The Swapper

[Ben X]

Dammit, I was going to do this twelve hours ago but didn't have the balls.

 

I am Spartacus!

 

[elmuerte]

What is?

[twmac]

So, I just finished Thomas Was Alone and immediately started The Swapper.

 

After listening to the talk on Idle Thumbs, I was expecting a very different aesthetic. The dark, brooding, space hulk of an environment was a pleasant surprise. This plays into the story really well that feels subdued in a hard sci-fi sort of a way.

 

The puzzles in the first half of the game were great and it successfully layered complexity on for about 4 hours and then I just hit this brutal wall and had start giving up on puzzle rooms. The game seemed to support this and allowed me to progress as long as I could figure out 50% of them. Then the ending comes up and requires you to finish up all the puzzles, which was really disappointing.

 

Will go back and try and figure them out but it was a real blow to encounter this 'optional content, not actually optional' sort of design.

 

Otherwise, it is really fun and I do like the designers "fuck you" to achievements by hiding them all in really obscure places.

[tberton]

For what it's worth, I found Swapper puzzles often benefited from stepping away, doing something else and then coming back with fresh eyes. I often couldn't solve puzzles simply because I was missing something obvious.

[twmac]

Yeah, I came back and immediately solved 4 more.

 

However, I did come across one that it became so frustrating that I looked up the solution - I was right to do so because I would never have solved that.

[eot]

Of all the "The Swapper" threads you could've bumped you picked this one!

[Ben X]

[twmac]

This is the first one I found, sorry?

[twmac]

So, I finished the game with the help of a walkthrough last night. There were 3 puzzles that I just could not do - I spent more time on them than the rest of the puzzles combined until I gave up and just went to a guide. I am glad that I did as two of them involved doing things that have never been done before and really lack sign-posting. When I saw the solutions I didn't slap my forehead and groan at how obvious it was, instead I just shrugged and concluded I would never have figured that out at all (one involves jumping up to wipe out one clone while standing in a specific spot - this has never been explored before).

 

So, yeah, a horrible final slog that locks off the ending credits is not how I wanted that game to end and it made me kind of sad after an otherwise fun, atmospheric game.

[GavinTheAlmighty]

There was one level that I just couldn't crack without the help of a walkthrough.  The Disused Module had four buttons and four doors, and for the life of me I just couldn't figure it out.  A lot of people complained about the one with the coloured lights, but the Disused Module was my hell in an otherwise sharp and well-desigend game.

[twmac]

That was one of the ones I got stuck on - it is the one where you have to jump and hit a clone standing on the roof above you to solve it.

 

Those three rooms almost ruined the game for me.