The Swapper

The Swapper is a side-scrolling puzzle-platformer in a science fiction setting. The player character is stranded on a damaged space station and is looking for a 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 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.

Humanity has exhausted its natural resources, and seven remote outposts are established in distant space to extract and synthesize useful materials from their neighbouring planets, to send back to Earth. The crews of the space stations must survive independently off Earth for several decades. First, Station 7 loses orbit and disintegrates into its closest sun, then Station 6 goes offline for unknown reasons.

When the crew of Theseus explore an uninhabitable desert planet called Chori V, with abundant natural mineral deposits, they find a more durable steel amalgam, an alien life form similar to Earth's silkworm, and highly complex rock formations of unknown origin. The rocks display unusual electro-chemical activity, leading some to believe they may possess rudimentary intelligence. The crew call these rocks 'The Watchers'.

The Swapper was a project made by two University of Helsinki students Otto Hantula and Olli Harjola in their spare time. The Swapper was backed by the Indie Fund, the 6th indie game title the fund has supported. Rather than digital textures, the game features handcrafted art assets and clay which forms the various game levels.

Curve Studios helped to port the title to the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita platforms, with an expected release date in May 2014. After being delayed to ensure the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita versions are "up to scratch", the game was released on 5 August 2014 in North America and the following day in Europe. Curve Studios later announced that they will bring the game to Wii U, the graphical capability will be on par with PC version. Subsequently, after the game's release on Wii U, Nintendo assisted in bringing The Swapper to the Japanese market, and they announced this during the Japanese version of the April 2015 Nintendo Direct presentation.

The Swapper received positive reviews from critics. It has an aggregate score of 88.09% on GameRankings and 87/100 on Metacritic. The game has won numerous awards including Best International Game at Freeplay 2011 and Special Recognition Award at Indiecade 2011.