Absurd things happen, and the characters don’t believe them either. However, the game never attempts to take itself seriously, which is one of its strengths. There is a very slim narrative that holds all the levels together, as you proceed up or down the tower of an evil corporate billionaire, filled with all sorts of spy clichés. Shifty does not really have is an in-depth story.

Each level has a completely different layout, and each one brings a harder and more complex challenge than the last. Despite the enemies being quite similar, the levels never feel repetitive, which is quite impressive, due to the repetitive nature of this style of game. You’re always either on the run from lasers, punching a horde of enemies with machine guns out of the window on the higher floors of a skyscraper, teleporting your way around several missiles, or just trying to survive. Then everything slows down so that you can run around and punch that enemy right in the face, all while teleporting and killing other enemies before the slow-mo bar runs out and everything is back to its normal speed.Įven in the earlier levels, Mr Shifty almost never gives you more than a short moment to breathe. Once it’s full, it stays full until an enemy shoots at you. After each enemy you kill, the “slow-mo” bar is filled a bit, but starts decreasing again if you don’t keep filling it. Only in the last few levels does it ever get to a difficulty where rage-quitting is a considerable option, and even then, it’s still doable – you just have to get better, or as a lot of people would call it, “git gud”. The progression is fast enough to not get bored, but isn’t overwhelmingly fast, either. It starts off easy, with few enemies that can only fire single shots, then progresses to melee enemies that are harder to kill, normal enemies with machine guns, shotguns, rocket launchers, and later even ninjas. Shifty does well is the difficulty curve. Then you have to wait for all of them to regenerate. Teleports, however, aren’t unlimited, as you have a maximum of five to use, which regenerate after a short period of time, unless you use all of them.

Move around with the left joystick, move the camera a bit with the right joystick, attack with one button, use or pick up items with another button, and teleport with a third button. The Nintendo Switch version seems to be one of the few games to use the HD Rumble feature so far, and it uses it fairly well, with different types of rumble for different impact, or explosions. Shifty is a top-down action game developed for the Nintendo Switch and PC by Team Shifty.

Mr shifty switch