MainFrames

MainFrames is a puzzle platformer starring Floppy, a computer program making its way through an operating system to discover its purpose. Along the way, they meet and rescue various other creatures of the system and learn more about the place they’ve found themselves in. Developed by Studio Assoupi and published by The Arcade Crew, it’s a short, punchy game that encourages you to think beyond the obvious and challenges you in engaging ways.

A platformer shines in its controls and level design, and MainFrames is strong in both aspects. At the start, the controls can feel a bit slippery, but once I got into the rhythm of the game, I found it very smooth. Almost too smooth. I can be an impatient gamer, so the temptation to jump around to my heart’s content got me killed a fair bit. Since the respawn time is very short, even dying to your own hubris in this way doesn’t feel too punishing. I did run into a couple bugs (being unable to move/jump, respawning at the bottom of the screen, and continuously dying) that had me quitting to the main menu, but the game just puts you right where you left off. Efficient!

MainFrames trusts its players. It lets you intuit its basic controls and gives you unobtrusive prompts for the more complicated stuff, like swapping between platform windows to change how they behave. Each new mechanic is introduced by way of an easy first screen, then slightly more difficult, then gets more and more tricky as you get deeper into the area. You can really feel yourself mastering each new technique, giving you confidence to try flashier moves. The levels are also designed in such a way that there are often multiple ways to make your way to the next screen. In some instances, you can make it easier on yourself, and sometimes you can think too hard and make it much more difficult. I can’t tell you how smug I felt when I skipped an entire section of a screen, unsure if the developers intended me to do that or not.

I would classify MainFrames as a relatively difficult game, but also a generous one. There’s a type of ledge grab mechanic where if you reach the corner of a platform, you’ll pull yourself onto it, which saved me countless times, especially when I undershot a jump. Another helpful aspect is if you overshoot the goal box and die but still manage to hit said goal box, you’ll respawn there and can move onto the next area. Hooray!

With that said, there was one mechanic I found tedious, which was the scrolling window, where the opening of a window relies on you walking continuously into a wall or moving the joystick back and forth rapidly or is tied to every time you jump. I often found these platforms frustrating and sometimes disproportionately difficult in comparison to others, and they often made my hand hurt. Another small issue I had was with the bumpers that fling you in the direction they are pointing at. Overall, they work great and have a nice weight when you bounce on them, but they reset every time you die. I found it annoying to have to rotate them time and again to get back to the pattern I needed, but I also understand that it’s one of those small annoyances that platformers will pile onto the player so they turn sloppy if they get impatient or stop paying attention. 

My favourite mechanic was jumping into an inactive window and ‘activating it’ (often turning it into a death zone to give each jump extra stakes) while Floppy is in the middle of it, which catapults you high into the air with lots of momentum. These sections where you fling yourself through multiple screens only using this manoeuvre were the most fun of the entire game.

Every world has a branching path of multiple levels, each with its own challenge. Sometimes you enter a room and find a mini-daemon with its own unique mechanics that you’ll need to navigate in order to deliver it safely to a waiting elevator. One might stick to surfaces and will only move when you switch platforms, while another may continuously move forward while you flip platforms to bump it into the goal. These small puzzles are my favourite part of the game; they’re short, sweet, and varied. I also adore the even smaller guys found among the regular platforming sections called processes. To save them, you need to activate your spin move on them, but they are easy to miss and placed inconveniently. I’ve made it to the end of a screen just to throw myself into death so I can grab one of those suckers, and I did it happily.

One of MainFrame’s strongest points was found in its visual presentation. The pixel art is adorable, the animations are fun and bouncy, and the way the characters interact not only with Floppy but each other is very endearing. There are a few more intricate designs, like the cassette player, that can make it difficult to tell where you can land, but thankfully you only require to use these for platforming once or twice. I’m a huge sound design fan, and this game is full of clicks, beeps, and whirrs that scratch my brain in the best way. My favourites are the ‘bwoo-woo’ when you rescue a process, as well as the Chulip-like vocal murmurs that each speaking character has. My least favourite was the elevator, only by virtue of it sounding just like my headphones dying, which sends me into a fight or flight response.

During my playthrough, I wanted to test out the accessibility options, so I toggled them in a couple different situations. An infinite jump is exactly what it sounds like and allows you to basically fly around an entire level. It’s great for scoping out a level before actively attempting it, or skipping a level entirely if you find yourself stuck. Personally, I think it’s a great addition because sometimes in otherwise great games, there are one or two moments you dislike so much that you never open the game again, and it’s nice to have the option that isn’t a pop-up window making fun of you for dying too many times. Infinite spin grants you multiples of the spin move that gives you an extra second of airtime and momentum. It’s not as OP as the infinite jump, but can give you an extra second to think and acts as insurance if you mess up a jump. I tried these two settings during a long, long platforming rush section where if you died, you started all the way at the beginning of the stage. Infinite jump basically made the entire thing skippable, while infinite spin allowed me moments of pause so I had time to react and let me experience that section of the game without wanting to rip every button out of my controller each time I had to restart (I promise I’m only a tiny bit bitter).

Another setting is invincibility, which I tried during a bullet hell section and one of the mini-daemon puzzle sections. The bullet hell lives up to its name with particles flying all over the screen, so if you dislike that type of gameplay, Invincibility can make it so that you just focus on the platforming aspect. I also noticed that invincibility makes it so you don’t hear the death sound when you fall off a stage, so if that sound bothers you then there’s an extra bonus. One fun experiment I did was an infinite jump with no invincibility around a level with a lot of floating death zones, so you go wherever you want but you die every other second. Intended way to play the game? No, but it was possible, which is how I like my accessibility settings to function.

One negative I did find was that there isn’t any way to go back to previous levels, which is unfortunate if you miss a mini-daemon or process and especially infuriating if you’re a completionist (especially since many of the achievements are about visiting every screen or rescuing every little guy). Luckily, this will be a problem of the past, as the developers have said on Steam that they are working on a selection screen for a future update.