What a fantastic game. Amazing atmosphere, a story that I'll be thinking about for days, and some really well balanced puzzles.
The graphics are something truly unique. Building all the objects in game from household junk and clay gives The Swapper a truly alien appearance. You can tell what everything is meant to be, but it looks just wrong enough to be unsettling. The excellent music and sound design are the delicious icing on this cold and terrifying cake. From space.
The game rarely lets you forget the horror at the core of its central mechanic. You are cloning and killing yourself over and over. Early on, the game asks you to reach the top of tall rooms by leapfrogging up a chain of clones, each successive vessel crumpling in a heap below. Occasionally I found myself dashing through bulkhead doors to avoid the sounds.
As you discover more about Theseus Station, more questions are raised about the true nature of the swapper device. Is it transferring consciousness between bodies, or forcibly overwriting the personality of the new host? Body swapping sci-fi isn't anything the new, but the ongoing story of the device's origins, and the discoveries made on the planet below are a clever take on it.
I'm also going to note here, just in case I end up borrowing the design at some point, the map was excellent. Clean, well laid out, and extremely good at showing you everything you had yet to explore. Also worthy of note is the placement of fast travel stations after every section of the game that was tricky to navigate. The designer realised that these sections are fun and challenging but wouldn't bare repeating as you back track through some sections of the station.
That's two excellent games done, will this be the start of a streak or have I just cursed it?
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