Demon Shift Review – Kidnap Those Happy Souls

Say you’re a demon, right, and the devil ordered you to bring his urn of souls. Okay. Easy enough since it’s right behind him, but what if you just happened to trip and bust it?

Well, son. I’m afraid you’re going to have to invest some time in this Demon Shift game and get them back.

Unless you want to die. I mean, that’s okay too.

Yet another flash platformer to eat my time and make me wonder why I have to procrastinate and play flash games in my free time. Sheesh.

I make it sound bad, but what we have here is actually a pretty linear decent platformer.

I can’t say I don’t like linear platformers, because I do. An RPG being linear is bad, but a platformer being linear is all right as long as the gameplay is compelling enough. I have to admit I didn’t pay much attention to the fact that Demon Shift didn’t have alternate routes or a whole lot of secrets. It’s straight-forward, and (if you want to spoil the outcome of this review) I’m okay with that.

Shifting to Success

Demon Shift’s premise is pretty simple: Get the souls back. You jump, you shift to the demon world, and you jump some more. Then you switch back for some more blood-pumping jumping action.

Shifting to the demon world is the big gimmick in this flash platformer. Platforms rise from the ground, statues come to life, and the various obstacles in your path can change their patterns or disappear entirely when you shift.

While it might seem that the shifting of the game could make it somehow fit into the “puzzle platformer” category, there really isn’t much thought to it. It’s fairly obvious when and where you should shift. Demon Shift is simply a platformer. No combat, no puzzles, just platforming. And timing. There’s a lot of timing.

Often you need to dynamically shift from one plane to the other to get past areas of swinging axes. These are affected in a variety of ways when you switch planes. Some disappear, while others appear or change direction. Being able to time your jumps and the trajectory of the axes will make or break your time with the game.

The controls are pretty responsive as well. While they’re not super tight, making your way through certain areas via wall jumps still feels just as good as bouncing from one platform to another. It’s not the quality of control you would expect from a platformer that you pay money for, but for a flash game the controls are not bad at all.

Green and Purple

The visuals here are nothing to be impressed about, but there is a lot of charm in how the environment changes when you switch to the demon plane. The moon and clouds disappear, lightning falls from the sky, plants and trees wilt (their leaves falling to the ground), and things just look beaten up. It’s a really nice touch that you have to really pay attention to in order to pick it all up.

Also, there is a lot of green and purple. And red. Green, purple, and red.

So, Is It Worth It?

Considering the amount of bad platformers you find browsing through flash games, yes. Demon Shift is worth your time (but not your money, because it’s free). Despite being fairly simple, it succeeds is being a fun game. The simple charm behind the changes when you shift only add to that. It may not be the best platformer on your browser, it is still a pretty good one.

 Plus, look at this cute little soul. He looks so happy.