Shift is a 3rd person racing game that plays with perspective. The player is on-foot running and jumping between surfaces in a way similar to Mirror's Edge. However, depending on the camera's view, the player can jump on top of a skyscraper in the background in the same way that they can jump onto a park bench in the foreground.

The camera is easily controlled by the player by using the mouse to control its orbit. It does not directly follow the player however, but lags slightly behind as though accelerating towards them. This creates the potential for the perspective jumping effect. As the player makes a perspective jump, of course they have shifted a great distance from the camera. To smoothen any camera movement, a motion blur and a slow start and finish to the movement occurs. Additionally, as a perspective jump would cause a change in character size, the game should predict just after jumping where the player would approximately land, and start shrinking or increasing the player's size accordingly.

The objective of the game in a single-player mode is to beat vehicles far quicker than a regular running speed to a finish point across a city or or even a state, such as a supercar or a jet plane. In a multiplayer mode is it simply to beat other players, as one would expect.

Image source Greg DuBois, retrieved 29/07/2016 from https://www.flickr.com/photos/gregdubois/15551643730/