Hey, you lot! It’s SurpriseEnema (FernGully) with another game review for you! What game am I jizzing over this week? Well, let me tell you: Shiftlings! Now, I know what you’re thinking, “that title really sounds close to Shitlings” and I’ll be honest, I along with Plasma Captain thought the same thing when we first read the title.

Anyway, this game is my week’s pick, so here goes… First of all, the game is made by an independent game development studio by the name of Rock Pocket Games. They’ve been making games since 2008 and are currently situated in Norway. The game was released on March 12, 2015 and is available currently on Steam, Playstation 4, Wii U, and Xbox One. (They’ve got their bases covered). I played the Playstation 4 edition, so my review will be based on that version.

The game is very much a physics-based-puzzler-platform-style game. It’s pretty textbook style in that you are playing along with a character (or two) and you are solving puzzles to advance in the game. Pretty simple, right?

WRONG! They have innovated this concept by having the player control two playable characters at once, and if that wasn’t bad enough they are connected. Yes, the characters you control are connected by an air hose. This is actually where it becomes interesting as you have to use BOTH characters in tandem to get through each level you encounter. The air hose isn’t one of those crazy infinite length hoses either. There is a length at which it reaches its maximum… and it’s just enough to pull off hilariously annoying moves.

So, who are these playable characters? Well, I’ll let you know: You have Purple Plop, a 1st Grade Janitor who is slightly grumpier than he probably should be, stuck working with my favorite character… Green Goop, a 2nd Grade Janitor who is fairly clumsy and always has a stupid smile on his face. He is pretty awesome.

They are both aliens, and they are both janitors. That’s where the story comes in? I wasn’t really sure when I started playing. You are aware you are playing as inter-galactic janitors who somehow find the fizziest drink in the universe, drink it and fill your entire space suit with farts. I’m not even joking, that’s exactly what happens. This fart suit helps the characters move about in the universe with ease. You can jump on each other when one is blown up and use the weight of the enlarged body to set off puzzles. It’s pretty awesome to be honest with you, even if slightly odd.

This is the part where I laugh while writing this review. While playing this, I had the pleasure of having Plasma Captain join me as we quickly realized that this can be a couch multi-player game with another person. This helps because you do not have to focus so much on both characters, switching back and forth.

You can play as either Purple or Green, and your partner is the colour that you didn’t choose. Plasma was quite annoyed after a while, and so was I… but this is a good thing. The beauty about changing characters who are blown up with fart gas from a soda is that you can change at any time… and I do mean, any time. There were plenty of times where one or both of us said something along the lines of “stop pressing that button you jackass!” Plasma Captain and I enjoy irritating each other when it comes to games, and we’ve discovered that most of the time, that only happens in puzzle games. There is a certain level of childlike behavior you get with Shiftlings; allowing you to curse to your co-player while trying to get them to “STOP PUSHING THAT BUTTON YOU SHIT HEAD!” *sigh*

I know I’ve said it’s rare to find games these days where you can play with other people, and I’m not wrong… but Shiftlings is a game I can enjoy with a partner sitting next to me on a couch, instead of online. I like that.

The game doesn’t disappoint in the physics department. You can never fully control the character, and if you have control issues… it’s not a game for you. Part of the fun is not being able to have full reign in movement, as you have to deal with a character literally attached to you, and if you play with another person as the other character, you have a whole other can of crap to deal with.

There are fun achievements to grab, but I wasn’t too focused on those and neither was Plasma Captain. We had too much fun playing to worry about anything else.

You can die by cutting on the air hose, I wanted to share that with you lot. It’s hilarious as well. We played a couple of levels and one of us got the air hose stuck in between a moving door, and it got cut and we both exploded. I started to laugh so loud at that. Then, there was a level where one of us (I think it was me) got stuck under a moving block, and Plasma Captain pushed it on top of me and I was smashed. I looked over, and noticed they had their mouth wide open and were smiling with glee. It’s that kind of game.

The art style is nice. It’s very colourful and crispy and silly, and I appreciate that in a game. For a long time, we have been bombarded by these gritty games that have little-to-no colour in theme other than greys and blacks. It’s a little over done (thanks Arkham Asylum). It’s refreshing to play games that explore colour and whimsy, and Shiftlings does that quite well in the art department.
Is there anything bad about it? I guess, but it’s more trivial than anything on my part and not even worth talking about for a game that honestly is fun to play. It’s a highly recommendable game from me if you want to find a game on the PS4 that allows a local multiplayer friend to tag along with you and annoy the crap out of you.

Find Shiftlings on the Playstation Network for Ps4, as well as Steam, Wii U, and Xbox One. Check out the trailer for the game below.