The Swapper (PC) - Review

Looking at The Swapper cover art, The game didn't look particularly appealing to me but I still wanted to try it out. At first I thought it was another survival horror game that would give me some mild jump-scares (which I hated). Then came Humble Bundle 11 featuring The Swapper among other good Indie games. And for the price of whatever-I-wanted, Naturally, I tried it out. 


The Swapper, developed by Facepalm games and released 31st May 2013 for PC, was classified as an "atmospheric - puzzle platformer". I absolutely did not know what that was suppose to mean. But after I finished the game, I thought to myself that if this is an atmospheric-puzzle platformer, then Give. Me. More. 

You start out the game as the repair crew of a downed space station, Theseus. While you're in the damned shuttle, you discover the kinds of dealings that the crew in the shuttle was facing. The crew of the ship have found an alien being in the form of rocks. Rocks that can communicate with one another. In the abandoned space station, you come across another person who has a plan to fix everything, with your help of course. That's all I'm going to say about this 4 - 5 hour game since the story is one of the main reasons you should play this game. Let's just say there will be some tough decisions to make towards the inevitable ending. 

When I hear "puzzle-platformer" I always think of colorful and bright games like Fez, or Braid. The Swapper has a more serious tone to it and creates this unique sense of calm and uneasiness at the same time. Perhaps it has something to do with the mild soothing piano pieces that play throughout the different areas of the abandoned Theseus. Throughout the game, you'll find beautifully hand-crafted environments that just has that extra effort put into them. Whether it's a the lush, green gardens of the space station or the mining station where the sentient rock-beings get pulverised, there's a hight amount of polish in the visuals. 

The graphics are definitely not of the AAA category but you'll often find yourself thinking that a Triple A company could have made something like this. 

"The only 2 words I'd used to describe The Swapper. Thought-provoking."

Gameplay, however, is what The Swapper is ALL ABOUT. Through the short 5 hour single player, the only thing you'll be doing is puzzles, puzzles... and more puzzles. The game does a good job at introducing you to the Swapper mechanics by having you use only 1 or 2 clones to solve the puzzle. As the game gets deeper and deeper, the puzzles too ramp up in difficulty. Walking into a new puzzle halfway into the game, There WILL be some head-scratching and at times, extremely frustrating moments. But the sense of satisfaction that The Swapper gives players after completing a challenging puzzle is unmatched. 

The game puts on rules upon rules that make the puzzles more challenging. For example, The red area's are where you can create clones but not swap into their bodies where as the blue areas are where you can swap into clone's bodies but you can't create clones. Everything is made even more challenging with switches that turn off certain lights. 

An easy puzzle will generally look like the picture to the right. Yes, that's an easy puzzle. Anyone who's played The Swapper would also agree.

"Brain-straining puzzles, Calm music and high reward value."

Solving puzzles earns you these orbs. The harder the puzzle then the more orbs you get. And you're going to need them because the orbs are used to help you advance through the story. 

What I really liked about the game was that towards the short and unpredictable end, You actually have to acquire ALL 124 orbs to go through the last stage of the game. You'll feel the sense of relief and satisfaction, and at the same time, anxiety when you collect the last orb because you don't know what's going to happen next. The puzzles aren't necessarily difficult to solve, rather, they require you to study the environment, see which switch does what, and from there you make up a strategy. There'll be more "This goes here, and that's how you get it" moments than the occasional "OH-YEAH!!" in this puzzle platformer. 



Throughout the game, you'll stumble upon these short written messages left by the crew. These messages help piece the story together, giving you bits and pieces that tells you of what happened to Theseus. Passing by the rock-beings also make everything distorted and all you see are the thoughts of the Rocks. It took a while for me to realize that those were the thoughts of the rocks. The thoughts tell you about what its like to be broken up from their other fellow beings and you can feel how lost and hopeless these creatures have become. 

Overall, if anyone's wondering whether The Swapper is worth the price of admission, I'm here to tell you that if puzzle platformers are your thing and you want an engaging story, Then you should think about getting this. I know I didn't include any downsides in the review because the only downside for me was that the puzzles are at times, way too difficult. But I suppose that's what the developers are going for. You'll have to make one out of 2 decisions in the game, but the game is good, and short enough that you'll play it again to find out what happens if you chose otherwise. 

Final Score - 8.0 / 10

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