paradox shift

Paradox Shift is a first person puzzle action game. As Inspector Carmen Medina from the Department of Time, you must evaluate the use of time travel in the creation of the Grand Canyon Dam. Unravel the conspiracy behind the dam’s construction and race to prevent its collapse. Use only a Time Transport Tool (T3) to instantly shift yourself and tagged objects back and forth between two time periods as you traverse levels and solve puzzles. With no tradiditonal weapons at yoru disposal, evade and distract enemies accross time as you stop them from destroying the dam.

The game was originally a small project in a sophomore year game design class. It was actually a multiplayer board game where each player had to capture the opponents flag. The goal was to create a world where players occupied the same physical space but experienced it differently. The board was drawn in red and blue and each player wore those cheap 3D glasses (swapped lenses so they were all blue or all red) and each player could only see one color. Then each player would abide by the rules of the map that they saw. Eventually Jared and Rowan (the game’s lead designers) took this idea and turned it into a small tech demo in Unreal and we just took off from there.

Our game takes a pretty standard game mechanic, time, and uses it in a new and interesting way. We think giving the players the freedom to play around and time travel whenever they want is pretty unique for game. Most games that use time travel or two worlds limit the player to when they can change from one to the other, we decided we wanted to give the player as much control over this as possible.



Also we put a dam inside the Grand Canyon.

Paradox Shift was about one year of work as part of a game design class at USC, but there was plenty of prototypes before that (like the board game I described above).

Scope! When isn’t that a problem. We had plenty of great ideas that we cut because it was too much. I think we got it right in the end. The motorcycle section that is in some of our trailers was something I said we should cut. However I was outvoted unanimously; I still think the facts were in my favor, but maybe they just wanted to prove me wrong.

Oh man, Paradox Shift has been the name of this game for too long. Honestly it was the first decent idea we came up with. We spent months trying to come up with a new one, but this one stuck so much that we just kept it. All of the other names were terrible, I’d rather not remember them….

Philadelphia, PA

University of Southern California.

Been playing games my whole life, from as early as I can remember on the NES. When I was old enough to realize that I could actually work in video games, I went for it, best decision ever.

The four of us (Jared, Rowan, Clark & myself) met each other while at USC about during freshman year. USC has great programs between the Cinema and Engineering schools and we got along well and decided we wanted to work on Paradox Shift together.

Rayman Origins, I love it!! It’s impossible to play that game and not have a smile on your face. Also NBA 2K12, I’m a sucker for sports games and this one is amazing.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time or maybe Katamari Damacy or…. Ninja Gaiden Black….. no wait. Tecmo Super Bowl. I can’t decide, it’s too tough. I go back and play all of them regularly.

Ice Hockey on the NES. It’s the only game my brother is really good at and I hate giving him the satisfaction of him beating me in it. I still can’t win to this day!

Technically an NES, but I was so young, I’ll go with Sega Genesis as the one I can remember.

Playstation 3.

You mean there are other things besides video games? I’m kidding, honestly I just like to go out and spend time with friends, nothing special, I just like to unwind.