The Swapper

The Swapper is a puzzle game with the mechanic of creating clones of yourself and swapping between them. You use that mechanic to deal with the expected obstacles like standing on pressure pads and getting around areas that block cloning/swapping. The story deals with a mysterious space station, which is apparently key to saving humanity but mostly abandoned and home to telepathic alien rocks. I assume more of that is explained later. I have been enjoying it so far, and it is apparently not terribly long. The puzzles may or may not stay sane.

This gets a mention mostly for being the greatest existential horror game I have ever seen, just based on the mechanics. The game has falling damage (instant death), but you get around that when rising/falling great distances by creating clones of yourself, swapping with them, and letting clones fall to their deaths. Just keep killing yourself, it’s fine. I want to make a movie reference, but even telling you the movie would be a spoiler. Spoilers allowed in comments, if anyone wants to chat about it. Non-spoiler book reference: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom.

I have been warned that the achievements are utter BS. They are hidden terminals with nothing to note their existence, where you need to do things like travel through what look like solid walls or make jumps of faith. The game does not even mention their existence, except for numbered, completely unexplained achievements. They also apparently hold some of the story of what is going on with the human race in this setting. If I enjoy the game enough, I might borrow a guide and get to them, or I might just look up what the bonus 10 pages of story are.

: Zubon