The Swapper

If there’s beauty in desolation, then it’s a commodity The Swapper has in spades. With locations and sets modelled in clay, Facepalm’s sombre puzzle-platformer has some amazing textures, whilst lighting and ambience give an eerie atmosphere that makes it sing with a ghostly beauty all of its own; no small feat in the crowded indie market. Thankfully it doesn’t have to rely on visuals alone, based as it is on a rather ingenious and mind-warping game mechanic.

Taking control of an un-named astronaut, whose stature is dwarfed by the abandoned space station he/she is tasked with exploring, players are armed with a, let’s say, cloning torch. Shine the torch on a suitable location and you can make up to four clones of yourself, switching ‘consciousness’ between your dopplegangers whilst controlling all in tandem. Initially you’ll use your personal army to cross chasms in order to trigger weight-sensitive switches that open doors, but you’ll soon find your clone gun can perform all manner of vertiginous and complex acts once you let your mind adjust.

This is what The Swapper does best – building a world around a core idea that is simple and incredibly effective. It’s not a game that holds your hand either, with the little in the way of exposition. You’ll have to work things out for yourself rather than be shown a cumbersome tutorial, which all adds to the atmosphere and the overarching feeling of isolation. It’s also not a game that gets heavy on ethics either, despite the rather cavalier way you will end up treating your clones. That’s an issue for you to wrestle with yourself.

The ongoing mystery of the abandoned vessel is slowly revealed through the environment, along with some long-dead mayday messages and other subtle cues. Like Portal before it, you’ll find yourself absorbing the story without even realising it. There’s some gentle guidance via a handy map and the occasional sentient bit of contact but overall The Swapper comes built-in with a cold, hard sci-fi feel that would probably make Arthur C. Clarke proud.

Yet there is a limit to the profundity and it will probably hit most players mid-way through. Once the atmosphere and cloning mechanic have become the norm, The Swapper plays out as a series of puzzle rooms in much the same way as the original Portal. But whilst Valve’s masterpiece made sense of its heavily structured environment by playing it out as a game within a game, The Swapper has no such elegant get-out clause.

Still, it’s a small price to pay for what is otherwise a smart and engrossing tale tied in with a neat bit of sci-fi hokum. Unlike its multiple, memory-addled protagonists, The Swapper is a one-of-a-kind game that will likely stay with you for some time.