Hothead are the same guys behind DeathSpank and the Penny Arcade games, but for them this is in many ways a first foray outside of the RPG genre. It’s more of an action-puzzler, giving you fifty blue-skinned creatures that make up the titular swarm and asking you to escort them through death-filled levels of traps, dangerous jumps and puzzles.
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| You control 50 blue swarmites in a dangerous world |
The game feels partly like a difficult platformer and partly like a puzzle game. The game is side-on, but is 3D in the respect that the swarm can move up and down a full plane of 3D movement on the level. The left stick moves the swarm around the level, while the shape of the swarm can be controlled by using the face buttons.
By default the movement of the swarm is loose, but if you want tighter movement for accuracy that can be achieved with the press of a button, making the swarm bunch up together for safety. If you have a narrow pathway, you can amke the swarm turn themselves into a living totem pole with some wonderfully cartoony, fluid animation – and then the pole will move across paths as narrow as one swarmite with ease.
There’s a few other tricks the Swarmites have – they can spread themselves out thinly to avoid them all being killed by one big bad explosion, dash and also manipulate items in the environment such as bombs and machines to clear themselves new paths through the levels.
Making controls that give you satisfying control over fifty different on-screen characters – even if they move as one – is an incredibly difficult task. Hothead have managed to create something rather special with the controls here, as I never felt like I was out of control of the Swarm and I never felt angry or frustrated whenever I lost large chunks of my swarm to a silly mistake. While it’s a completely different kind of game, it feels a little like Super Meat Boy – it’s devilishly difficult, but it’s hard to get mad at – it’s just all about practice.
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| There’ll be platforming and puzzle action |
The swarm moves wonderfully – smooth and fluid, like water. The animation and movements reminds me a little of Pikmin, just more sick with more lovely, gory, ridiculous death. Not a bad thing at all.
The fifty swarmites you control become in essence your health bar. As you thread your way through the difficult segments of the level you’ll undoubtedly see some of those little blue dudes get impaled, gassed, cut up and all sorts – but you only have to complete the level with one Swarmite to move on.
Sometimes it’ll be necessary to sacrifice 10 or even 20 swarmites for the good of the rest of the group, and all too often stragglers won’t make that long jump or escape before spikes rise out for the floor and skewer them like a kebab – but it’s all part of the overall plan – to get at least some of that Swarm to the end of the level.
If you lose way too many Swarmites there’s little blue pods strategically placed throughout the level. Hitting them will restore your swarm to 50 – basically replenishing your health and giving you some more dudes to throw into nasty, painful deaths. Much of Swarm’s charm comes from the animation – and seeing and discovering the plethora of ways the little swarmites can die – via explosions, stabbings, electrocutions, falling, asphyxiating and more – always gets a chuckle – and makes you wonder if you’re sick or something.
While it appears that Swarm isn’t going to pack in any multiplayer features, Hothead are going to include detailed, global leaderboards on each platform. The leaderboards will track level completion times, how many Swarmites made it through each level, how many bit the dust and so on and so forth. Picking up ‘DNA’ and other drops throughout the levels racks up a multiplier, which can add to your score significantly.
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| And lots of painful death for the Swarmites |
AS an Xbox 360 and PS3 title Swarm will of course ship with achievements, but as well as the leaderboards and the regular achievements/trophies, the game has its own mini built-in achievement system which tracks how many of the possible swarmite deaths you’ve seen, amongst other things. It’s a nice touch, and is sure to keep people playing.
Swarm doesn’t feel like it could stand up as a full retail disc, but as a bite-sized Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network title even without multiplayer it feels like a great value proposition. My time with is left me laughing, challenged and excited to play more. I’ll be looking forward to playing it when it lands on Sony and Microsoft’s online servers.
