The Swapper PC Game

The Swapper is a Puzzle platformer video game for Microsoft Windows. It was developed and published Games.

The Swapper is a side-scrolling puzzle-platform video game. The player controls a person stranded on a damaged space station and looking for means to escape. To do so, they must explore the station and find orbs that are used to activate certain doors, allowing them to progress further into the game. The game uses some concepts of “Metroidvania” games in which the player may have to backtrack through the facility, divided into a number of rooms, to proceed within the game.

The player acquires a hand-held cloning tool early in the game through which they solve puzzles to collect orbs. The tool offers two functions: the ability to create up to four simultaneous clones of the player character, and the ability to swap control to any of these clones as long as they are within line of sight. Once created, the clones will move with the player unless otherwise blocked by the environment; for example, if the player moves left, all the clones will also move left unless they run into a wall. This allows the player to complete complex steps to activate doors and switches as to acquire the orbs. Like the player, clones can also die falling from a large height or through other environmental hazards. Clones are reclaimed if they die or if they physically move into the same space as the player. When using the cloning tool, time slows down, allowing the player to execute more difficult maneuvers involving the clones. One example is to scale a vertical area by repeating the process of creating a clone higher than the currently active clone and immediately swapping control to the new clone while it is falling in mid-air, until a safe platform at the top of the area can be reached by a clone. Later levels include sections of the station where gravity has been reversed, increasing the difficulty of the puzzles.

The cloning functionality is limited by certain light sources. Blue lights will prevent clones from being created in the illuminated area, while red lights will block the control swapping ability; purple lights block both actions. Touching certain white lights, moving off the current stage, or touching another clone will otherwise destroy those clones.