LinkShift Is a New Colourful Puzzle Game for Tinkerers and Pixel Junkies

LinkShift is simple. It’s a tech puzzle action game, according to the developer Tim Overvliet, who is a seasoned game developer having worked in the AAA games industry for more than 10 years. Before this, he released his first solo project, Arabilis, in 2022.

LinkShift has a bunch of colourful puzzle pieces

It’s an arcade puzzle game that mixes classic puzzles with roguelike. You link Nodes together to create big combo chains. LinkShift throws randomized Boosters, upgrades, and special joker-type Nodes called Relics.

The Relics can bend or straight-up change the rules, while Boosters can be upgraded. So, a run can slowly turn into one of those situations where you start with a fairly normal puzzle game, but end up doing things that feel completely unfair.

There’s also a lot of action, strategy, and deep scoring mechanics involved. The main goal is to experiment with randomized Boosters and upgrades, unlock powerful Relics, find combinations between them, and see how far you can push everything.

LinkShift has three different game modes, including more relaxing casual modes. There’s an Exploration Mode if you want to get deeper into the strategy. There are also new unique Relics to unlock, new Boosters, new levels, grids, and backgrounds, plus new Avatars. The game has global leaderboards too.

According to Tim Overvliet, LinkShift was inspired by Japanese puzzle game classics like Lumines and Meteos. Visually, LinkShift goes for fully handcrafted psychedelic graphics with a custom soundtrack. The game leans into a pixel-heavy, colourful puzzle-game vibe.

LinkShift is available on the Google Play Store for $1.99. There are no in-game purchases, no ads, and no data gathering. At launch, it comes with more than 15 Relics and more than 50 upgrade Boosters.

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