How Behind the Frame’s animation makes you feel at home

blog.playstation.com:

Most games you’ll find featured in Game of the Year lists revolve around fantasy, larger-than-life stakes, the far future, or distant past. These are places that want to transport players to completely different worlds, new experiences unlike anything you’ve ever had before. Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery, which releases for the PlayStation 4 on June 2, has its sights set on a different fantasy – one in which you can sink into the delightful routines of everyday life.

I’m Buddy, the community manager for Akupara Games and I wanted to take a little time breaking down why that core experience of Behind the Frame’s gameplay is so important to us. In Behind the Frame, you play as a young artist trying to exhibit her art at a big time exhibition. And while the game itself focuses on a mystery that she’s trying to solve, most of the time you spend in Behind the Frame will be in her quaint, lived-in apartment studio.

Behind the Frame sports a number of animated cutscenes over the course of the game, which many players and critics have likened to the animation of Studio Ghibli, famous for films like Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away.Those films, as well as many like them from Japan, are some of Behind the Frame’s biggest inspirations. In particular, When Marnie Was Therereally helped orient Silver Lining Studios to the particular style of traditional animation they’d use in the game’s cutscenes. The bold earnest colors and crisp linework elevate the artist and her studio into something more beautiful.

For the gameplay, the goal has always been immersion. The developers at Silver Lining Studios wanted to get players oriented to the routine of that daily life. Waking up in the morning, fixing yourself coffee, cooking a