Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Walker introduced us to the monochromatic delights of indie puzzle-platformer (increasingly the de facto indie flavour, in the same way the de facto indie film flavour is interlocking vignettes about miserable peoples’ miserable lives) Shift a while ago. At least I think that’s what he was posting about, but of course I didn’t read it because it was by Walker.

The third one’s out now, and it’s expertly pushing the lovely concept (obstacle navigation via colour-inversion, sort of like Lost Vikings via Ikaruga) into something new.
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I do so love these ingenious little Flash platform games, each taking a novel concept and executing it so well. Shift is an excellent example.

A simple platform set-up – single screens, with keys to acquire and a door to reach. However, getting there requires being negative. And positive. That’s a joke there. By hitting Shift, you flip upside down, into the other colour’s dimension. The screen rotates, and now you can progress. It’s muddling at first, but worryingly quickly you can adjust to thinking, “In order to be up there, I’ll need to go down here.”

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