Former EA Firemint developers open Loveshack Entertainment, announce first game

Listen; if you’re going to name your new game development company after a B-52s song, I think you should go with “Cosmic Thing” over “Love Shack,” or maybe “Girl from Impanema Goes to Greenland.” Regardless, three former EA Firemint senior developers have  hopped in the Chrysler (it seats about 20, you know) and formed Loveshack Entertainment, announcing the narrative-based puzzle game Framed as their debut project.

Founders Joshua Boggs, Adrian Moore and Ollie Browne are veteran game developers with experience in mobile and PC games.

Boggs and Moore were lead developmers on Firemint’s SPY mouse, and the trio have individually worked on titles such as The Movies (Lionhead Studios), Populous, Theme Hospital, Syndicate Wars (Bullfrog), Rolling with Katamari (Namco Bandai) and Real Racing 2 and 3 (Firemint/Firemonkeys).

As for this new project of theirs:

Framed is an innovative puzzle game set in a noir comic book world. Presented as an animated storyboard and played in ‘chapters’, each panel depicts an important action or event. After watching the scene unfold, players can rearrange the order of the panels, changing the way the events play out and the outcome of the narrative. With each action “framed” by the last, context is everything.

I must confess that this concept video makes for a rather slick and extremely unique puzzle game:

Framed has been in pre-production for the past six months—having received funding from both Screen Australia and Film Victoria—and is targeted for release on tablets and PC in late 2013. For more information on the company, visit loveshackentertainment.com.