The Swapper

The Swapper is an indie puzzle platformer with a gameplay hook which is cleverly married to a grand operatic narrative. Its strange visuals and atmospheric soundtrack augment this vision, creating a wholly unique and cohesive experience. While some of its later puzzles are a bit too fiddly for their own good, and the overall pacing sometimes feels a little off kilter, this is still a space voyage that comes highly recommended.

Although The Swapper was originally released on PC nearly a year and half ago, this does little to dampen its appeal on Wii U; this is a title feels fresh and unique when stacked up against some of the other download games the eShop has to offer. With its unsettling environment, intriguing storytelling and some truly mind-bending puzzles, the entire experience oozes quality.

Few games fully realize their potential. Thankfully The Swapper is able to execute all of its ideas. The challenging and thought-provoking puzzles are only outdone by the rich narrative which will stay in your mind well after the credits roll. The Swapper is a masterpiece that needs to be experienced.

The Swapper is yet another indie coup for Sony, as it is very clearly one of the best puzzle games to come out in years. This is a well-designed experience that has the potential to win over non-puzzler fans.

In most ways this game hardly shows its age (almost 4 years old at the time of this writing), sure the graphics could be slightly cleaner, but the the most important aspects (mechanics, gameplay, and puzzles) hold up quite well. In the same vein as Braid, the core of The Swapper is the geometric and logic challenges, which are not hindered by its age. Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys puzzles, logic challenges, or atmospheric space games, The Swapper is a solid experience, even by 2017 standards.

The Swapper is a fantastic puzzle game that combines a fantastically realised, isolated atmosphere with a minimalist and yet intriguing narrative. Its combination of subtle horror elements and puzzles gameplay make it a game that can be played by anyone of any predisposition, whether they like scarier games or not.

The Swapper is a unique and interesting puzzler, with a story that keeps you intrigued all the way to the end. The clone creating and swapping element to the puzzling is something brand new, and the puzzles themselves are the right balance between too easy and too hard. The game's setting is suitably eerie with music and in-game conversations to match. For £11.99 (or regional equivalent), it feels like the game could be a little longer, but the content of the story and puzzles that you do get, it is still worth swapping your hard earned money for.

Despite a strong first impression, The Swapper is a much worse game than I previously thought. Despite being impressed by its visuals and attention to detail, I hadn't first realized how short and lacking in substance it was, and I always begrudge video games like that being released in the first place.

Taking many tropes from the Metroidvania sub-genre of games, and adding a mechanic all of its own, The Swapper succeeds in creating an interesting world to explore and challenging puzzles to conquer amidst one of the most atmospheric backdrops ever put to a video game.

I am not a religious man by any means, yet despite that a quirky little puzzle/platformer game gave me feelings outside of the one or two I typically register (usually "hungry" and "tired" are about as diverse as my emotional spectrum gets). Using clones to solve environmental puzzles is definitely something we haven't seen on this scale before, and the game is just the right length to prevent the concept from becoming stale.