Color-Shift Review

Looking at the screenshots of Color-Shift before I downloaded it, I did not think that I was going to like this game. Truth be told, the visuals look like they were designed with Mario Paint. But after playing around with it a little bit, this homemade quality started to grow on me.

Before long, it seemed right at home with the kind of game play that Color-Shift was offering. And it is here where I think, for what it is, the game works. In large part because developer RocknRolla Games was able to take random and disparate parts of other games and combine them into a well-blended synthesis that goes down pretty easy.

The gameplay in Color-Shift is a combination of different elements from Pong, Tetris, Space Invaders and Tap Tap Revenge. When the game starts, your objective is to move a colored box left and right on the bottom part of the screen, collecting falling polygon bits in order to earn points.

The catch is that you have to make sure to only collect falling polygons that are colored the same as your box. But not only do the polygons fall at different speeds, some of them also will drift slightly to the left or right, so you always have to be aware of where everything is and make sure you always have an escape route.

If you happen to hit a different-colored box the game will end, unless you have some lives stockpiled. The quicker you can go about dodging bad colors and collecting good colors, the more extra lives you will earn. Whenever you see a star moving by, be sure to try and get it because it's a power-up that will either slow down time, make you invincible, or change everything to the same color for a short time.

When that happened, my strategy was to bust out the windshield wiper method and try to wax on and wax off as many falling polygons as possible. The title of the game comes in whenever there is an actual shift of the color of the box. Each time the box switches colors, there will be a large halo around the box that will collect any polygons that are in the vicinity. So the longer you can last, the more color shifts you will get. That's about it.

Color-Shift is only available on the iPhone right now. But with the rather mundane visuals and simple one-thumb sliding of the gameplay mechanics, it's not the kind of game that would lend itself to the iPad to begin with. For what it is, Color-Shift is a nice little game that's worth a buck if you're looking for a low-stress casual time waster.

The developer might be better off making it free for now if they want to get people through the door, because there's certainly room for improvement. With an update that offers some better visuals and bigger, splashier power-ups, the game could perhaps attract a nice little following.

App Store Link: Color-Shift for iPhone | By RocknRolla Games | Price: $0.99 | Version: 1.0 | 7.2 MB | Rating 4+