MainFrames is an ideal instance of a sport with a intelligent concept that doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Within the new indie platformer, you play as an cute floppy disk that traverses laptop desktops. The aesthetic is ridiculously charming: the numerous characters sprinkled all through the sport are so dang cute, and the degrees are stuffed with utility home windows and desktop icons that function bouncing pads or gears to alter issues within the ranges. The whole lot is overlaid on pixelated panorama laptop backgrounds that differ between worlds. And it’s all backed by a catchy chiptune soundtrack that basically sells the vibe.
It’s an ideal premise, and MainFrames takes the concept one step additional by usually letting you manipulate laptop home windows by clicking or dragging them such as you would with an precise mouse. So, for instance, if you happen to can’t attain a far-off ledge, you would possibly be capable to hop onto a pc window with a platform and drag that window over to the ledge so you’ll be able to attain it. You’ll additionally “choose” sure home windows to activate features like flipping gravity.
Over the course of the sport, you’ll tackle progressively harder platforming puzzles that require exactly timed jumps and manipulating home windows in varied methods. There are many totally different approaches for exploring every stage, and it’s value combing via them to see as a lot as you’ll be able to. One in every of my favourite sections had me retrieving tissues for a clock with a chilly. A couple of occasions, I ran right into a espresso cup making espresso at a espresso machine. As soon as, I even came across a photograph memorializing any person’s canine.
A number of the platforming puzzles are fairly tough. However whenever you fail a soar or run into an impediment, you respawn immediately, so it’s simple to throw your self at a problem as many occasions as you could beat it. I used to be capable of skip via some rooms by being good about the place I used to be leaping, and whereas I felt fairly pleased with myself, I’ve a hunch the sport’s builders deliberately designed a few of these shortcuts. You may also activate accessibility options like invincibility or infinite jumps to breeze via something you simply can’t get previous, and I’m not ashamed to confess that I did so for a handful of areas close to the tip of the sport.
Whereas enjoying MainFrames, I saved drawing comparisons to Celeste. Each are good platformers with nice vibes that may get fairly powerful, however as a result of reloads are so fast, repeated failures don’t sting too badly. And each video games really feel like they play out their concepts precisely so far as they should. I rolled credit on MainFrames in a bit underneath 4 hours, and the expertise felt good.
MainFrames is now obtainable on Nintendo Change and PC.