My heart aches for so many different reasons every time I solve a puzzle in The Swapper. The first time I softened what would've been a fatal fall by creating a copy of myself at the last minute and swapping my consciousness into it was absolutely revelatory. Watching the body that I'd inhabited just moments before crumble onto a lifeless heap as it hit the ground gave me pause in a way that few games ever do. Were these copies simply lifeless tools with the sole purpose of helping me overcome a challenge? Or was I actively murdering countless versions of myself in cold blood? Or is it suicide?
That's the big question that arose as I spent about four hours (excluding the time I got stuck) solving a series of puzzles and piecing together the profound and well-told story of a derelict space station. Though The Swapper's cloning mechanic brings to mind games like Braid and Closure, it differentiates itself by giving you your one and only puzzle-solving tool right at the start. The titular gun that allows you to create copies of yourself and swap places with them is relatively simplistic in its singular function, but developer Facepalm Games' uncanny ability to continually put us in foreign predicaments vaults The Swapper into the ranks of the elite puzzlers.
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