Shift

The late, great Michael Jackson once said “it don’t matter if you’re black or white.”

Having played Shift on Android, I’d go a little further and say that it’s preferable if you can flip between the two.

Naturally, I’m not talking about racial differences. I’m referring to the two-tone mirror-image world portrayed in Armor Games’s ingenious Flash game conversion.

Swapping colours in this platform puzzler is more than a matter of aesthetic preference. While you can move left and right and jump in true 2D platformer style, of far more importance is your ability to flip the world upside down and swap your alignment between black and white.

Each of Shift’s levels is painted like a distorted yin-yang sign. Your solid black silhouette of a character moves through solid white air, and leaps between solid black platforms. Pressing the virtual ‘Shift’ button swaps it all around, and your newly white character can interact with the solidified white areas.

The goal in all this is to reach the level exit, which usually requires the collection of a number of keys in order to open up new areas or move platforms into a more advantageous position. It’s an instantly beguiling and constantly absorbing task.

Rather than a straight ascending line or a steady upward sweep, the difficulty curve here is an undulating wave that will often follow up a fiendishly tricky level with a couple of easier ones. This means that frustration is kept to a minimum, and the game's pace is nicely varied.

This latter point is important, as the core colour-switching platform-puzzler gameplay doesn’t really vary, and relies on the mechanic’s inherent strength – and the imagination behind the level design – to keep you interested.

It should also be noted that the controls aren’t particularly refined. You can get by with its four-way move left, move right, jump left, jump right setup, but during the timed levels – or the ones where a spiky ceiling/floor forces a prompt solution – its weaknesses are exposed.

Still, Shift is no Mario wannabe. It’s a clever, brain-scratching puzzler dressed up in two-tone platformer clothing, and it fully deserves your attention.