Get Shifty – Mr. Shifty That Is
Hotline Miami was a huge hit with a bumping Synthwave soundtrack, but those pesky walls just got in the way of your mayhem – until now.  Physics be damned in the new top-down beat-em-up game from tinyBuild, Mr. Shifty!
Players will take control of Mr. Shifty, a character that appears to have ZERO backstory (even his face is obscured by his red baseball cap), but has all the powers of Nightcrawler and Max Payne with phase shifting and bullet time – and Shifty can whistle like a champ.
The game has the same rules as Hotline Miami, where one shot kills and enemies are abundant.  But instead of feeling very vulnerable, Mr. Shifty feels like a very empowered ninja, focusing on using the environment to its fullest.  It’s also very sadistic when you can pull a trident off a statue and spear three enemies against a wall, or phase shift between two enemies and they shoot each other as you phase shift out (that way, it’s not technically murder).
The bullets aren’t the only thing you’ll have to worry about – from the gameplay at E3, the enemy and environment variation is pretty robust with meaty beefcake men, flamethrowers, laser grids, and exploding barrels.  Mr. Shifty’s arsenal also shifts (see what we did there) from his fists to fun environment objects and what appears to be a steel beam that he holds and uses like Gambit – he’s already got the trenchcoat for it.
The action ramps up as you get more familiar with your powers, negotiating an army of baddies, cutting between walls, Catherine Zeta Jones-ing it through a laser grid hallway like Entrapment, and escaping a room full of exploding barrels that makes you feel like you’re in Michael Bay’s fantasy dream movie!
Mr. Shifty lands on Steam and the Nintendo Switch on April 13th, BUT you can play the Open Beta right now for Steam!