Puzzle games are great starting places for aspiring game designers, mostly because the term "puzzle game" is kind of redundant. A puzzle is pretty much the purest essence of a game. There's a clear objective, certain rules and regulations to which you must abide while completing the objective...and that's basically it. When making a puzzle game, the designer needn't be bogged down by the burden of creating a story, setting, characters, etc. In fact, there's really no need to be that creative whatsoever.
That might sound a bit harsh, but I swear I'm not trying to call out puzzle game designers for being uncreative. Far from it. All I'm saying is that a puzzle game can get away with just putting you in a maze and calling it a day as long as the maze is well designed. I like to call these "lab rat games," and Shift is that in a nutshell.
The problem in reviewing lab rat games is that there's pretty much only one non-aesthetic factor to be weighed in determining the quality of the game; that's how well the levels are designed. More specifically, how well the difficulty curve is designed. There aren't really that many other ways to identify the quality of a level. Shift's difficulty curve is very well executed. Bam. There it is. End review.
The most frustrating part about the game, I would say, is how easily you can fall off an edge and have to restart the level. The game was already challenging enough without that, but at least I can see where the developers were going with it. They don't want you blazing through the levels and stumbling upon the solutions by chance. They want you to take your time and think about the solution before carefully planning every move. If you ask me, that sounds more like limiting the playstyle than promoting success, but again, not a huge problem.
The part I liked most about Shift was the music. I'm not quite sure who the composer was (given DigiPen's music bank or whatever), but whoever it was should be proud, because the music alone was enough to make me want to keep playing.
Long story short, pick this game up if you're bored. You won't be bored much longer. That's all I got for today. Until next time, stay shifty.
Links
Caps Lock: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=26703
