Superliminal

Superliminal encourages players to reconsider how they perceive reality, effectively rewiring their brains to make sense of its gluttony of optical illusions and forced perspective puzzles. Except, each scenario in Superliminal doesn’t have to make sense; in combining 2D shapes to make 3D objects, and in twisting perspective to manipulate the size of said objects, Superliminal is a more dreamlike affair, and, just like dreams, leaves a surreal lasting impression.

Hollow Knight 

Team Cherry’s take on the increasingly popular souls like genre has been met with great critical and commercial acclaim, and for all the right reasons. The world of Hallownest strikes a careful balance between being joyful and daunting, and in addition to this – the game has excellent art direction, music, platforming, and level. It’s a really well-rounded and complete package, which is available across all platforms at just a fraction of the cost of contemporaries.

The developers behind acclaimed titles like The Swapper, Crayon Physics and Environmental Station Alpha have announced a new take on the rogue-lite genre. It’s called Noita and blends rogue-lite action with physics-based puzzle solving and magical spells.

Noita allows players to make their own spells in a world where every single pixel is influenced by physics. The worlds are procedurally generated and it’s possible to manipulate the laws of nature to your advantage. Want to kill an entire lake of fish? Use a lightning spell and zap them into extinction.

Facing a room full of gas and enemies beyond? Ignite the gas and watch it melt through your foes. In keeping with other rogue-lite titles, you can use whatever was learned from your previous death on the next run.

Noita doesn’t currently have a release date or confirmed platforms but given the developer’s pedigree with PC, it’s more than likely to hit Steam. Check out the full gameplay trailer for yourself below and witness the kinds of destruction that each spell can bring.

PlayStation Plus subscribers in Europe will be receiving some fairly hard hitting games. Sony has announced its Instant Game Collection for January and it includes inFamous: First Light, the story-based standalone expansion for Second Son which focuses on Fetch.

PS4 gamers will also receive The Swapper, an indie puzzle platforming game that’s received much critical acclaim and focuses on switching between bodies in order to complete puzzles.

PS3 players haven’t been left out though – they’ll be receiving Prototype 2 and DuckTales: Remastered, the former being an open world game with super-powers and the latter being a full remaster of the classic DuckTales platforming adventure originally released on the NES.

PS Vita users will receive games like Woah Dave! and Duke Nukem 3D Megaton Edition. Since Duke Nukem can’t be released in Germany, German users will be receiving Gravity Crash Ultra instead.

What are your thoughts on this month’s free games for PS Plus? Let us know in the comments.

Since then the game has since gone on to be developed for other platforms. That now mostly complete development cycle is being headed up by Curve Studios (Stealth Bastard and Proteus) and involved porting the game from its computer based operating systems to the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4 and PS Vita. Curve Studios are also responsible for porting the game over to Nintendo’s Wii U which is soon to be released in November of 2014. .

The game was originally launched on May 20th before being ported. Post-port the game was released across other platforms on August 5th. November will bring the game to Wii U.

• 1. Development
• 2. Gameplay
• 3. Story

Development

The swapper is not only somewhat singular in its near universal acclaim from critics and gamers alike, it’s also somewhat special in how it came to be such a well received hit.

The game wasn’t created as an indie targeted, massively funded game. The Swapper was actually a project that was being worked on by two students from the University of Helsinki, in their spare time no less.

With the game showing such promise despite the small development team, which consisted of only Olli Harjola and Otto Hantula, The Swapper received backing from the Indie Fund. An organization created by independent developers designed to help fund indie dev’s.
At the time, The Swapper was the 6th game to be funded and backed by the Indie Fund, alongside other hits like Monaco: What’s yours is mine and Antichamber.

The games art assets are particularly worthy of note, they aren’t the typical texture that you would find in 99% of games, the various stages and backgrounds in The Swapper are made up out of hand crafted objects that were modelled in clay before being digitized. This is one of the features that not only drew the attention of indie devs, but helped give the game its stunning visual appeal. This, when combined with the soft glowing lighting in the game give it a unique and atmospheric feel.

The Swapper first launched on the 30th of May 2013 on Microsoft Windows and later on February 18th on Linux and Mac OS X, but following its success the game was set up to be ported to the home consoles as well as Sony’s struggling handheld, the PS Vita.

The port was to be handled by Curve Studios wo have had prior experience in porting Thomas Was Alone and Proteus to the PlayStation 3 and PS Vita from its native PC platform. Development went ahead as planned with on short delay that was enacted to ensure the port was “up to scratch”. Following the delay, the game successfully launched on August 5th 2014 in North America and August 6th 2014 in Europe.

Since then, Curve Studios have announced plans to launch The Swapper on the Nintendo Wii U at some time in November of 2014. They’ve since stated that the games graphical fidelity will be on par with that of its original PC counterpart.

Gameplay

The swapper is a platforming puzzle game set in a sidescrolling world where it uses established video game mechanics and tropes to great effect than then improves upon them to make the game feel truly special and rewarding to play.

Despite being limited to a 2D plane, the simple mechanics of the gameplay are a perfect representation of the easy to learn but difficult to master nature of competent platformers.

The player must solve puzzles in order to progress further into the game, this si done through the process of self cloning, an ability give to you thanks to a handheld mechanism that allows the player to replicate themselves four times.

This device is further augmented with the ability to swap between any of the four clones at any one given time, hence the games name. When beginning the cloning process, time is slowed down, giving the player adequate time to properly plan out their strategy.

The twist on the cloning procedure is that it’s context sensitive. Not all maneouvers can be executed at the same time or in specific areas. For example, standing in a a specific type of blue light will stop you from being able to clone at all. Red lights allow you to clone yourself as per usual, but will stop you from swapping. Purple lights will however block both of these abilities.

The player is tasked with using these clones and their synchronised movement (when you move, they do so in the same corresponding direction) to collect orbs that allow for progression further into the game.

The clones aren’t immune to damage however, if the player would normally die from a large fall or an environmental hazard, then rest assured that your clone will most certainly be destroyed as well. White light sources will destroy your clones, as will having them walk off the screen area or by having them touch another clone.

Story

You would be forgiven for thinking that The Swapper would feature a flat and pointless narrative, as is often the case with most platforming games.
To save you from spoilers, this will be informative but vague.

Humanity has, as if often the case in games, finally exhausted its natural resources and is forced to expand into the stars to mine other planets of their materials in an attempt to synthesise something useful. To this end we establish outposts on a number of remote worlds where we are likely to find something of use.

On one of these worlds, scientists discover a strange rock with odd electro chemical activities that are quite out of place with most other discoveries. Not long after the discovery of these rocks, researchers learn how to create a device that they called The Swapper, they believe this information was passed onto them from the rocks, believing them to be a telepathic entity.

From here on, the story takes a dive into humanitarian ethics and what is morally right but fundamentally wrong and it’s discovered that these telepathic rocks are in fact much more sinister than they would first appear. But by the time the crew discover this it’s already to late.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.

Indie developer Curve Digital has had great success with the PS3, PS4 and Vita adaptation of Facepalm Games’ The Swapper. The game will gross more than $1 million over the next month on all of Sony’s platforms.

Curve Digital managing director Jason Perkins stated that, “Traditionally, if you wanted your game to appear on a console, you would need to work with both a publisher and a porting house to get the job done. At Curve, we keep everything in-house from development right through to submission, QA, and marketing.

“Every game we release on console helps us build up more experience and more contacts in a world that, prior to this new generation of consoles, was out of reach of the vast majority of developers. Our extensive links with platform holders and our ever increasing empirical data on the purchasing habits of console gamers means we can offer not only the project management and technical expertise of a development studio, but the sales and marketing expertise of an experienced publisher.”

Have you played The Swapper yet on any of the above platforms? Let us know in the comments.

Back in 2013, Facepalm Games brought the original PC version of “The Swapper” to the masses. It earned critical and gamer acclaim through a solid puzzle game draped in a chilling narrative, one that asks something ever so slightly distinctive from the usual of the player. “What is a self?”.

"The nature of the rock-like “Watchers” themselves as well as the gameplay mechanics raise those all important questions of identity, but never really draw any conclusions."

Easily likened to a Portal meets Dead Space, The Swapper begins with very little information given. Your whereabouts, situation, or even identity a mystery, and you’re asked to press forward anyways. As you explore the station that serves as the setting of the game, a combination of crew logs, and whispered alien exposition fill you in on the goings on ever so subtly to the story of “The Watchers” and the abandoned vessel which they were taken onboard.

The nature of the rock-like “Watchers” themselves as well as the gameplay mechanics raise those all important questions of identity, but never really draw any conclusions. Whether or not you consider the narrative better or worse for leaving those for the player to ponder well after the credits roll, one can only praise how the game can raise the issues of cloning, identity and survival without coming off heavy-handed, and it stands as a highlight of The Swapper.

The claymation art style is hardly common in gaming, and perhaps that helps the desolate and alien feel of The Swapper. Outer areas feel like lifeless moonscapes, and the ship itself coldly metallic. The foreign environments are chilling to the bone, and wouldn’t feel out of place in a survival horror title where something could jump out at any time.

"The game introduces its mechanics with an almost Portal-esque fluidity."

Just as that paranoia would begin to wane, the game swaps from ambient tones to comforting music. While nothing too memorable outside of the game, it mirrors the player and their comfort before the game turns everything all on its head and makes you uncomfortable again in near masterful pacing.

Though the presentation and narrative are both very well done, the real triumph of The Swapper is undoubtedly the puzzle design. Setting its rules from a very early point and consistently demanding that you iterate upon them, the game introduces its mechanics with an almost Portal-esque fluidity. Puzzles laid out in front of you can mechanically be taken in within moments, yet be amazingly demanding based on just how the game asks you to use your tools to circumvent them.

The Swapper gives you four clones to play with as a hard and fast rule, for a total of 5 copies on screen at once. They all take the same input, so moving the one you’re in command of moves the others accordingly. You can swap control between clones via a direct line, to gain a new perspective or angle that wouldn’t have been reachable with your original body.

"The Swapper easily deserves to be in the same breath as Portal, Zero Escape or World of Goo in this regard as some of the best puzzle titles this side of Tetris."

It plays with these mechanics throughout until you master them, and placing the clones and learning how to use the environment to position them just so is paramount. The game folds in more mechanics naturally, such as lights that won’t allow clone placement, swapping between clones, or both and as such demands you manoeuvre your way around or block them in some way. Buttons and gravity also make their way into the mix and naturally work their way into puzzle design.

No matter how intricate the puzzle, there is always a way and like all amazing puzzle games it never changes or asks you to learn new rules without ample introduction. A room can stump you for days, only for the solution to come to you away from the game that you bring back to find a glorious, satisfying victory over the room that had you so stuck. The Swapper easily deserves to be in the same breath as Portal, Zero Escape or World of Goo in this regard as some of the best puzzle titles this side of Tetris.

The game looks identical on every PlayStation platform, and suffer no downgrade from the PC as far as presentation. Though the game never asks you to be very reflexive, it was clearly designed for the input of a mouse, which the right stick is not a suitable substitute. The Playstation Vita does a little bit to alleviate this with the touch screen, but isn’t a substitute either.

" there is one roadblock right before the ending of the game that bafflingly lets you in on the climax of the story, but demands you solve every last (puzzle) before you’ll be let in on the ending. "

While I did praise the pacing earlier, there is one roadblock right before the ending of the game that bafflingly lets you in on the climax of the story with having solved most of the puzzles, but demands you solve every last one before you’ll be let in on the ending. It’s really the placement of the block that I have a problem with, not the fact that the game asks you to complete every challenge. The ending itself is just as thought provoking as the rest of the narrative, but its cruel cockblock is jarring.

The Swapper is brought over to PlayStation with minimal loss to an amazing game. A thought provoking tale that asks you to consider what makes up a “self” and a great atmosphere frames an amazingly tight puzzler that stands with the best of them. Though the input isn’t as smooth as it used to be and some strangely placed roadblocks break the experience in odd ways, The Swapper is still well worth the time of any PlayStation owner.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

What is The Swapper, you ask? It’s an indie game, a puzzle platformer video game that was originally released for PC, Mac, and Linux, developed by a studio called Facepalm Games (no, really, that’s their name). The game has now also been ported to the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita by Curve Studios. It is available for these platforms in both North American and European territories starting now.

The game sees the player stuck on a stranded spaceship in space, and tasks them with exploring the station, solving the environmental puzzles to find your way out. Think of it as a sort of less Portal-themed, more Dead Space-themed Stealth Inc., and you get the picture.

The game’s out now on PlayStation, so be sure to check it out. And for all you Nintendo owning people out there, don’t worry. The game is due out on the Wii U later this year as well, so hang on tight for that release, and stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage.

It was recently reported that Sony’s PlayStation Plus Instant Game Collection for August had been leaked. This is essentially the line-up of free games that PS Plus subscribers could expect next month and it would have apparently included Octodad: Dadliest Catch and The Swapper for PS4, Saints Row IV and Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon for PS3, and 1001 Spikes and Atelier Rorona Plus: The Alchemist of Arland for the PlayStation Vita. Of course, no real source was provided aside from a random tweet from Russia.

Curve Studios’ Rob Clarke responded to the report and said The Swapper would in fact not be available for free in August. Tyrone Rodriguez of Nicalis also wrote on Twitter, “Feel free to ignore [the rumours],” in regards to 1001 Spikes being available next month for free on the Vita to PS Plus subscribers.

What are your thoughts on the report? Could it have a hint of legitimacy to it despite denials? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Microsoft’s ID@Xbox program, which is responsible for bringing indie titles to the Xbox One, may have a wide range of titles scheduled for the next few months but some developers are still avoiding it due to the parity clause. Speaking to Digital Spy, Curve Digital’s managing director Jason Perkins says it’s the reason that titles like MouseCraft, The Swapper and Titan Attacks won’t be on the Xbox One.

“Unfortunately, all these titles here get ruled out by the parity clause.”

Design director Jonathan Biddle also stated that, “We feel like it’s unnecessary handcuffs really, but that’s the way they’ve decided to run that. We’re platform agnostic. We’ll support everyone. What works for us is having many as healthy competitors as possible. They’ll all try and promote the games they’ve got, and that’s what we want. We want a healthy ecosystem, so we want everyone to do well.”

The aforementioned parity clause states that developers must release their games on the Xbox One at the same time as other formats. It’s become a big issue for some developers who have specific time frames for other formats or might want to bring the indie title to the Xbox One later. And it won’t be disappearing any time soon. Stay tuned for more information.