Shift
Greetings Subject 32763
Welcome to Shift, your not so ordinary puzzle platformer.
Shift is a quintology flash game series about test subjects that have to reach the exit, utilizing a power known as "shift." When the test subject shifts, they invert into the ground below them, making the white tiles the foreground and the black tiles the background. As the game progresses to sequels, new things are added such as tiles you can't shift on as well as arrows that shift gravity.
Truthfully, the company that's performing the experiment has actually captured a father, mother and son to use them as test subjects to experiment on them in secret. As the series progresses, the family tries to escape.
The series is available at Armor Games, Newgrounds and Kongregate. Go here.
Recently, a Gaiden Game by the name of "Shift: Freedom" has been released. It was initially exclusive to the iPhone. Additionally, an adaptation called "Shifting World" made by Aksys will be released in April 2012 for the 3DS. No relation to Need for Speed: Shift or its sequel, Shift 2: Unleashed.
- Advancing Wall of Doom: A few spike-lined walls make appearances in the first two games.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall
- In the first game, at one point it claims the player's timer has been corrupted and it will not be able to record their name as a high score.
- In the beginning of Shift 2, when an Advancing Wall of Doom in the first level stops halfway instead of crushing the player, the game claims it's due to a "faulty actionscript".
- Deliberately Monochrome
- Diabolus Ex Machina: The endings. All of them, to the point of apparent self-parody by the fourth game.
- Everything's Better with Spinning: Shifting and touching the arrows causes the screen to spin. Doors rotate halfway once the key is obtained. The lightbulb icon in 3 and 4 also spins.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: To beat the game, you have to, well, shift. And it is performed by the shift key.
- Gravity Screw: Aside from the titular Shift mechanic, arrow tiles from Shift 2 onwards change the level's gravity at any time.
- Happily Ever After: The Good Ending of Shift 4.
- Level Editor: Introduced in Shift 2.
- Mind Screw: Don't try to figure out how the Shift mechanic works. Or how the multiple characters in Shift 4 can maneuver in different spaces and gravities all at the same time.
- Multiple Endings: Starting in Shift 2, if you get the Bad Ending, the game will hint that there's a better one out there, but you'll have to figure out the rest on your own.
- Plot Hole: Shift 1 and 2 end with the player character either dying or escaping the facility. But somehow, in the ending of Shift 3 and the gameplay of 4 those characters are still imprisoned and need to be rescued.
- Secret Character: In Shift 3, you can unlock Mel Gibson. Actually, Fancy Pants.
- Sequel Difficulty Spike: Averted in the main sequels, but more than a few of Shift 3's player packs require an insane amount of precision jumping, sometimes verging into Some Dexterity Required.
- Shout-Out: Portal, and at the end of Shift 4, Shaft. There's probably at least a half a dozen more.
- In the first one, there's a whopping two of these to Portal: "Now you're thinking with shifting :P" and "THE TIMER IS A LIE!".
- Spikes of Doom
- Timed Mission: Every Shift game has a timer somewhere in it telling you how long you've been playing (and the game likes messing with you on this matter, too). In Shift 4, it says you have only "ten minutes" to complete each chapter, but this is a lie (you even get a medal for letting the timer expire). However, when Shift 4 gives you "two minutes" to get through three rooms to reach the Good Ending, it really does mean it.