Shift 87

Shift 87 was born from the idea of creating a spooky, 3D-style spot the difference game in which you are an unnamed character who has been given the job of searching certain areas for anomalies and reporting them. For what reason and for who is never said, which is most likely to fit in with the mysterious and creepy atmosphere that carries throughout the game.

Developed by Germany-based Pixelsplit, they classify Shift 87 as an observational horror game, which I believe is slightly misleading as the game is more creepy and eerie in its vibe than experiencing anything truly horror-based. There’s no blood, grotesque monsters, or mutilation; instead, the lighting, music, strange locations, and a few jump scares fill the horror tag. 

Did that work on me? Not really. The game jump scared me once, but the rest of the time I was not effected by the game’s efforts to scare me, no matter how hard it tried. And one reason for that was the problems I faced during my playthrough, which continually took me out of the game. 

There are three main areas for you to explore, each hiding twenty-two anomalies for you to find. You’ll not find them all in one go, though, as this game runs on a looping system. So you’ll have to revisit these locations time and time again until you have found all of the anomalies in each area to truly complete the game. The looping system also comes into effect within the locations, as you’ll need to restart the loop many times over. This is because not every loop houses an anomaly, as they are randomly generated, and you need to figure out whether this loop houses a difference or not before you start the next loop. If there is a difference, you need to report it using your fancy gadget thingy, or if you think there’s no difference, just walk to the end of the area and start over. You need to get this right six times before you can move on, but if you get one wrong, your counter goes back to zero, and you have to start that area again.

This is where one of my biggest issues comes in, and while I was all down for this looping system and for finding differences, I actually think it’s a genius idea. But because some of the differences are so obtuse, I ended up aimlessly exploring, missing these tiny changes, and my counter resetting many times that my frustration just grew and grew. I got so bored exploring these settings after a while that I ended up just going through the motions, scanning randomly in the hope I might pick one up. 

What I would have loved was at least a couple more settings with the same amount of anomalies spread through them, just to keep it a bit more fresh, as I was about to have my own horror tale if I had to explore those locations one more time. Don’t get me wrong; the locations were varied and interesting at the start, but by the end of the game, my eyes rolled as I yet again entered the same area and had to explore it all over again. The same can’t be said for the majority of the anomalies, as they were very inventive, with some getting a positive remark from me, and I only started to see the same ones in my last loop of the game. 

The other issue for me was that everything was too much of a mystery for me. There’s no explanation of who you are or why you’re doing this. You don’t know where you are or what’s actually going on. I like a mystery in a game, but I also like to have some little nuggets of information every now and then to help feed my imagination. And I really wanted to know more about what was happening, as this world fascinated me and I wanted to find out the results of my work, but there was nothing, and that also left me feeling frustrated.

A couple of other annoyances landed at the start of every main loop, where the game felt like it needed to explain everything to me again. By the second loop, I knew what needed to be done, and I didn’t need it, but the game insisted till the end. The other annoyance was that the game didn’t relay all the information I would have liked, keeping that mystery vibe going, I guess. There is a counter in each area to help you keep track of your correct guesses, but these are hidden on things that are decorating a wall or are part of a location itself. I didn’t realise this until I was three-quarters of the way through the game, so I was slightly peeved when I finally realised this, as I could have done with knowing this much earlier in the game. 

One thing the team did nail was the graphics. For a small indie game, this has some of the best visuals I have seen in some time. Everything was so detailed, from a coffee cup to a petrol station. The rain effects were on point, giving everything that soggy look, and the use of colours was perfect, giving the game that eerie vibe, especially when it used a glowing red on top of black. The lighting was also used to great effect, bringing me to a stop to admire the scenery around me. The sound presentation was also a highlight, just sitting there in the background and using it to creep up the atmosphere where it was needed. It’s very much in the vein of a classic horror film score, and it fits in nicely here.