Sometimes taking cues from past ideas end up badly – it might be because one certain style end up copied in a 1:1 ratio unsuccessfully, or because the game is not in sync with its inspiration. Fortunately, The Swapper managed to avoid both of these. As a sci-fi platformer puzzle game, it seeks into the future, while being present in the present, pardon the pun. As a PS Plus title, it’s absolutely recommended to check it out…

Escaping from a space station… I think I heard this story somewhere, maybe it’s from Super Metroid – oh wow, this game has been out for two decades now? How time flies… -, which happened to have the same intro. It plays out differently though!

Why is this contradiction? While the story is easy as a wooden cartwheel, the gameplay itself isn’t. Being based on Metroidvania elements (going back and forth to discover new segments with new abilities, check!), it’s still managing to have new aspects, bowing deeply in front of the player…

A hobby project

It’s unbelievable how these Finnish guys created this game at Facepalm Games – they have no reason to facepalm though. Not even because of the port, because that was made by a British team called Curve Studios.

So why is it unbelievable? Think about it; this whole project started out as a hobby in their free time while being students. It successfully got a financial boost on Indie Fund, and so, the game was born…

May this be a prime example for all creative minds out there – sometimes it’s just one spark that can explode into success, as proven by The Swapper…

Nomen est omen

Most of the time the games are named after their main hero(in)es, but there are exceptions when their main item/weapon christens the game – a good example for this would be last year’s successful Transistor, or our current topic of this review. The Swapper is a useful tool that can clone the player. Yeah, we can copy ourselves a few times in order to escape from the space station in order the solve these puzzles alone, or… together?!

We will have to swap between… us (or you?) to progress, underlined by the narration as well – this also keeps going on during solving some of the tasks, marching towards our targets. Or yours. (Okay, this cloning aspect makes things confusing!)

The thing that can make things worse is the lifetime of our clones. Let’s face it, their duration is very short, and this brought up three thoughts while playing the game through. First off, isn’t it a bit weird? We keep dying over and over, which led me to the second thought: what exactly was Facepalm Games thinking during the development? Is this supposed to be a future sight of the humanity in the way of a tasty game…? Will this really be our future? We might never know. The third thought of mine was the way how the game scrubs our mistakes into our faces – it could be a bit annoying in the long run.

Always look into the light

The game isn’t as easy as I was describing it so far! Always focus on the light beams, because they will limit us in different ways. Remember the three colors: the blue light disables our cloning ability, the red light stops the ability of swapping between… us, and the purple light is the icing on the cake: it combines the two limitations. By the time we reach the purple lights, you might think about how actually the game represents itself: succeeding really feels good, but failing is absolutely miserable, especially if we mess up repeteadly at one point. The last time I felt this way was back when I was playing Rogue Legacy, although that game never really took itself, proving this point in the characters’ unique abilities…

Clayful

The Swapper has stunning visuals – it’s actually based upon digitalized clay modelling, reminding me of Skullmonkey all the way from the nineties. It looks unique with its sci-fi design, and it sounds very detailed in the audio aspect as well. The combination is brilliant.

As The Swapper is free for PS Plus subscribers, it’s simply recommended to check it out. Don’t let the original release date (2013 on PC) disturb you, this is an artistic game with a thoughtful story. It might be a bit too artsy for some, but still, 2015 lifted off with a nice platformer…

-V-

Editor: Facepalm Games

Developer: Facepalm

Genres: 2D, platform, action,

Publication: January 2015