Xbox Live Indie Games Trial Impressions – I Heart Shift


xboxboxart (1)This one came out earlier today, and I’m still trying to decide what to make of it. On one note, the graphics are complete garbage. But the gameplay is oddly addictive. It’s a match 3 puzzle game mixed in with a Geometry Wars style twin stick shooter. The patterns/enemies fade in and out through different colors and you have a bar at the right side of the screen with a circle color scrolling down. Once it reaches “shoot” it fires. If you hit a different color than what’s fired, it changes that color. If you hit a group, it makes that group explode.  (You can also tell what color is coming up by the trail your ship or vehicle or whatever the hell that thing is supposed to be leaves) The more times shoot the same color the higher your multiplier gets, the faster the game seems to go and the procedurally generated music starts sounding like actual music. You shoot one of them and change the color, you lose your multiplier. If you touch any of them, you lose your multiplier. You hit the border, and the shapes you’re matching come to life and it becomes a rather simplistic version of GeoWars which is the only time you can really die it seems.

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Apparently the game comes with 15 levels and 15 enemies. There doesn’t seem to be any way to get back to the main menu from the level select screen other than going into a game and quitting it again. The controls are just fine, it just uses the two analog sticks. The graphics, while functional have the most horrible looking color palette I’ve seen in a while. The sound … there isn’t much (it’s a little over 1 meg to download) … once the procedurally generated music starts sounding like actual music aside from a steady thump and a few random notes here and there it sounds like … well … music.

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The above screenshot … yeah … you can see the caption. I wouldn’t exactly say it’s action because once the enemies do come to life they just kinda move around aimlessly and tend to group up at the bottom of the screen. Everything about this particular game is either terrible or close to it but the gameplay which is surprisingly interesting. I’m still personally kinda on the fence about whether or not I wanna buy it … but it’s definitely weird.

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