When you’re dealing with games that are made to be simpler, and to be picked up on a smaller budget, it’s interesting how good ideas can sometimes serve to elevate more ordinary play. Whether the title manages to mix together genres in new ways, adds some roguelike elements for flavor, or sometimes just finds a smart theme and then runs with it, it doesn’t take reinventing the wheel to be notable when the price tag is quite humble. MainFrames absolutely fits into this mold with its very reasonable asking price, classic desktop PC theming, and somewhat inconsistently challenging platforming action gameplay.

The hook is that you’re controlling your little character, who looks like a classic floppy disk, as he works to navigate a variety of classic desktop PC windows and elements. It’s actually a pleasant surprise to see how many different ways the developer was able to make use of this gimmick, with you working to drag and drop, resize, and scroll windows as well as some other ideas. Given the somewhat minimal degree of overall direction, you’ll simply be left to explore, look for alternative exits, and try to do all you can to proceed, but also to try to liberate a number of fellow digital critters you’ll run into along the way.

The problem it runs into is that the level of difficulty when interacting with some of these elements can vary wildly, and not always in ways that are tied to your level of skill. I found that in particular I wasn’t a fan of sections where you’d need to make movements to resize your window, then trying to complete platforming challenges on a tight time frame as the window would immediately start to shrink again. I suppose not all of the sections with this particular element were terrible, but there were a few that were memorably just a bit over-the-top in their degree of difficulty. In cases like that, my issue isn’t just that they’re difficult, it’s that they can feel a bit inconsistent, and that the controls aren’t quite as mechanically up to the task of helping you be successful as they could or should be.

While there’s no question that the overall experience has some rough edges to deal with, I still applaud the game’s smart theming and overall setup. While it could no doubt be a bit longer, and maybe more balanced in terms of its challenge curve, it’s still relatively cheap and yet stands out for doing things its own way. Perhaps with a little more refinement, as well as improved in-game assistance for ensuring players have everything they need in order to be successful, it could reach a higher score, but in the end this still feels like an appropriately-priced romp with some cool ideas.