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Hey folks! Are you ready for perhaps the briefest review yet? I sure hope so, 'cause that's
just what you're watching. Let's play Swap!
Swap was released by Microids in 1991, and, in all honesty, it's very hard to call it
a game.
There's no way of winning or losing. There's no scoring system, or official means of judging
how good or bad you're doing.
Really, it's much more of a toy than a game. A means of chilling out or just killing time.
In Swap, you are given a screen full of coloured shapes. You have the ability to swap one shape
with one that is adjacent to it.
If two or more shapes of the same colour line up, they are removed from play. If you can
remove all the shapes from the screen then you begin with a new screen and this process
continues until you decide you've had enough.
You probably recognise the gameplay mechanics. And you may also recognise the gameplay style
from the video.
Yep, while the majority of CPC games disappeared into obscurity, Swap grew up and got a job:
It turned into Bejewelled!
And that's much better than Rick Dangerous, 'cause last anyone heard of him he'd been
signed to star in a lousy sequel with Shia LeBouf.
Now, I could be wrong when I say this, but I think Swap is the first game of its kind.
Of course, there are games in which you match the colours of various things, Wario's Woods
for example, but Swap is the first "Move around the geometric shapes to make clusters of a
colour which will then vanish" game.
And it really says something about how good it is since we're still playing it today.
Swap has a few differences compared to Bejewelled, though.
To start with, Swap lets you choose from four different shapes to move around: big squares,
little squares, triangles and hexagons.
The hexagons are the easiest shapes to work with since each shape has many potential moves,
while the triangles are an absolute nightmare.
You'll also notice that, in Swap, the shapes don't fall down and get replaced. When they're
gone, they're gone.
To help prevent the game from becoming unplayable it includes a gravity option, which makes
all the tiles drop to their lowest possible point.
In all honesty, I really like Swap a lot more than what it went on to become.
Swap just hasn't been the same since they included a scoring function. Now it's just
a corporate tool.
And putting Tré Cool on drums, what were they thinking!?
[COUGH] Sorry, slipped into an entirely different
conversation there. Excuse me.
Swap is not an inherently difficult game, but at the same time it's not a particularly
easy game.
It's only as hard as you want to make it, since it gives you the ability to alter all
kinds of in-game parameters to tailor it to your own liking.
If you want to make it fiendishly difficult you can set it up to use triangles with eight
different colours, while, if you want an easy ride, you can set up three shades of hexagons.
Three shades of hexagons sounds like a pretty good band name to me.
So does Drunken flute solo, but I'll tell you how that one came about another day.
Among the various difficulty settings you can find a means of putting a timer or requirements
on your game, such as 'Clear half the board', etc.
But, really, using these that is kinda like breaking your leg before running a marathon.
Sure it makes things more challenging, but what's the point when you can take it easy
and do without?
And that's it.
Save for mentioning the lack of sound there's absolutely nothing else to say about Swap
that wouldn't be patronising.
So I'm going to call it a day and keep playing.
So until next time, goodbye.