Most of the games you’ll see featured on the Game of the Year list revolve around fantasy, greater-than-life stakes, the distant future, or the distant past. These are places that want to take players to completely different worlds, new experiences unlike anything you’ve had before. Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery, releasing for PlayStation 4 on June 2, has a vision set in another fantasy – one in which you can sink into the exciting routines of everyday life.
I’m Buddy, community manager for Akupara Games, and I wanted to take a moment to find out why Behind the Frame’s core gameplay experience is important to us. At the back of the frame, you play as a young artist trying to exhibit his work at a big time exhibition. And while the game itself focuses on a mystery she’s trying to solve, most of the time you’ll spend behind the scenes will be in her quaint apartment studio.
Behind Frames there are several animated cutscenes throughout the game, which many players and critics have likened to animation by Studio Ghibli, famous for movies like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. Those films, as well as many other Japanese films, were some of Behind the Frame’s biggest inspirations. Especially, When Marnie Was There really helped orient Silver Lining Studios to the specific traditional animation style they would use in the game’s cutscenes. Seriously bold colors and sharp lines elevate the artist and her studio into something more beautiful.
As for the gameplay, the goal is always to be immersive. The developers at Silver Lining Studios wanted to make players oriented towards the routines of that daily life. Wake up in the morning, prepare yourself a cup of coffee, cook a quick breakfast and put on some music before you start painting for the day. Drawing and solving the puzzles associated with it is the main gameplay of Behind the Frame, where the story will continue to unfold and many mysteries will be revealed. But for players to really come to terms with Behind the Frame’s protagonist, they’ll need to see more of her than just what’s involved in the plot. That comes from helping her cook some eggs and some avocado toast.
Another example, my favorite detail is to play music from the cassette player. It’s not just about clicking a button and starting music. The player needs to methodically open the tape deck, pick up the tape, put it in, close the deck and press the play button for a musical note to play. In game design, we have a term called “kinesthetic”, which describes the player’s sense of movement in a virtual space. The same way you can type on a keyboard without looking at your finger because you get a feel for how the movement of your finger will translate to the letters that appear on the screen, the player can understand the virtual avatar how they move in cyberspace . And just as a game can have good/bad mechanics, graphic or sound design, its kinetics can greatly enhance the experience. I’m more attached to the illustrator as a player because of her playing of the cassette than when I do it through a simple button press or a cutscene.
The same care for kinematics also applies to other parts of the game’s animations. When players hit play and start playing their music successfully of their day, the instant cut to the cassette allows the player a moment to appreciate adding music to the game world. In fact, all the little habits in the artist’s apartment include that moment of appreciation, whether it’s watching a tape or pouring coffee into a cup.
The attention to detail also extends to the game’s graphic animations. Silver Lining has added special equipment to the artist’s arm, so that even when the player is drawing with a brush (which is matched to a controller), the arm will still follow the strokes. Details have also been added to how paint from the game dissolves into the final presentation. While the player draws, water drops from their stroke will begin to slide down the canvas. When they finish painting a part, the paint will transfer to the finished product that has been cleaned up smoothly. That progression helps to establish a sense of the passage of time and care in correcting the details of the painting.
For the developers at Silver Lining Studios and us at Akupara Games, it’s the details that really sell the immersive, immersive experience of a young artist spending his days painting in his apartment. If you’d like to draw some masterpieces yourself, Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery launches on PS4 on June 2. We’re also releasing some brand new content for the game, a spin-off focused on another young painter, same day ! And I hope if you choose Behind the frame, Please pay attention to have more options like the options above. This game is full of them!
