Shift at Midnight Review (Xbox Series X|S & PC)

Shift at Midnight is a bit like Papers, Please, only, the customers in this particular convenience store are gas-guzzling doppelgängers who, for some reason that is never explained to us, have the power to call upon the Blood Moon and summon eight-legged entities if and when you forget to stop them from taking out their groceries. It’s a strange concept, but stick with us — we’ve only just begun to unpack this oddball horror.

Think of Kiosk, and then pepper it with all of the usual low-poly bits and pieces, and you should have a vague idea of how Shift at Midnight presents its deck of cards. Like your typical first-person psychological horror that blends monotonous chore work with light action and social deduction gameplay, it more or less presents you with a thirteen-leg campaign in which your sole purpose is to meet the nightly quota, earn funds, and purchase medical supplies for your pet. I called mine Knobby — but that’s a whole other story that, frankly, we don’t really need to go through.

It goes like this: you have thirteen shifts, each of which entails a flow of customers, a formal check, and  a simple decision. If you suspect that the customer is a doppelgänger—a person who either lacks the primary characteristics of the person featured on the identity card, for example—then you have a simple job: to pull the gun our from beneath the counter, and to squeeze the trigger, naturally. If, however, you believe that the person before you is who they say they are, then you can bag up their groceries, cash them out, and earn a little extra for your nightly paycheck. But, here’s the catch: if you miss a doppelgänger, they will alter the entities before the end of the shift, and you, being at the center of it all, will need to fortify the store and survive a brief onslaught.

Shift at Midnight is broken up into two parts, with one part involving general store maintenance, such as mopping up blood, disposing of limbs, and stocking shelves with detergent and what have you, and a second part that involves serving customers, checking documentation, asking personal questions, and doing all in your power to prevent a doppelgänger from breaching the threshold to inform an entity. And then, of course, you have the pre-clocking out phase—a time during which you must barricade the doors, build traps, and fend off various creatures. It’s a lot to think about, but then, that’s precisely why it works as a multiplayer game.

Believe me, I tried to tackle the thirteen nights as a lone cashier, but honestly, the whole ordeal lost a lot of its charm after the first seven or eight nights. Don’t get me wrong, it often gave me something new to look forward to, like a serial killer, a twilight ritual out in the woods, or a totally absurd encounter with a gnome on a motorcycle. But then, even with the curveballs, I often struggled to find value in the latter portion of the experience. Simply, I’d clock in, complete the usual checks, and earn minimum wage. I’d then hide in the same sport each evening after boarding up the same doors and sprawling out the same bear traps, and I’d wait. The bus would arrive to take me home, and I’d return the next day to complete the same task.

If there’s one thing that Shift at Midnight did right during the two or three hours that I spent with it, it was keeping me on my toes. In any case, I would have expected to roll up to a familiar checkout to serve the same ragtag crowd. But in Shift at Midnight, a sense of unpredictability brought me to conclusions that I couldn’t quite fathom. In one moment, I’d be mopping up the blood of an intoxicated doppelgänger who only wanted to quench their late-night snack cravings. But in another, I’d be knocking back questionably bad-tasting cups of local lemonade, unleashing bullets at floating monks, and splashing gallons of petrol at starry-eyed drivers. It rarely made a lot of sense, but I was all for the ride.

Of course, I can’t quite bring myself to say that Shift at Midnight is a natural-born horror, because frankly, its kookiness and off-beat humor outweighs its horror infusions in most cases. The characters, for example, are laughably wooden, and the whole experience is severely lacking in jump scares and tender gameplay moments. Though, I can’t quite complain about it. It might not have been its intention to exhume a giggle, yet it works as a comedy. And with friends, it more or less skirts along the lines of a pantomime.

I’ll admit, at no point did Shift at Midnight truly scare me or make me feel uncomfortable. If anything, I spent more time chuckling at the absurdity of it all than quaking in my own boots. After the first shift, it all became a doddle. The only thing that did prevent me from completing my contracted hours was the upgrades and the simple fact that I needed more cash than I could afford to pay for the veterinary bills for my cat, Knobby. But other than that, it was a walk in the park. Granted, it wasn’t quite a picnic, or at least, on the same wavelength as Supermarket Simulator — but it was a lot easier than I anticipated.

Shift at Midnight is definitely a game that shines the brightest under the spotlight of a fully-fledged team. Given that proximity chat plays a huge role in the experience, most of the jump scares and action here are dependent on how you approach each situation as a collective. As a solo player, though, it doesn’t quite hit the same, mainly due to the fact that you’re either surrounded by silence or without the spontaneity of an unhinged teammate. That, in short, is what makes Shift at Midnight the barrel of laughs that it is. It might not be a good horror game, but it does make for a fantastic comedy.

Verdict

Shift at Midnight blends the low-poly humor of Kiosk with the social deduction aspects of Papers, Please to create a mismatched self-serving horror that, beneath the light of its multiplayer world, is a lot of fun to work through. It might not be the scariest co-op game to hit the shelves since The Boba Teashop, but it does make for an oddly unnerving experience, especially in the company of friends who can’t quite differentiate between the common floating monk and the local doppelgänger.

If you have the friends to spare and a couple of spare hours to work with, then I’d recommend giving Shift at Midnight a shot. It might not have a lot of replay value, and it might fall short of its target of being a great horror game. Still, I can give credit where it’s due and say that, in spite of its few minor flaws, there is a surprisingly entertaining game here. The only thing that isn’t quite as entertaining is the gnome. Don’t drink the lemonade, basically.