Serious balancing issues: it comes down to the leveling system. I was at level 78 when I beat the game. Strength was around 60 - and it was still taking a significant number of hits to take down some of the enemies. You can't really play around with different weapons - you have to pick one, at the beginning of the game, and stick with it through the whole thing, or you'll be drastically underpowered.
It's not that the enemies are difficult - they either throw stuff at you or just go straight towards you. But when you're whacking away with a sword for four or five minutes a screen - and not being injured, really, just hitting the attack button over and over again - it gets really boring.
Found one secret... out of five... and had a valve left over when I finished... and still don't know what that one map drawing was about.
Pretty sure I missed some stuff.
Freezes on me right after clicking the first Spade, as a text-message-like sound begins playing. Tested on Chrome, Firefox, and even... sigh.... Internet Explorer. All had the same issue. Unplayable.
I've got all 5 stars stars, plus the "threat" quest, but the "hipster" class hasn't been unlocked for some reason, even though I was given the quest at 3 1/2 stars ... is this a bug?
The hacking minigame is broken. Sometimes it makes the screen dim 10 times in short successions, flashing the menu up on the screen between dimmings, and then suddenly I'm back at the start of whatever area I was in. Also the gun mechanics are a bit off, it takes a second or two for guards to react to being shot, during which time they'll sometimes send up an alarm and then promptly die from being shot unawares. Other than these bugs, really great game. Still gave it five stars in the hopes these issues will be corrected.
Stage 17A is ridiculously difficult. The problem is that Flash only seems to recognize two keystrokes at a time, and 17A requires three. Basically impossible to complete.
Puzzle mode is NOT a puzzle mode. It's still a run-as-quick-as-you-can mode.
Ways to balance this: having monsters that don't respawn over and over from the holes in the ground, and not having monsters that chase you, but rather only monsters that wander around.
This game has lost most of the appeal that previous versions had. The 40's era, noir-esque music is gone, replaced with uninspired electronic organ music more appropriate for a post-modern church than anything else. The sarcastic tone of previous games is gone, and replaced with some bubbly characters that don't fit the feel of SHIFT at all. Even the animations for death and solving a level take far too long and are uninteresting to watch. Finally, the difficulty level of the puzzles has been reduced to a point where the game doesn't require any real thought to solve.
This was a pretty okay game, really. The platforming aspects were well done, for the most part. Controls were fine, except for one difficult room. The map design wasn't quite right, though. I don't know what makes a map better or worse in games such as this, but it felt off. The enemies could be frustrating at times. Not a bad game overall, though, and it's obvious that time and effort were put into this. It's just a little short of where it could have been, though, and unfortunately that makes all the difference.
The stamina bar seems like a cheap tactic to get people to pay money to play the game... I hope Kongregate doesn't make this a standard tactic in the games they host on their site.
 "Rooms of Memory"){kind=icon}
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 "Focus"){kind=icon}
 "Shift: Freedom!"){kind=icon}
 "Minesweeper on acid!"){kind=icon}
 "Nick Toldy and the Legend of Dragon Peninsula"){kind=icon}
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That's not Flash, that's your keyboard/browser.