent time killer and a great puzzler which I would recommend on mute.