5 years after its release, Shift Trap receives an enhanced edition! This great cart by Sol was held back by sound design that wasn't on the same level of polish as the rest of the game. I loved this game and wanted to tighten it up just a little bit to create the definitive version.
SHIFTTRAP - Enhanced improvements:
• Entirely new music composed by me!
• Removed the constant banging of the gears in the background.
• More pleasing sound effects.
• Added difficulty toggles in the menu between normal and hard.
• Cutscene timing and writing was tweaked to be more concise.
• Several new sound effects added to cutscenes.
• Three levels were tweaked slightly to improve the difficulty curve (levels 2, 11 and 21)
• The duration of the hourglass energy was increased to make it more useable and fun.
Changes explained in detail:
• Added difficulty toggles in the menu between normal and hard. The hard mode didn't trigger correctly in the original cart any more likely because of a PICO-8 update. Originally it was supposed to be a sort of new game+ that would happen automatically when restarting after you beat the game. As mentioned, It didn't work anymore. Now it can be accessed without needed to beat the game by way of new menu options. Note: the game must be reset for the difficulty change to take effect. That's why the menu items say "Normal (Reset)" and "Hard (Reset)". If difficulty is changed, the game will still resume on the same level after the reset. If changed to hard mode mid-way through the game, you understandably can't get the "secret" message for getting all 30 scrolls if you skipped some scrolls because you played previous levels on normal mode. The scrolls are only in hard mode.
• Cutscene timing and writing was tweaked to be more concise. I felt like too much of the games' plot wasn't explained in game. Now there's a couple of added lines explaining who Nina is and what the goal of the game is etc.
• Cutscene audio was reworked to be more fleshed out with several added sound effects to help sell what is happening in the scene.
• The duration of the hourglass energy was increased to make it more useable. This change reduces the overall difficulty of the game a little. It's now roughly 1.75 times its previous duration. I landed on this amount because it adds enough to make it more useful but not enough to make it anywhere near game breaking.
Detailing the 3 levels that were changed:
• Level 2: Moved the scroll up one space (only effects hard mode).
It’s so early in the game that the difficulty to get it in that original position seemed too advanced considering it's the first scroll in the game. One block up is more doable so early on.
• Level 11: The difficulty spike on this level was originally too severe IMO. One red block near the top was changed to a standard block and two red blocks at the bottom near the end gear were removed. The red block near the top seemed a bit too difficult at this stage of the game on normal or hard modes. The two red blocks at the bottom were too punishing in hard mode. To jump between those two red blocks required a pixel perfect alignment below after you’d already done the entire level. This alignment seemed too finicky considering the amount of movement the character makes from a single press of left or right movement.
• Level 21: The only level that was heavily reworked. This level introduces the no-stick ice mechanic and before this level was noticeably easier than previous levels in normal mode. It also didn’t force you to see the new mechanic clearly enough in my opinion. I tried to make that mechanic even more obvious and made the difficulty hopefully a bit more consistent with prior levels. That said, it still keeps the main concept and flow of the original version of this level.
Story:
After a freak laboratory accident, ninja-in-training Nina finds herself trapped in an alternate dimension where the walls shift each time she jumps. Now she must collect the scattered gears to fix this shattered world and escape! But with 32 challenging stages to outwit, that will be no easy task...
Original description from Sol in 2020:
"hey all!! sol here. it's been a while since my last game, but I haven't been resting on my laurels. this time around, I've made a puzzle-platformer with a focus on fast gameplay and a novel mechanic-- each time you press the jump button, the walls will shift between the foreground and background! you can also cling to walls and jump off of them to reach greater heights. I've built a lot of really tricky puzzles around this, so I hope y'all enjoy!"
Original release by Sol: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=74037#p
Obviously, all credit for this great little game goes out to Sol! I hope you all enjoy this enhanced version of Shift Trap!
Really fun! Only has (in my opinion) problem that (O) is jump not the up arrow. But besides that a great game.
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