Mystery Ball's beta launches this weekend, so the final Doodad, the Phase Shifter, couldn't have come sooner! Enabling FRED to shift into an alternate dimension to avoid obstacles and sneak past Frenemies, the Phase Shifter opens up a whole world of new possibilities. This exclusive preview showcases how it can be used to shortcut one of the worlds FRED visits. Be sure to check out the new gameplay video too!

Posted by davidbhowe on Sep 16th, 2011

Mystery Ball's beta launches this weekend! I am thoroughly pumped to introduce FRED to a bunch of new friends for him to work with. He's been terrified lately, and he could use a good lift. With the addition of the final Doodad, the Phase Shifter, he's been talking in gibberish. I think the idea of shifting into an alternate dimension really has a couple of his screws loose. Can you blame him? The guy can barely roll two feet forward without passing out.

So how's it work? Best to show, not tell, right? Let's first take a look at some screenshots demoing the latest Doodad in one of the Grassy Plains worlds, then we can examine the in-game footage.

Here we are in one of the earlier levels of the game: like in all worlds, FRED's main goal is to find the Exit Pipe to dive deeper into this hole he's stumbled into. FRED's spawn point is marked with the yellow arrow. Of course, collecting Bravery Badges is always good and will help him to learn to overcome his three primary fears, but in this demo, we're just concerned with getting to the exit.

For my solution to this world, I've placed a Spring near FRED's spawn (and converted it to an Ultra Spring for more height), a Pulling Magnet at the top ledge, and two Phase Shifters (Red and Blue).

After boosting off the Spring, the Magnet's pulling force takes over and helps him get the rest of the way up.

A quick jump into the Red Phase Shifter takes FRED into the alternate dimension, where he can hide from his Frenemies or avoid obstacles. In this case, we're going to use it to shift through the glass ceiling protecting the Exit Pipe from short-cutters like ourselves!

And that's that, hop in the Blue Phase Shifter to get back to our dimension and down the Exit Pipe FRED goes!

This video shows the Phase Shifter in action, as well as a first look at the Rusty Lab world. Stay tuned - beta launch is imminent! If you're interested in helping test the game, please be sure and contact me soon - I could use one final wave of testers before the launch this Fall.