Shifting World

Genre: Puzzle-Platformer

Players: 1

.

Review:

The Shift series of Puzzle-Platformers began their life in 2008 as a Flash web games based on the premise of a monochrome world where you can “shift” the screen upside-down making all the solid blocks passable and all of the passable space into blocks. The original game and subsequent installments were all released as Flash games and on mobile devices until 2011’s Shift Extended was released in the PlayStation Minis line of games on PlayStation platforms. However, the series got an even bigger mainstream boost in 2012 with the release of Shifting World on 3DS.

Shifting World marks the series’ first shift (ha) into the world of 3D visuals, though the gameplay is still in full 3D. The world is still in low-detail black and white, though clearly this is a stylistic choice, with the world taking on a slick minimalist look with angular characters and a world built out of geometric shapes, all backed by very chill acoustic jazz themes in the background. This isn’t pushing any envelopes, but it’s stylistically appealing regardless.

Unfortunately, while the gameplay promises to be just as thought-provoking, it doesn’t really succeed in meeting that lofty ideal. The game’s map design seems needlessly confusing, and it’s often difficult to determine just where you need to go. The mini-map on the bottom screen is of little help there, as icons are obscuring so much of it as to make it close to worthless.

Usually, I ended up just trying to jump around to places I hadn’t been yet, and following the general directions of any arrows I saw, which usually had me stumbling my way to the exit. However, I didn’t feel like this was me solving puzzles so much as the game simply filtering me toward the solution with little conscious effort on my part.

While I suppose I found the experience of Shifting World pleasant, it’s hard for me to think of it as a good game. I thought the presentation was classy and the premise was interesting, but the game was just designed in a way that felt like it kept me from engaging with it. And while I didn’t hate Shifting World, I can’t really recommend it either.

tl;dr – Shifting World is a Puzzle-Platformer where players shift the world upside-down and turn its blank spaces into platforms and vice versa. This game has a great presentation, and a cool core concept, but the actual gameplay had me feeling detached and not really connected to my successes within the game. This isn’t terrible, but it’s not really good, either.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Talissa, Eli Goodman, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}