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Shifter’s Box

This is a little gem of a freeware game. A one man effort from Ben (304) Chandler, now of Wadjet Eye fame, admittedly from a while ago when his artwork wasn’t quite up to the standards you see today in Technobabylon etc. but still pretty good looking!

You play as Sally, a young lady out for a walk who comes across a mysterious box, apparently just left out in the open with no discernable purpose or owner. Sally decides to investigate…

Naturally, this is no ordinary box and Sally finds herself transported to other strange worlds with a backstory of war, robotics and almost magical pseudo-scientific power. Can she discover what the box is and find her way home?

Gameplay-wise, this may appear to be little more than a series of “escape the rooms” and to some extent, that is exactly what it is. However, it is a long way from the boring “find the key to open the door” type gameplay you might expect from escape the room type games. Each room has one or more puzzles which must be completed to advance and these are varied, imaginative and not necessarily as straight forward as they may first appear. From catching a floating jellyfish in a strange floating mechanical world to fixing a lift to manipulating a note on some strange pipes on an island in a yellow sea, there is no small amount of variation, both puzzle wise and graphically.

It has had a new soundtrack since first release and is overall a lovely little package of puzzles, stylised art and goodness.