Grade: C
An arcade game where you possess and control your enemies.
Fusion Shift is a pixel art retro side-scrolling action arcade game. The premise is one I hadn’t seen before and caught my eye. You play as an alien predator who has the ability to control its enemies. The alien itself is weak as a kitten and has no attacks, but its power comes from possessing its enemies.
With each level, you are dropped into the scene, and your first task is to take control of an enemy. Then, you use that person’s weapon against all of their allies. After taking out all of the enemies, you have to kill the body you’ve been inhabiting as well, and that takes some creativity since you don’t have any weapons yourself. Throwing the possessed creature into spikes or water or outer space works fine for that, though.
Fusion Shift was a quick playthrough, and I got through the game in about an hour. The art style was lacking, and the story itself left some holes, but the game was bug-free with solid controls. The developer provides it to the world for FREE, so it’s worth a shot to pick up if you want an hour of distraction.
Art and story were lacking
While I was interested in the game’s premise, the art for the main character ruined the vibe the developer was going for. You play as an alien predator, but the grey floating smiley face doesn’t inspire fear. This floating emoji guy can stop time (but only for a short amount of time, which seems a little idiosyncratic), and that stop time ability is a simple flash of white on the screen. Lastly, when you inhabit a creature and take them over, the animation on that is non-existent. You schlorp right in with nary a fuss on screen. I think leaning into the main character’s design and making it “cooler” would have elevated Fusion Shift a lot.
Beyond the art style, the story was limited. I think calling this alien a “predator” was the wrong flavor. Maybe it would have been better to have the alien be the last of their species and hiding while being hunted by poachers. Perhaps these poachers were trying to collect their alien parts to sell as a healing balm on the black market? Instead of building out the world, there were some easy tropes that Fusion Shift leaned into instead, which was ok. However, the game could have turned into something much more colorful if it had a stronger narrative behind it.
Overall Impression
Why did I choose Fusion Shift out of the 947 left to play in the Itch.io bundle? Well, it looked like the graphics would work on my old laptop, and it had a cool name. It sounded cool in theory, but in implementation, it’s not overly thrilling.
The controls and gameplay were well-designed, and nothing adverse to report on that end, but the story and art didn’t hold up. Still, though, it’s provided as a free download and made by a single developer as a passion project. So it’s worth a shot for that reason alone.
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