March Analysis: The Swapper

          The Swapper is a puzzle game dealing with platforms, lights, and the eponymous device used to navigate the space station. This game stands out from puzzle platformers mainly due to its unique art style and mechanics. It quickly turns from being an interesting game with an eerie atmosphere into a horror story where you feel isolated from everything else alive in the station. 

          The game works like this: you control a device called The Swapper. It allows the user to create a clone of himself that acts dependently. Whenever you move, the clone moves in the same direction at the same pace. If you jump, the clone jumps. You can have up to four clones of yourself at one time, though some puzzles will force you to work with less. The Swapper can also fire a beam that lets you swap places with your clone, hence the name. Two simple mechanics that lead into one of the most complicated puzzle games I’ve played to date.

The art style astounds me. At first glance it appears to be 3D assets. But upon reading more about this game, it turns out the environment is made from clay! Every wall, floor, panel, plant, portal, and block is pure clay. Some parts are 3D modeled such as the player character, but it gives the world this alien appearance. It makes sense as the station you’re inhabiting is on an alien planet. Everything appears shaped by hand and warped into an unnatural precision. Lots of work went into making this game look as great as it does.

          Mechanics are introduced steadily to the player. First, you learn about how to create clones with The Swapper. When making a clone, time slows down and a red outline of yourself appears as your cursor. Letting go of the button spawns the clone into existence. Touching the clone with your own body absorbs it back into you. Walking under white spotlights also eliminates clones and serves as a quick way to reset a puzzle and try again. Next the player is taught the idea of swapping with their clones. Simply clicking the other button fires a white beam at the target and the player trades places with their clone. The process is instant, but there are some cases in which you may need to slow down time by preparing to generate a clone before you attempt a swap. One ill-timed shot can cost you your life, especially if you’re falling from hundreds of feet up. 

Once players do enough puzzles to get used to the idea of cloning and swapping, the lights make an appearance. Lights affect The Swapper by limiting its functions. Players cannot create clones in blue light, but they can still swap places with any existing clones. In red light, players can create clones, but not swap places. When the lights combine, they create a violet light which renders The Swapper useless. The puzzles involving light will require the player to either turn off certain lights with switches or by finding workarounds to the lights that stay on permanently.

          Gravity adds even more complexity to an already tricky game. When standing on a white glowing surface, players will swap gravity depending on which direction the surface is facing. If it’s facing up, gravity becomes directed from the ceiling. If the surface is pointing down, gravity is reversed back to the floor. Careful when falling as hitting the ground after leaping from a high place will kill you. In instances like these, you’ll need to create a clone of yourself, then swap to it and let your old self plummet to death.

          Four is a peculiar choice for how many clones are allowed to be used. In every puzzle, you will be using all of them to reach the solution. In some puzzles, the number of clones you can utilize is limited to two or three due to needing to have someone stand on switches to open doors to the puzzles themselves. The developers likely had a lot of ideas for puzzles that worked with just two clones or three, but ultimately went with four. It may have been the best choice for the biggest variety of puzzles, plus they knew they could place limitations on the player if they felt a solution could be reached too easily with all four clones available. Adding more clones to the player’s arsenal might have resulted in a much easier game, but the puzzles could end up being enormous and elaborate in order to warrant the use of all those extra clones. Four feels like the perfect number to work with.

          Throughout the game are terminals that have info on what happened to the space station. Scientists found some sentient rocks, studied them, then inadvertently got themselves killed. You and one other person are the only survivors. As you find more terminals, the game makes you question identity. What does it mean to be yourself? If you make a clone, are you still you? Or is the clone you? What are the implications of destroying your own clones after swapping? The game wants you to ask yourself this, but you can’t afford to get too attached to the idea of self-preservation. Many of the puzzles require that you sacrifice your clones in order to succeed. In the end, there can only be one you.

          This is a game that should be on a bucket list. It’s a prime example of using simple mechanics to design difficult puzzles, it never gets boring or repetitive, the atmosphere is truly unsettling, and the gameplay invokes thought. It doesn’t necessarily convey narrative through the puzzles themselves, but it’s story is told through interacting with the other survivor and the terminals as well as the Watchers. Good forms of art make you think about their message. The Swapper makes you think not only about problems and solutions, but about identity and what it means to be you.

For When I Miss A Week Or Two

          On occasion, I don’t upload an article for the week. The explanation varies between being sick or losing the original document. But in reality, sometimes you just have no idea what to write. Readers may have noticed some weeks have no articles posted. Most often, it’s because I didn’t write anything. 

          This isn’t a case of me being lazy. It’s merely a condition in which I find a topic to discuss that I don’t think about often enough nor research enough to write something worth reading (also known as “procrastination”). It happens to the best of us, really. Every so often you need a break. Missing a scheduled task harms your consistency, but recovers your thoughts.

Think of an artist who draws every single day for a year. They keep up a daily routine in which they draw a sketch that takes between thirty minutes to an hour to do, then post it online or share it through other means. Then one day, there’s nothing. No sketch of the day today. What gives? Maybe something came up that took precedence over the daily sketch. A week later, still no drawings. Did they give up? Are they done drawing? On the eighth day, you see a post. The author explains their situation and why they haven’t been drawing lately. At least they were able to communicate to their audience. But in some cases, there’s no communication. Only silence.

          I’m not stopping my writing or anything; I don’t have an article up because I had too many other tasks to do and couldn’t get around to it. Either that or despite the list of topics to discuss I couldn’t come up with anything to say about them. That’s one of the reasons I’m trying a monthly analysis where I look at a game, analyze it, then talk about it. What makes the game work, where it falls short, and why readers should play it or at least learn from it. It gives me time to really look at the game in my free time and see if there’s anything worth looking at. If there is, expect a long read at the end of the month. If there isn’t, that article may be brief.

          I do apologize if you look forward to these on a weekly basis and I unexpectedly have nothing. I can’t exactly prepare for weeks where I have no ideas. They show up out of nowhere! Still, I try to be consistent like the artist who can draw a picture a day for a year. Reality is, some days you can’t make yourself work. It’s fine to take a break and relax. During that time, more ideas come flowing in and now we’ve got something to work with.

Thank you all for reading my stuff thus far. I doubt I’ll be quitting anytime soon. Still, if anything happens you’ll be the first to know.

Character Development

          Creating characters is an art form unto itself. Some characters stay in our memories long after we’ve read about their lives. Others are forgotten minutes after they’re introduced. What about a character makes them more likeable to the audience? What makes us hate what they do? Are characters molded by the story or is it the other way around? The first question you should really ask is, “What is this character going to be used for?” Once you answer that, you can start creating the character in full. For the sake of this guide, let’s say this character will be used for a written story.

Whenever you need a character or two for a story, it helps to have an idea of what they’re going to do. Are they a protagonist or antagonist? What story revolves around them? How do they fit in and affect the world around them? Characters need enough detail to convince readers that they’re real. So how do you go about making a character? Do you need to focus on what they look like? At first, no. You have no idea what that character will look like because there’s nothing to define them yet. Before anything else, a character must be fleshed out. I use many things to make a character: personality indicators, moral systems, decision-making, and a loads of questions.

          Who is this person? Why do they exist in this world? What have they done and what will they do? How would others describe them? These are common questions to ask when doing characterization. First thing I do is refer to two personality charts: Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram. I pick one of the sixteen personality types from Myers-Briggs and use that as a template for how my character behaves. I may end up with an introvert who is highly reclusive, or I could have a very social person with a bad habit of talking about themselves too much. It’s a good idea to study each type and learn how they think and feel. However, this is just a template; Myers-Briggs is a starting point, but is by no means a perfect description of your character. 

          Secondly, I look at the Enneagram for additional personality traits. The Enneagram has nine different personality types and is more focused on how a person reacts to the world around them. It also factors in changes in mood and how some people’s personalities mix with other types. Combining this with Myers-Briggs can give you a solid foundation for your character. But like Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram is not the final word. 

There are many aspects of personality and character development to consider when doing characterization. What kind of moral values do they have? Are they good or evil? Do they obey the law or could they not care less about the rules? For this, I refer to the Dungeons and Dragons Alignment System. It’s a simple chart for dictating actions a character is likely to take. Someone who is Lawful Good is virtually a saint and can do no wrong. Conversely, a Chaotic Evil person will defy the law and commit the most heinous of crimes against humanity. The Alignment System is meant to be an indication of moral tendency. Not every villain will remain evil, but not every hero can stay in the light. This is where choice becomes a primary factor in character development.

Along the character’s journey through their story they will encounter decisions. It could be as simple as deciding which road to take or as complicated as what profession to pursue. Each choice changes the character’s narrative and affects the rest of their life. Maybe your hero fights a bear and breaks its arm, but two years later the same bear comes back with cybernetic implants and severely injures the hero. Now the hero has to recover physically and mentally to overcome the obstacle that is a missing set of legs and a phobia of ursines. Choice doesn’t just affect the characters, but the writer as well.

Writers ultimately make the decisions for their characters. If a character acts a certain way, the writer wrote those traits in. If they dress in unusual attire, the writer made that choice. That’s why it’s important to really ask yourself why to make these choices. If you want to make a turncoat character, when is the best time for them to switch sides? You shouldn’t build up a character that the audience loves only to have them pick a side the audience can’t root for. Imagine having a best friend that stabs you in the back after years of knowing you; you would hate that person for what they’ve done. In this case, you hate both the character and the writer for the betrayal. Keeping all of this in mind, we can now move on to the biography. 

Where does this character come from? What are their origins? How tall are they? Age? Weight? Gender? Sexuality? There’s lots of questions to answer, but the audience doesn’t have to know all of those details. It’s best to build up a character with enough info to pull in interest, then add more info over time. Some info only you the creator will know. Don’t pour all of the data about your character onto the audience. They need context. “Why do the readers need to know this hero’s fears?” “When is the best time to introduce this idea?” “How much will the audience know about this character when they are introduced?” “When will they learn more?” “What are facts about the character that only I will know for the sake of developing them?” You don’t have to answer these all right away. Like the personality indicators mentioned before, the questions serve as a template to define your character.

 

Knowing how to write characters is essential to storytelling. They drive the narrative forward with their developments, dialogue, actions, and thoughts. These guidelines also apply to writing characters for film and animation as well as games. Yet despite the advice I’ve written, these are only the basics of building a person. Characters will change over time as they become more developed. Events will occur that change this person’s worldview, they will grow after going through some personal experience, someone will hurt them badly and the character has to find a way to overcome this struggle. This guide is a way to get started, but only you will ultimately write your character the way you want to.