The demo of Shift At Midnight adds excitement and innovation to a classic style game to be enjoyed by chill gamers

If you’re anything like me, you’d spend hours searching for a game that doesn’t hurt your wallet. Ever since the demo version of Shift At Midnight was released free on Steam, it has been an immediate go-to game. It’s enjoyable, has good game design, and is extremely fun with friends. Completing the demo takes roughly an hour but the short length doesn’t take away from the fun and excitement it provides. 

Shift at Midnight is planned to fully release on Steam sometimes between April and June. In the meantime, the developer Bun Muen worked with Kwalee (a video game publisher and developer) to get the game out early and release a demo.  

The game is set in 1993, where players are spawned in as a gas station employee, working the nightshift along with your fellow co-workers. You stock shelves, clean messes, and take out the trash. But most importantly, you serve customers and determine whether they’re human or not. 

The design perfectly encapsulates a 90s retro look. A soft 3D quality, low-poly style, with dark lighting intensifies the mood. This gives off a freaky feeling of never knowing what is going to happen next. The simple visual style makes the gameplay enjoyable and consistent.

The game is a hybrid of genres being both a job simulation game and a spot the inconsistency type. Shift At Midnight isn’t just another spot the doppelganger and win, it’s a business too. 

You gain money from each sale which you can use to buy products, traps, and weapons, turning each decision into a strategic balance of profitability and survival. Given a gun under the counter, the employees must decide if the customer is a human or not. If the players think the customer is fake, they use the weapon to shoot the customer, crossing their fingers that they didn’t just take down an innocent person. Every human killed results in money lost which will affect the players as the game progresses. Meanwhile, any doppelgangers who survive the shift become threats at the end of the shift. 

As of now, the demo provides three nights with five to seven customers per night. While it may seem short, each customer comes with their own backstory, ID, and unique character design that may or may not line up with their ID. Players can check IDs on the staff computer to see how the customer would usually act and what they’d wear. Each non playable character has a phrase when they walk up to the counter that you can fact check. The game gives players descriptions of the customer, and you can question them about inconsistencies in their appearance and ID. This is the most important mechanic in the game, as it lets you and your friends play detective, working together to keep the streets safe. 

However, these aren’t the only tools that are used to detect imposters, as another tool is introduced on night two or three. 

An emotion detector is added to the cashier’s desk, which is an interesting item that I’ve never seen in a game before. Based off the customers responses, you’d get a grasp of how they’re feeling. Using context clues, the emotion detector is a nice add-on to the detective side of the game. As you progress, the game provides more opportunities for the player to slip up with all these minor details that could be missed deciding whether you make or lose profit.  

At the end of the night, you’ll find out if you’ve let any imposters through. If not, you’ll complete all your shift tasks and go home to finish the night. If you did serve an imposter, you’d see the repercussions when the game tells you to set up a defense to protect your gas station and your life. The players will unlock a secret area, a weapon stash where everyone can grab guns to shoot the monster. You get wooden planks to board up doors, windows, and vents to try and keep the monster out as well as using traps and explosives to stun and damage it. 

This feature is awesome with a real consequence to letting an imposter through. You must fight for your life in the case of the imposter being loose. It’s not an instant loss or an instant win. You and your friends must strategize to eliminate this shapeshifter monster before it tears you apart. The monster also uses hearing to find you through sounds coming from your microphone. So, you can hide and surprise attack the monster without it noticing but you can’t run, otherwise, it will catch you. 

This part of the game drives the excitement. With eerie sounds and frightening deaths, the fight to the death caps off your night with a fun but tense battle. 

I personally look forward to this game coming out in 2026. With all the fun and innovative ideas already showing up in the demo version, I anticipate that the full version will be even more complex and surprising than what we’ve seen so far.

cover image: Screenshot by Paul Anderson