Like many of the best puzzle games, numerous moments in The Swapper made me stare at the screen in confusion for what felt like an eternity. It sounds basic, but The Swapper’s puzzles are hardly easy. Puzzles frequently involve creating clones and having them step on switches to shut off the lights in a specific way. Conversely, you can create clones in red light but it blocks swapper rays. Blue light allows swapper rays through, but clones can’t be created in it. Clones can fall to their death or be crushed by environmental objects, but nothing matters unless the clone you control dies.Ĭolored lights conspire to make puzzles difficult for your space traveler. By aiming at a clone and clicking the left mouse button, you can swap places with it. These clones move and jump with the same keyboard commands as the “true” you, and many puzzles have you closely monitoring the position of several copies of yourself. By holding the right mouse button and hovering over open space in the environment, you can use this gun to create up to four clones of yourself. Almost immediately upon starting the game, you come across a swapper gun that proves critical to each and every puzzle. You play as an astronaut stuck on Space Station Theseus. What’s amazing is how Facepalm presents such a wide variety of puzzles with such a limited set of tools. You won’t encounter a single enemy, and all of the items and mechanics are introduced in the first 10 minutes. The Swapper’s sprawling map and 2D perspective may draw comparisons to Metroid, but its gameplay proves to be far different than the classic Nintendo franchise. The ride is over quickly, but it will stick with me for quite some time.

Made by small developer Facepalm Games, The Swapper is a highly atmospheric, gorgeous title with a variety of mind-bending puzzles. Several impressive games were featured at the Indie MegaBooth at PAX East last year, but one stuck with me more than the rest and left me excited to experience the finished product.

The swapper 2