Champion Shift is a Vampire Survivors-like I’ve been having quite a bit of fun with for the last few weeks. That’s partly because it’s a solid top-down auto-shooter with roguelike elements, and mostly because you can transform into a freakin’ car.
The skinny is this: you are one of a number of legendary figures (you start out as King Arthur Pendragon) working together to fight your way through crowds of cyberpunk minions. Mowing down waves of mobs and completing other objectives around each stage’s map will gradually earn you randomised weapon upgrades and abilities, before you take on tougher bosses.
Like Vampire Survivors, shooting is automated, although you can aim certain weapons with a bit more precision depending on their attack style. You can also dash on a cooldown, which is handy for escaping hordes of enemies. Most importantly, though, another button will instantly turn you into a speeding car that can plough through foes and add its own modifications like machine guns, rockets and blades. Your car mode cools down on a fairly generous timer, and I’ve found that I can typically carve my way through enough enemies to collect item drops and keep filling my bar up without needing to shift back to human form for a good while.
Champion Shift has been in early access only a few months, having arrived on Steam in April, but developers SRG Studios have now launched it into a full 1.0 release as of today, June 21st. The full release follows the game’s largest patch to date at the start of the month, which added Jesse James to a roster of mythical heroes already including the likes of Sun Wukong, Athena and Gilgamesh, introduced seven new stages – plus a stage selection option – and relics that can be collected for permanent stat boosts that carry across between runs.
I’ve personally only played by myself so far, which I’ve enjoyed a good bit (thanks to the lovely Jason Coles for putting this on my radar), but Champion Shift can also be tackled with up to four people in online co-op. The separate maps chain together into a set of branching paths, leading up to a final boss – which I am yet to reach – though you can apparently continue for as long as you survive against increasing difficulty levels beyond that, too.
Champion Shift costs only a fiver over on Steam – it’s currently cheaper than that due to a sale, too. If you’re at least somewhat intrigued by the concept of “King Arthur meets Transformers”, I’d say it’s easily worth that buy-in.