INTRO:
Sometimes, there are games that are notable for doing incredibly different things, yet eventually fall back to disappointingly typical designs. The Swapper is one such game. Almost each of its aspects is a surprise at first, yet it is not an entirely revolutionary game.
PREMISE & NARRATIVE:
The Swapper does not start with an exhaustive preamble. Rather, the player is shown the player character – presumably a human in a space suit – being jettisoned out of a space station. He/She lands on a celestial body that is little more than a (seemingly) lifeless dustball, but soon after finds the means to teleport back to the space station.
(The player character’s gender is established much later, though it turns to be a matter of little consequence.)
The player is led along, not knowing what the player character’s actual goal is other than to get from one place to another. Eventually, the player discovers that the space station – named “Theseus” – is a research vessel. (The significance of its name is only clear far into the story.)
Specifically, it had been studying seemingly sentient rocks, each of which is telepathic. The key element in the study is the use of the eponymous “Swapper” device, which can transfer sentient minds about as well as create copies of its wielder near instantaneously.
As is typical of research vessels in sci-fi stories, the Theseus has been struck by a calamity; an attempt to communicate and learn from the rocks has gone terribly awry.
Presumably (though there is a plot twist later), the player character is a survivor who is either trying to salvage things or just escape. To do so, he/she will have to use the Swapper, which by the time has already garnered a rueful reputation.
For more than half of the story in the game, there will be exposition on the rocks and the research on them. Despite the game being named after the eponymous Swapper, the story-telling is centred around the rocks (which are quite dumb, despite their penchant for philosophy and theorization).
The Swapper is briefly described as a by-product of the research. Yet, there is little else about it that is mentioned in the story. Even if its effect of swapping minds is not entirely consistent, as the player would find out after discovering the true nature of a certain other character.
In fact, perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the narrative is not explicitly delivered at all. This is the trepidation of using the Swapper to get through fatal hurdles; progress is achieved by leaving many clones behind, dead or alive.
THE SWAPPER:
The most prominent element of the gameplay is the titular Swapper. Initially, in the tutorial stage, it only creates mindless copies of the player character that mimic their creator. The copies will be elaborated further later.
Eventually, the player character finds a module that can be inserted into the Swapper, thus giving it the ability to allow the wielder to swap between the clones. There will be further elaboration on swapping later, because it is integral to the gameplay (and the story too).
If there is any problem with the gameplay elements concerning the Swapper, it is that it does not have any further upgrades beyond the aforementioned module. There is also no narrative reason as to why the Swapper does not have the swapping module in the first place (though it is implied that it had been deliberately removed by people who are terrified of it).
“COPIES OF COPIES OF COPIES”:
The copies of the player character mimic what the player character does, regardless of where they are; if the player character jumps, they jump, and so on. They also have Swappers, but for some reason, theirs are not usable. The clones are blocked by obstacles and are killed by hazards, just like the player character would be.
If obstacles block them from mimicking the player character, they will not do that. This is actually of importance to the solutions for some puzzles. For example, the player could use obstacles to alter the distance between the player character and the clones, or between the clones and each other.
The player can have up to four clones operational at any time; the Swapper cannot make any more. To make any further clones, the player must either have the clones absorbed or eliminated by hazards. (Hazards will be described in their own section.)
ABSORPTION:
The player character – or rather, the body that is housing the will of the player character – can absorb the clones by coming into contact with them. The clones have to be very close though; at the very least, they have to be less than a fifth of their model’s width in proximity to the player character, if they are on the same platform. If they are not, their torsos have to overlap each other before absorption can happen.
This mechanism is of particular importance much later in the game, when absorbing clones is the main way to free up cloning options due to the paucity of hazards.
SWAPPING:
Swapping is not an instantaneous and always available option. To swap between bodies, the wielder has to point the Swapper at the body that the player wants him/her to switch to. Then, the Swapper will fire a light-distorting beam. The line of fire must be clear; the beam is stopped by anything except thin air. The beam cannot go through red light either. (There will be further explanation on the lights later.)
LACK OF NARRATIVE REASON FOR CLONES:
If there is any issue with the clones, it is in the narrative explanation for them, or the lack of it. None of the in-game memory logs and messages from the Watcher rocks explain how the Swapper is capable of creating clones out of thin air, why the clones mimic the wielder, or why there is a limitation of four clones. An even bigger question comes up much later in the game, near the finale, when the player character’s true origins are revealed (or, rather, implied).
The story does not explain how the wielder could reabsorb the clones either. It also does not explain why the mote-filled lights can dispel clones.
With these gaps in the story-telling, the most that the story-telling did is to raise philosophical questions of what constitutes a sentient mind. Considering that this concerns the Swapper’s swapping ability only, the story can seem unsatisfactory to people who prefer to have a narrative reason behind every story element.
SPACE TO CREATE CLONES & TIME SLOW:
Before creating a clone, the player has to hold down the control input to make a clone. While doing so, the player can see a visual indicator that shows where a clone can be created, if there is space.
The visual indicator also includes the edges of a wedge that expands outwards from the wielder; this is intended to inform the player of the space that is needed to create a clone. Obviously, if the arc encompassed by the wedge underneath the aiming cursor is less wide than the height of a clone, the clone cannot be created.
Holding down the control input to make a clone slows time considerably, somehow. The player will need this convenience in order to get past levels which involve a lot of falling or moving hazards.
A clone is created when the control input to do so is released. However, this also means that the time-slow effect is removed too. This can be a problem if there is an obstacle that has to be overcome by projecting multiple clones and swapping to them in a rapid sequence. Fortunately, there are very few of such obstacles.
Perhaps the game could have done better by having separate control inputs for slowing down time and for creating a clone.
LIGHTS:
For whatever narrative reason (which is not mentioned anyway), there are lights all around the space station and other places which hamper the use of the Swapper.
There are red-hued lights, which block the travel of the swapping beam. An interesting thing to note here is that as long as the business end of the Swapper is not immersed in the red light, it can still fire the swapping beam even if the wielder is well within the red light.
Next, there are blue-hued lights, which prevent the creation of clones in them. Clones, however, can move through the blue-hued lights.
Then, there are purple/pink lights, which are a combination of both red and blue lights. In some cases, they occur when blue and red lights overlap each other. More often than not, the solutions in these cases require the player to turn off one of the constituent lights in order to make progress.
CHECK-POINT LIGHTS AND DOORS:
There is a type of light source that is characterized by large visible motes floating around in its light (which happens to be white). When a clone moves into this light, it is dispelled, thus freeing an option to create another clone. The playthrough’s single save-slot is also automatically updated when this happens.
Throughout the space station, there are doors that separate levels from each other. If the player character walks through such a door into the next section, all clones still in the previous section are dispelled. This means that the player can use doors to reset attempts at overcoming whatever obstacles that are in a level.
TELEPORTERS:
Apparently, human technology has advanced to the point that teleporters are apparently devices that are not even remarked upon in the story.
Anyway, teleporters are meant to be shortcuts from one segment of the station to another. The player will still need to do some running about after exiting from the teleporters, but the teleporters do save a lot of time that would have been spent platforming.
As are typical of such devices in video games, teleporters are only activated after the player character has come across them for the first time.
There are two types of teleporters. The massive ones allow teleportation between any of them. The small ones are connected in fixed pairs and are either used for maze-like puzzles or just to get to rooms with puzzles.
HAZARDS:
The space station is a derelict that is slowly degrading below boundaries of safety. Therefore, there are hazards all over the interior of the space station.
The most common of these hazards is gravity itself, or to be more precise, the lack of any way to ascend heights or to prevent falls. Presumably, things like ladders and staircases are no longer around, though it is difficult to believe that they could disintegrate before the rest of the interior. (There are also no signs that such structures existed in the first place.)
There are a few operational elevators, but these pose hazards too. If the player is not careful about where the player character is standing, he/she can be crushed by a descending elevator that had been called just earlier.
There are also bulkheads, which for some reason, are operated by floor switches that have to be stepped on. The player will likely have to use clones to stand on the switches. Since they move away if the player character moves, there is the risk of getting crushed by bulkheads when their corresponding switches are no longer pressed.
Fortunately, most of the hazards can be and are intended to be circumvented by the use of the Swapper and the clones (who are likely to be killed by the hazards when the player leaves them behind).
GRAVITY SWITCH FIELDS:
There are places where the gravity controls of the space station appear to have been exposed; they are represented by particle effects that appear as visible wind currents. If the player character comes into contact with them, the direction of gravity as experienced by the player character is reversed.
There is next to no narrative reason for the presence of these fields. They are presumably the consequences of the deterioration of the space station, but there are terminals and other machines that can only be operated when the player character is experiencing reversed gravity. This means that the fields are not the result of damage to the space station.
Narrative aside, the player has to make use of these fields in order to get through significantly large and vertical sections of the space station.
They are also used for puzzles. To be specific, the clones that the player makes will have gravity affecting them like how it did for the wielder when they were created. The player has to make and maintain clones with different gravities acting on them, usually for the purpose of activating floor switches with different orientations.
GRAVITY SHUNTS:
Some of the gravity fields appear to be contained via stable means; they appear as paths with streaks of light. These will send anything that is caught in them towards whatever one-way direction that the fields are designed to have; the streaks of light show their direction.
Although the player character and the clones can enter the shunts from anywhere as long as there are no barriers between them, there is little that they can do after they are caught in the shunt. In the case of the player character, clones can still be made and swapped to, but that’s it.
NO-GRAVITY SECTIONS:
There are sections of the space station where gravity is no longer working. The player character loses any traction on the floor and floats. However, there is a way to move the player character about.
Somehow, the swapping beam imparts a little bit of recoil on its wielder. Therefore, the player could have the player character move in a direction by firing the Swapper at the opposite direction. This appears to be the only way to move about in the no-gravity sections.
There is nothing to collect in these sections though. They are mainly there to pack the gameplay with padding while another character utters some exposition.
(Incidentally, in no-gravity sections which are practically jaunts through the void of space, hurtling asteroids bar any attempt to have the player character drift into outer space.)
For whatever practical reason, the camera’s orientation changes when the player character moves around. This can be a bit disorienting. It might have been a deliberate design decision, but if so, it is still not a good design decision with regard to user friendliness.
ORBS:
Throughout the space station, there are peculiar floating orbs that have to be collected. There are terminals that can only be activated after the player has collected certain numbers of orbs. Orbs are essentially the goal of the gameplay experience in the Swapper.
Orbs are located at seemingly inaccessible spots in puzzle-filled rooms. They have to be reached by making use of the Swapper together with the clever manipulation (and elimination) of the clones. Obtaining them also conveniently disables all lights and opens all bulkheads in the rooms.
There does not seem to be any narrative reason for the presence of the orbs, however. Perhaps, like the teleporters, they are such a norm in the sci-fi setting of the game that they are not remarked on. On the other hand, there is the impression that the orbs are only in the game for the sake of the gameplay, without any regard for how they contribute to the story-telling.
MEMORY TERMINALS:
The other type of collectible is the memory terminal. This contains recordings by certain individuals who had worked aboard the space station. The recordings are mainly there to inform the player of what the space station was for before it became derelict, and how it became derelict.
WATCHER ROCKS:
There are also the Watcher rocks, which have been hoisted into the space station for study prior to the events of the game. Getting close to any of them triggers the appearance of a line of text, as well as a little slowdown. The text indirectly informs the player as to how they perceive existence and the minds of other sentient beings.
MAP:
The space station is large and has many non-linear sections. Fortunately, there is a map display to help the player figure out where the player character is and where to go next.
The map display shows the location of doors, Watcher rocks, memory terminals and orbs. It will only show rooms and sections that the player character has reached; any doors that lead to unexplored rooms will be marked in blinking green. Any small teleporters that have yet to be used are also marked in similar ways.
With frequent consultations of the map display, it is not too difficult to find all of the collectibles in the game on the first playthrough.
LEVEL DESIGNS THAT ARE CHALLENGING …:
All of the aforementioned gameplay elements are used to craft rooms and levels which would challenge the player’s thought process. In particular, they would test the player’s capabilities at the timing of the placement and elimination of clones and the coordination of the clones’ movements in manipulating obstacles. There are very few puzzles which require rote repetition.
… BUT DOES NOT GEL WELL WITH STORY-TELLING:
Yet, this focus on making the levels contribute to gameplay also causes disbelief. Much of the layout of the station is just not conducive to research work. For example, there are a lot of regions that have to be traversed by using the Swapper to leave bodies behind.
One could argue that the events of the calamity on the space station could have contributed to this necessity, but there is next to no exposition that any damage had been inflicted on the interior of the space station, much less any act of sabotage prior to the events of the game. The teleportation system is also not extensive enough to make travel through the space station easy and convenient.
There is also the argument that the use of the Swapper has become prevalent, but a recorded log that can be read early on puts such an argument in doubt; the crew of the space station are apprehensive of the Swapper. There is that, and that the Swapper was relatively new technology.
Coupled with the unexplained need for the collection of orbs, there is the impression that the level designs have not been done hand-in-hand with the story designs.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
The visuals of The Swapper can seem familiar yet outlandish. Players who have watched films or played games with clay-based animation might eventually recognize that just about everything that they see in the game is made out of clay.
In actuality, the bulk of the models in the game are scanned and digitized clay models. If they are not these, they are frame captures of clay models in the case of foreground and background layers, and 2D sprites. In the case of the latter, clever lighting effects are applied to give them a semblance of parallax.
Speaking of the lighting, it is very effective at conveying an ominous atmosphere in the interior of the derelict space station. That the player character’s flashlight does not reach far contributes further to this.
In the case of the 3D models, they are animated using rudimentary skeletons; there are no stop-motion animations. That is not to say that they are smoothly animated, however.
An observant player might notice early on that there are goofy animations for the player character and other humanoids in space suits (including the clones). They move like they are marionettes, so much so that the transition to ragdoll status when they die is seamless. This is perhaps intended, considering the narrative theme of minds controlling bodies.
Yet, considering how convincing the rest of the visuals are (especially how they only reveal their clay origins upon close examination), that the animations for humanoid models are almost immediately unbelievable is a disappointing contrast.
SOUND DESIGNS:
At the default settings for the audio, the music is rather subdued. Turning it louder would reveal that much of the music is drawn-out, with little tempo. In other words, the music had been composed with ambience in mind, rather than something that can be listened to on its own. In fact, most of the tracks are quite boring to listen outside of the game.
The other sounds that the player would hear are the player character’s interaction with the machines, walls and floors of the space station. Doors hiss when they open or close. The footsteps of the player character change in quality as the player character steps onto a different kind of flooring. Most notable of all are the little noises that the Swapper makes when it is operated.
When the player character goes out into space, or breached sections of the vessel, the sounds cut out, as to be expected in vacuum.
As for the voice-acting, there are only a handful of voices to be heard. Most of them sound listless, lacking any sharp inflection. Perhaps this is how space-farers who had been away from their homeworld for too long would sound like.
SUMMARY:
The Swapper makes a strong first impression with its swapping mechanism, clay-made graphics and disturbing story. However, it squandered its potential by padding its experience with plenty of eventually similar puzzles and story-telling that does not immediately focus on the most interesting thing in the story, the titular Swapper. Nevertheless, it is a competently done puzzle-platforming game that is not a waste of time.