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Frame by Frame

Step directly into the film reel in Frame by Frame, an award-winning 2.5D puzzle-platformer. Restore a damaged documentary about the dawn of Italian cinema by solving environmental puzzles, repairing film splices, and bringing cinematic history back to life, one frame at a time.

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Developer
Michele Bissanti, Simone Botosso, Roberto Carda, Marco Penno, Gabriele Piergiovanni
Publisher
2Hardware
Release
Coming Soon
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About the Game

Frame by Frame is an award-winning 2.5D puzzle-platformer that blends environmental puzzle-solving with the delicate, fascinating art of film restoration.

The game revolves around the discovery of a lost, fictional documentary about the epic Italian cinema of the 1910s. As you sit at the moviola to watch it, you quickly realize the footage is severely damaged. Your task? To literally step inside the film reel and fix it from within.

Restore Cinematic History Every level is a hands-on restoration project. Your movement acts as a temporal marker: as you navigate the platforming challenges, the film scrolls forward and backward on the moviola monitor in real-time. You must repair the film's splices to keep the documentary running while cleaning up secondary damage like scratches, dust, and dirt.

Tools of the Trade To succeed, you will need to master your restoration toolkit:

  • Repair Film: Use this to fix broken splices and bridge the gaps in the footage.

  • Marker Tape: Place physical markers in the environment to create teleportation points, allowing you to traverse complex puzzles and rewind your position.

After repairing each section, you return to the moviola to watch the restored footage in real-time, creating a deeply satisfying cycle of gameplay and historical discovery.

Key Features

  • A Journey Through Time: Discover the overlooked world of Italian epic cinema before World War I through a unique documentary experience.

  • Brain-Teasing Puzzles: Navigate intricate 2.5D puzzle-platformer sections that will test your logic, timing, and platforming skills.

  • Authentic Art Direction: Immerse yourself in visuals dedicated entirely to the analog magic and mechanical beauty of film restoration.

  • A Prestigious Pedigree: Created in collaboration with Turin's National Museum of Cinema featuring original film clips. Winner of the First Prize at the 2025 Italian Video Game Awards.

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