Warp Shift
Puzzling your way to the portal
$2.99 Developer Fishlabs, warpshift.com Platform Universal Requirements iOS 8 or later
Remember those puzzles you had as a kid, where you had to slide about tiles on a grid until they formed a picture? Well, Warp Shift is the adventure video game equivalent of that – both in mechanics and levels of satisfaction.
You start in one square room, with an exit portal in another. Rooms can have exits on any – or even all – of their four sides, and you need to shift the rooms about on their grid so that the exits align for you to make your escape.
As you move through the game, things of course get more complex: different colors of exit that can only be aligned together, switches, a perky sprite buddy-cum-key who needs to be collected before the portal will open its turquoise majesty for you.
The puzzles themselves are fairly simple – you’re not going to be left scratching your head for hours or even minutes on end, nor are they above a bit of trial and error on the rare occasion you do get stumped. The problem is, the star rating awarded to you upon completion of a level ticks down so quickly as to be truly punishing. We found occasions where we replayed a level until we’d memorized an efficient solution, yet still couldn’t swipe fast enough to get more than two stars. It feels like a slightly artificial means of padding out what could otherwise be a somewhat insubstantial game. Still, we can’t quite deny the tactile pleasure of those childhood sliding puzzles.
the bottom line. A puzzler that delivers some charm and enjoyment, but with a serving of frustration in equal measure.