MainFrames made me feel a little bad. In the real world, I’m a QA Test Manager. It’s my job to break software as much as possible. So MainFrames coming along and giving all the little programs faces and personalities brought on some strange level of guilt. Am I the software equivalent of a supervillain? Perhaps doing QA is the equivalent to walking into someone’s house and putting my foot through TV or tearing down the wallpaper, and then telling everyone that the place sucks. Maybe I’m overthinking it.
Actually, the idea of breaking and destroying things is quite at odds with how MainFrames made me feel. I found it incredibly refreshing. I’ve been in a bit of a slump, video games wise. Nothing has really gripped me in a while (meaning no disrespect to those I’ve reviewed). MainFrames blasted me back to the days of Adobe Flash platformers, with its cute art style and buttery smooth platforming. It’s a pinpoint platformer with an intriguing central gimmick.
Desktop Dangers
MainFrames‘ main gimmick is that everything takes place within a computer, which is connected in turn to a network. Our hero is a li’l floppy disk, called Floppy. If you don’t know what a floppy disk is, then please keep that to yourself. I already feel old. Anyway, Floppy’s little house gets destroyed and he’s cast out into the system. Turns out he is one of a collection of software daemons. These are programs that run processes that are hidden from the user. Unfortunately, the system housing these processes is in the middle of falling apart.
Floppy needs to explore his way through all of the computers connected on the network. This involves a good deal of jumping, as MainFrames is a classic platformer at its heart. First, and most importantly, the movement feels wonderfully precise. Landing precision jumps is quite easy, and there’s a double jump (of sorts) to help dial things in. The end result is that when I died – which was a lot – I always felt like it was my fault. There weren’t any cheap shots. Every death gave me information on how to avoid it in the future.
Added to this is a wealth of mechanics that change things up. Being set inside a PC isn’t just an aesthetic choice. The platforms are all little windows, for instance, and each set of levels plays with that. An early level gives us a mouse pointer, for instance, so we can move around platforms at will. Another lets us BSOD individual windows to give us more platforming space. Each area introduces a mechanic and then puts it through its paces. As a result, MainFrames never gets stale.
Daemon Saving
Despite juggling all these different gameplay modifiers, MainFrames skates along quite a sensible difficulty curve. It hits the sweet spot of being difficult, but never to the point of being too frustrating. Usually it’s just a case of becoming comfortable with the new mechanics. It’s not a particularly long game, mind, but the difficulty was such that it felt like a good challenge. The only real spike was in the middle, with an odd section where you face a running gauntlet of platforming challenges. One way of making sure we’re awake, I guess.
Outside of that, MainFrames has some nice little collectibles in the form of other software daemons. Collecting them requires an optional challenge, which is usually something more complex than the standard levels. It’s good fun, and contributes to the overall idea: that we’re rescuing programs from deletion. There isn’t too much plot here, but I liked the snippets that indicate that the network is falling apart thanks to some big-brained project management moves. On a more surface level, MainFrames also has a lovely, cute art style that manages to somehow inject personality into Floppy. Tall order for an outdated storage medium.
In fact, I’ve only got two itty-bitty criticisms. Firstly, while the abundance of collectible daemons is great, there doesn’t seem to be a way to go back to ones in previous levels. Even if we could, the world is a tangle of interconnected levels and there’s no overall map that I can see. Backtracking would be a bit of a pain in the neck. Secondly, some levels are a bit easy to cheese. I put that down to Floppy’s ability to mantle, which removes the need for too much precision. It also means we can occasionally hop on top of the level and run along it, avoiding all the hazards.
MainFrames – Wonderfully Refreshing
All-in-all, MainFrames feels like a meeting of old and new schools. The platforming feels deliberately retro, albeit improved by all the PC-style shenanigans. The wonderful pixel-art feels pretty old-school too. But the cleverly put together levels, underlying plot notes and general chaotic style to it make it feel fresh and new. There’s a sense of chaotic personality to it. At points, you stumble across a daemon operating a big coffee machine, for instance.
Another puzzle has you turn down the volume slider for an out of control program. It’s little personalities blended with generic programs, and I love that. I would’ve given it high marks for the platforming alone, but MainFrames manages to make its dying electronic world feel alive. Charm drips from every corner. If you’re in the mood to relive the platformers of old, but want something brimming with personality, then you have to give MainFrames a whirl.
