Sometimes I like games with big possibilities and boundaries that are sometimes hard to see. That’s why I have spent more time in EVE Online than I ever thought I could (more on that next week). But there are other times where I am in the right mindset for some interactive escapism but those big games just aren’t as appealing as I would expect. For example, last week while out on a roam in EVE online somebody forgot to refuel the clone bay where I would normally respawn after getting blown up. Faced with 45 minutes (or more) of taking the long way home, I just could not bring myself to spend that much time on just getting back to where I need to be. That’s when I decided to swap the big game for something a lot simpler, at least until things could get straightened out.
The Swapper is a simple game in a wonderfully dark science fiction setting. It is, fundamentally, a 2D puzzle game built around one neat mechanic: the player can deploy clones and “swap” to any of them provided their beam is not blocked. The player can only control one body at a time, but all of them move in unison. Once I got the display and control settings to a usable point (needed to be running in compatibility mode in order for the mouse to move) I found myself quickly immersed in both the story and the puzzles along the way.
It is a strictly single player game, and apart from the clone/swap mechanic it revolves around, nothing in the gameplay itself really screams write a big thinkpiece blog post about this. But maybe that’s exactly why it really hit the spot when I picked it up: I did not have to depend on other players to do things. I did not have to spend more than five minutes learning how to play the game. It was an easy alternative path to the escape from reality that normally comes from pretending to be in space. I highly recommend it to the Portal crowd: challenging yet not impossible puzzles, good narrative, and no shooting to kill (assuming that we don’t count the clone bodies consumed to break falls). I do look forward to getting back to some of the “bigger” games, but am certainly glad I gave this one a try.
Alastair is taking a break for a few weeks, but rest assured that he will be resuming the Full Steam Ahead series when time allows. Next week I will be providing an update on how things are going for me in New Eden, and the following week I will be playing and DMing some D&D at IntrigueCon’s Spring Mini Con.
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