Warp Shift review for Nintendo Switch

I’m of two minds when it comes to Warp Shift.

On the one hand, it doesn?t have a lot of replayability, it?s kind of short, and it?s more expensive on the Switch than it is on the iTunes store, even though the Switch version has less content. Given that we?re talking about a fairly simple puzzle game here, those would seem to be three relatively big strikes against it.

Thankfully, however, this isn?t baseball, so it?s not a case of Warp Shift getting three strikes and being out. Whatever flaws the game may have, in my mind they pale when compared to the fact I genuinely enjoyed the game. While I certainly would have liked to have been able to play even more levels, at the same time, it?s probably better for a game to leave players wanting more than for it to overstay its welcome. The lack of replayability is, I?ll admit, a slightly bigger mark against the game, but still, if you?re pushing yourself to get three stars on every level, you?ll be able to sink at least a couple of hours into Warp Shift.

The game is also helped by having a delightful art style, and equally delightful mechanics. Playing as some sort of astronaut girl (there?s really not much of a story here) trapped inside a brightly-coloured world, your goal is to rearrange boxes to find your way to the exit. As you?d hope for in a game like this, the controls are simple: you?re just shuffling boxes around, and you can do so with either buttons or the touch screen. While this seems simple enough at first, as the game progresses it adds little wrinkles and extra tasks in each world. It?s easy enough to solve them, but Warp Shift ups the difficulty level by tying how many stars you get into how many moves it takes you to finish a level.

Which brings me to my only real complaint about Warp Shift: early on, when I was stuck on a level the game offered to show me the solution. Despite my best (worst?) efforts in later levels, this never came up again. It?s understandable that the game wouldn?t want to hold players? hands from Level 1-1 to Level 5-15, particularly since it gave me three stars for simply following directions, but it still feels like there could have been some kind of compromise.

Nonetheless, this wasn?t anywhere close to being enough to turn me off the game. Warp Shift is only long enough to fill part of an afternoon, but as far as I?m concerned, at least you?d be squeezing a few hours of fun into that short time frame.

Isbit Games provided us with a Warp Shift Switch code for review purposes.