The Swapper

Imagine a game soup flavored with chunky bits of old school 2D Castlevania, Portal, and BioShock, and you still wouldn't get close to what The Swapper actually is. The Swapper's not quite a platformer; it's a puzzle game, packaged with a brooding-mystery sci-fi story set in space. ?Finnish company Facepalm Games delivers a fascinating, memorable debut.

The game begins with a space shuttle reaching the Theseus research station. You, a lone astronaut, navigate the 2D space and find a "mysterious device" called The Swapper. ?The Swapper lets you create clones of yourself in any point in space. When you see a pressable button, you have to get a clone to stand on it. ?You hold the right-click and release it to create up to four copies of yourself. Even better, point your mouse and left click, you can swap yourself into one of your clones. All of your bodies move in lockstep wit the one that hosts your consciousness. If you move one step to the left, so do all your clones. Your clones can die, but it's not game over unless the one you're currently controlling gets snuffed out. As the station is abandoned, the only way to die is to get crushed by a lowering door or to fall to your death?yes, Thebeus has gravity.

Research Station Theseus, Planet Chori V
The essence of the game is getting to smaller puzzle rooms generously dispersed throughout the desolate space station Thebeus. Each puzzle room is clearly marked with a security orb. Until you procure a specific amount of security orbs, you can't progress. At first they are worth just one orb, but later on they account for more. You need a certain value to be able to activate console panels that open paths to various parts of the research station. There is an illusion of choice, as you can tackle orb collecting in any order within a hub, but you eventually have to solve all puzzles. The map is your primary guiding tool, and it (cleanly?) delineates the nearest teleporter, unexplored area, or orb.

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The puzzles have a steadily-rising difficulty curve, but you may not find yourself stumped until the later ones appear. That said, more systems are added as you advance, deepening the puzzle complexity by with more buttons that you have to stand on simultaneously, with new conditions that interfere with your cloning abilities. For example, red and blue lights sometimes bathe the ship's poorly-lit, cavernous sections, preventing you from either creating clones or swapping within them. ?

For puzzles with several buttons, you have to create additional clones and orchestrate your movements just right, so that you can turn off the red or blue lights which block your access to the orbs. These are just the types of dilemmas you face as you ponder your next move in each increasingly-demanding puzzle set. For the most part, the challenges are not agonizingly difficult (except for a few at the end) and are satisfying to solve.

Moving Through Space
There's a little more to The Swapper than just mental exercise. Memory Terminals litter the area, with short, tantalizing logs left behind by the Thebeus' crew. They'll make you wonder how the Swapper device actually works ? you didn't think it was just a puzzle tool, right? As you tease out the details about the station's past, it becomes clear that at least one crew member stayed on board. Couple that with mysterious rock samples mined from the site dubbed "The Watchers," which seem to have some electric impulses resembling brain activity, and a carefully-crafted narrative begins to permeate the ever-more complex puzzle rooms.

The heavy sci-fi atmosphere is heavy with prolonged isolation and sounds of shuttle doors closing, vents breathing, and space-inspired sounds. It's not monotonous, however; the setting sometimes takes you to lusher, greener spaces, punctuated with wonder-inspiring piano segments. A good pair of headphones is a must.

Despite the deeper story and atmosphere, I didn't always feel entirely immersed in the game world. As you pass a Watcher, cryptic messages show up, but they don't affect you in any way other than giving food for thought. For the most part, I focused on the puzzles at hand, which always were just hubs with sectionalized rooms. If the puzzles were integrated more seamlessly into the level design, instead of being just "challenge rooms," they would lead to more powerful player immersion.

The World is the Limit of Thought
The Swapper's environment is all made from real-life objects like clay, which blends incredibly well with the computer-rendered lights, space elements, and the slightly suffocating sound. The clones' movements and death animations look realistic, even though they're tiny figures. The Swapper holds your attention with questions that alternate between the moral and philosophical, and the more you learn about the crew's fates and the possible ways the Swapper device functions, the bigger the surprise will be from the twists near the end. ??

I do wish that the experience was longer, and that some puzzles were optional. As the orbs began to increase in value, I thought (incorrectly) that perhaps I wouldn't need to solve every ?room in order to progress. That would have been a great solution for those who get stuck on difficulty to progress. Including more puzzles than required would satisfy those wanting greater challenges.

Although it's a short game, there is replay value to The Swapper, which can sustain at least two plays through because of multiple endings and achievements. It's more than the sum of its parts: it's not just a puzzler, mere platformer, or sci-fi tale. It's a meditative, immersive, mostly flawless experience. If you value any of those features, The Swapper is a must-buy and a clear Editors' Choice.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/2bI-R_nqORk/0,2817,2420264,00.asp

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