This weekend WayForward demonstrated Mighty Switch Force at an event in Los Angeles.  Although still being polished, the five stages on display showed MSF to have a good deal of promise.

MSF is a puzzle-platformer in which you play Patricia Wagon, a cybernetic law enforcement officer tasked with recapturing escaped…girls. (The WayForward representative would neither confirm nor deny if these blondes are convicts, although online documentation identifies them as the Hooligan Sisters.) There are five girls scattered about each stage whom you must recapture before finding your mech to finish the level. Some levels are linear in design, while others are structured as a non-linear arena to explore. At your disposal is your ability to jump, a blaster gun (which lets you shoot horizontally), and your special helmet.

The helmet allows you to phase special blocks into and out of the foreground by tapping the left trigger. This is the primary draw of the game. The level design leverages this mechanic in traditional platforming sequences where you jump and run on these blocks, swapping their planes of existence while in mid-air to progress. But the levels also use the mechanic in more interesting ways. In one level I had to kill baddies to progress, but they were not hurt by my gun. Instead, I had to knock each of them around with my gun to place them in front of a block in the background and then shift the block into the foreground plane, thereby smashing and killing the enemy. Later levels on display also introduced cannon blocks. By placing Patricia or an enemy in front of a cannon block and then shifting the cannon block into the foreground, the character can be hurled as a projectile in the direction the cannon block is facing. These cannons are used, sometimes in succession, to navigate through passageways or guide explosive enemies to breakable walls.

Since Patricia’s move set remains static over the course of the game, the game’s progression and continued appeal ultimately will rest primarily on its level design. Fortunately, the environmental obstacles and tools on display were cleverly exploited through the course of the demo, suggesting the levels will contain a good deal of variety. To further extend the game’s life, playthroughs are timed, and WayForward has also hinted at the possibility of an additional, unlockable mode.

While my time with the game was enjoyable, I found it to have a few rough edges. The timing for the sequential cannon puzzles was very difficult because the action freezes completely while the blocks are shifting phases. In these cannon puzzles I had to swap block phases in quick succession, and the brief pauses made judging the timing based on distance and speed tricky. Further complicating matters was my vulnerability while focused on phase-shift puzzles, as poor timing often resulted in the enemy-turned-projectile exploding into a block or wall in Patricia’s vicinity. At one point I died while attempting to solve one such puzzle, not even cognizant I had been taking damage! The developers seemed to be aware of the issue, so hopefully they can resolve this annoyance before the game is finalized.

Overall the presentation is clean and simple while still visually appealing. The sprite artwork is layered to make subtle but effective use of the 3D screen, and the various characters are amusingly animated. The upbeat, energetic music suits the action, but I found Patricia’s saccharine exclamation ("Stop in the name of the law!") and death shrieks to be grating and repetitive.

WayForward is well versed in the 2D action genre, and Mighty Switch Force is definitely worth keeping on your radar. The demo on display had some quirks to iron out but was still a lot of fun. WayForward has not announced a target completion date for MSF (and ultimately may not have control over when it is released on the eShop), but hopes it will grace 3DS systems in the near future.