Shift released for iPhone

We covered the flash version of Armor Games-developed Shift in our flash roundup a while back. The silhouette polarity platformer caught our attention by violating expectations of what counted as floors and corridors in its rapidly rotating world. Now iShift has found its way onto the iPhone, one of the few gaming devices out there that can tell when it has been inverted.

Don’t get too excited, though. Although iShift lets you use the accelerometer to tell the game when to shift between the inverted world and the normal one–well, I hesitate to call the other one normal–it just uses the same waggle controls you know and loathe instead of letting you flip the device.

The cool interface design instead comes from an unexpected source: Armor Games has figured out workable platforming controls for the iPhone. Mobile gamers have probably already noticed that the trouble with touch screens is the lack of tactile feedback. If you want to have two directional buttons and a jump button, you have to look at your hands to figure out if you’re actually hitting the one you intend. iShift deftly sidesteps this problem by having only two directional buttons; you jump by pressing both at the same time or by tapping the second button while you run. It feels just as responsive as a keyboard for Shift, and hopefully other developers will take note.