Mr. Shifty

released on Apr 13, 2017

Quit creeping through shadows, stop surveilling security patterns, and ditch the fancy toys. An expert thief and master of infiltration, Mr. Shifty can get inside any place he wants with just the power of his fists…okay, teleporting helps. A speed-stealth, kung-fu brawler about a teleporting thief, Mr. Shifty combines fast top-down gameplay with the ferocity of '90s Hong Kong action cinema, coming to PC (Win/Mac), PS4, and Xbox One in 2017. Pummel your way through 75 levels of heists, rescue missions, boss battles, and down-'n'-dirty brawls. Outsmart your opponents by luring them into traps and tricking them into shooting each other. Activate slow-motion to dodge when the gunfire gets too thick, and watch your back, because it only takes one bullet to bring you down. Newly announced from indie publisher tinyBuild GAMES, Mr. Shifty is the debut title from Team Shifty; a close-knit group of four developers from Brisbane, Australia, who previously worked as a team at Halfbrick for over five years and have collectively shipped 21 games for consoles and handheld.


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Hacerlo de puños en vez de disparos fue buena elección

É um hotline miami só que com a mascara do Tony e a Corey, a história é ignorável, a gameplay é bem gostosa, principalmente quando você faz combos, mas eu senti falta de um apoio visual; um medidor de combo, luzes etc, caso já tenha zerado os dois Hotlines, esse jogo é um prato cheio

Next (and likely last) up on my TinyBuild marathon is Mr Shifty, a game most people have called Hotline Miami with teleportation mechanics. They're right to do that, because that's exactly what it is. Mind you, a copycat isn't necessarily a bad thing, and this game is great fun!

The teleportation mechanic makes the arcadey Hotline Miami formula that much more hectic as you teleport around to get behind bad guys with guns and punch them up while trying to avoid their friends who also have guns. Tricking enemies into doing friendly fire, throwing items you find at them (or clobbering them over the head with them), and getting around/into walls are all things totally required to get through this admittedly fairly short game (it took me about 3 hours).

The story is silly and campy, with the literally silent Mr Shifty getting instructions from his female operator over his headpiece and the enigmatic and boastful Chairman Stone taunting you the entire game. There was more than one line from Stone that was just so campy it made me genuinely laugh out loud, so in my mind the story did exactly what it needed to. It's not trying to be some mysterious grandiose statement about something or other, it's just fun window dressing for a game about teleporting around bad guys and punching them.

Verdict: Highly Recommended. The $15 price tag is gonna turn some people away from a 3 hour game, but if you look at it like a $10 movie ticket, this is pretty good value in my mind. It's a fantastic arcadey brawler that's a very fun way to burn away an afternoon (or two) with.

This game is amazing. Actions in this game are very satisfying plus no repetitive level. But some levels were too difficult that I had to die more than 60 times to complete that. Finished it twice.

The foundation is perfect, the core gameplay leaves so much to be developed on top of the base idea. The door is open for so many opportunities.

And yet?

At first, you'll have fun for a bit. The gameplay is refreshing, the mechanics are really neat, etc, etc. After a while you'll realize the forumla barely changes or innovates on itself and eventually you'll realize it's like this for the entire game.

Mr. Shifty decides to rely on redundancy for about 4/5ths of the game. There's the occasional new enemy type, weapon type, or level design which might force you to slightly alter how you go about tackling the game, but a majority of the time there aren't really any major ideas or changes which enhance the teleportation mechanic. No upgrades and no interesting interactions via "shifting," it is what it is. Halfway through the game I was already feeling like getting it over with, they run out of content and new ideas to utilize so quickly and playing the game feels like an absolute chore. Its difficulty is founded on frustrating slop where they place enemies and weapons wherever they felt like without any real second thought to it, stage-design likewise. Some levels are stupidly easy and some levels are obscene in difficulty because there's no real thought behind level design. Some sections might have long periods of fights without a screen transition meaning you have to endure for however long it requires, and sometimes the screen transition happens 5 seconds after entering a room. If/when the game crashes, you're expected to restart from the very beginning of the stage because of an oversight. Fun!

On the topic of enemies, the AI is just fucking stupid. It's completely inconsistent in how it acts and at times just completely broken and unresponsive. They feel so rough and annoying to deal with. It doesn't help that it feels this way for over half of the cast of enemies.

Story doesn't really have anything to offer either, it's very elementary. "Big bad guy has something in his tower and you need to KILL him." The humor doesn't alleviate the boring story because it's just as bland and lame.