Code Shifter (2020) — Release Date, Cheats, Price & Requirements

Code Shifter

- Iconic ASW characters remixed in 8-bit pixel art! Characters from all the iconic Arc System Works franchises, including Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, and the River City series, all meet in a 2D pixel art action…

57 29 January 2020

What Code Shifter is

Code Shifter is a fighting game developed by Arc System Works and released in 2020. It is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC (Microsoft Windows). It runs on Unity.

The premise, in the publisher's words

You're a video game developer, and the deadline is quickly approaching! The story takes place in the development offices of a software company, "Awesome Rainbow Corp". Trouble arises just as you're gearing up to release the final version of the game, many mysterious bugs are occurring, and time is running out! To deal with this situation, a programmer, Stella, whips up a debug program: "Code Shifter", that let's her avatar "Sera" dive into the program and start fixing things up. Will Stella and her coworkers be able to find the origin of these bugs and deliver the game before the launch date?

Description from the publisher · source

How it plays

It is played from a bird view / isometric perspective. Its themes are action and science fiction. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component. Available modes: Co-operative, Multiplayer and Single player.

Where it sits in the Guilty Gear series

Code Shifter is the 25th of 47 entries we hold in the Guilty Gear series. It arrived 8 months after Guilty Gear 20th Anniversary Pack. The next entry was Guilty Gear: Strive - Ultimate Edition in 2021. Its critic score of 57 is 13 points below the series average of 70. The highest-rated entry is Guilty Gear: Strive - Nintendo Switch Edition at 100.

See all 47 Guilty Gear games in release order →

How it was received

Code Shifter holds a critic score of 57 out of 100. That places it above 19% of the 981 rated fighting games in our database, which average 68. Games released in 2020 averaged 73, so it scored 16 points below the year average.

What it launched against

Code Shifter launched on 29 January 2020, within three weeks of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Dreams, Besiege and Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot. All of them reviewed better. It arrived 7 years into the PlayStation 4's life, so it was built for hardware developers already knew well.

Released around the same time: Yakuza: Like a Dragon, Dreams, Besiege, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot.

Code Shifter — frequently asked questions