Shell Shift
A downloadable game for Windows
Shell Shift is a 2D Shooter about a special agent that has to fight off waves of enemies by shifting into the bodies of his fallen opponents. Use the different strengths and weaknesses of your enemies to stay alive as long as possible.
Controls:
WASD - Move
Left Mouse - Attack
Holding down Right Mouse - Activate Shift Mode
Release Right Mouse - Shift into the new body
Additional Shell Shift Gameplay Help:
Destroy boxes and collect health packs or shift into enemies to gain back health.
There are 3 different types of enemies. The Pyro, the Blade and the Sniper. Choose wisely. For example the Pyro is very effective against Blades.
Corpses will decay after some time.
From Wave 9 on you will also encounter Elite versions of the characters. They deal more damage and have more health. You can also shift into their bodies and use their advanced strength for some time.
Wave 10+ is a pretty solid performance for a new player.
From Wave 14 on it will get tough with more and more enemies and randomization.
Shell Shift is a prototype and was made as a student project at the Cologne Game Lab. There is no further development planned. There might be some bugs or balancing problems.
Enjoy anyway!
Credits
Jonathan Mannshoven
@Retrific - Programmer, Designer and Art Director
Tristan Hantschel
@TristanArkham - Game Designer and Project Manager
Fabian Donner
@Thunder_Draws - Artist, Character Design and Trailer
Cyrano Kaul @cythemusicguy - Artist & Sound and Music Designer
Kurt Rexrodt - Artist, Environment Design and Background Artist
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Patch 23rd SeptSep 23, 2017
Comments
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Woah!
What engine/library/api did ya'll use!?
Looks awesome!!
Game Maker Studio
Is this game good? Yes!
Is it worth your time? Definitely!
Should you download it? ASAP!
Since this is all custom-created music, could you upload the songs on YouTube or something? gr8 game btw
Thank you.
I think someone did this already. The songs can also be found as standalone files in the game's zip.
I just get a black screen every time I fire the game up. Anyone else dealing with this?
Hello sorry for the late response.
This is a problem with the latest Windows 10 update. Please start the game in Windows 8 compatibility mode.
This looks like a very pretty and very interesting game. Any chance it'll be playable on Mac in the future?
"We made a game!" Cool. "It was for a class project." Neat.
Cut to me actually playing the game. "Holy carp, this is good stuff!" And I mean that, because even though it's a single stage arena game, this is a quality piece of work. The music is rad, the art is clean and has a good level of detail where applicable, and the controls are all pretty solid. The body swap mechanic is interesting as well, especially since you threw in the r/p/s element. A shame it won't be updated or turned into something bigger.
Have a video.
can you do update so that we able to play on xbox controller ?
I would love to know the sound track name
The sound tracks are custom made music specifically for this game. They don't have a name.
Wow, nice sound track
Im a bit hype, what type of music is this <3
What engine was this made in?
Game Maker Studio
yeah I thought so. Im gonna make a game similar to this style sometime soon.
I really loved this
hi, great game! I am a fellow game developer and I was wondering, do you guys make enough money from the donations? How do you guys manage to find such a talented group of developers and artists to collaborate in a game where there is possibly no economical remuneration?
Thank you for calling us talented :D
We're students who developed this project as a semester project and not for profit.
I really loved this game. The rock paper scissors element plays really nicely with the way you balanced each character and that came across without explicitly needing to be told. I genuinely mean it when I say that I would love to see a full game with this mechanic. I say that its genuine because this is the part where I self promote XT
Seriously, I want more. GImme
The game is very good. its kinda like rock paper scissors. Gun beats flames. flames beat sword. Sword beats gun. A thing where you would explore levels to get to the end but the AI would be more "guardy" if you know what i mean would be amazing.
Very impressive how you executed the switching bodies idea. It really made me feel cool to freeze time and appearing on the other side of the screen.
The art was great, soundtrack is really good, and controls felt solid!
The only downsides in my opinion is how little characters there are, and how they were in comparison to the others. The pyro felt incredibly slow. And I know he has that enormous tank on his back, so it makes sense, but I personally feel his speed pushes me away from controlling him. Other enemies were great though!
But that's my thoughts, so don't let this comment pull you away from this game.
That is kind of what makes this a paper rock sissors game, the pyro can easy dispatch many blades, but has a hard time dealing with snipers, I personally found it difficult later on to combat snipers with anything but another sniper.
Pros:
-I had some fun
-Graphics are awesome
-Music too
-Good concept
Cons:
-Can't perfect a swordman with a swordman, maybe I lack skills :P
-characters aren't well balanced
Good job, it's a nice game :)
GREAT SOUNDTRACK
Pretty cool game.
But why have put the retry on R button ? I reload the game with the habitude to reload gun : )
This game was super fun to play. I loved the colors and the fast paced feel to it!
Mac??
HIGHEST WAVE. 22.
The inter-restriction among three types of enemy is a good mechanic.
Excellent game, art is super solid, as are the mechanics. The enemy-triangle deal (blades beat snipers, Snipers beat pyros, pyros beat blades) becomes apparent after the first few waves, but the addition of elite enemies/large mobs of enemies keeps it from getting dull (Which body do you chose when you have 6 blades coming after you AND a bunch of snipers shooting at you?)
Anyways, super fun. ALSO That pixel art in the intro is crazy good.
I absolutely love this game! Honestly, just such a blast playing it, and I hope you guys have just as much fun watching my coverage of it!
Is it just me or is the game SUPER slow? Neat game by the way, really like it. But like I said, it's REALLY SLOW for me.
Probably your pc isn't powerful enough.
Do you have a dedicated GPU? Do you use a laptop?
Do you know how many fps you get?
Yeah, I play on laptop. My laptop is a work laptop, so crappynes is expected...
We really liked your game! The shifting element is super cool! I like that it could be used to not only recover health but could be implemented into fighting strategies (kill guy way over there, lead enemies over here, then shift over there). It almost felt like an RTS at times and that's rad! Make more games!
We made a video about it! Enjoy!
https://youtu.be/5vh6ni3dJZo
hey can you tell me more about the development? what engine did you use? etc and stuff like that?
Hey, Jonathan here :)
I used Game Maker Studio for Shell Shift. I learned a lot about Shaders while working on Shell Shift, a lot of visual effects use simple pixel shaders, for example the reflections, rain, corpses or character lights.
The artists used various programs to create the assets we needed and the music was done by Cyrano using Ableton I think.
The biggest challenge for art and programming was probably the perspective that brought a lot of problems.
We had about 2 months for the development.
its very good i love it and please make more enemies :)
Love to se future updates. I feel a slow bur furius gameplay. May be a little tactic. I like it
Very good effects and the game is felling awesome!!Keep it up guys!!!
LOVELY CONCEPT! would love to see this concept explored even more!
I tried out the game and really enjoyed it. I'd love to see more of this!
My first impressions video on this:
That sound track