Amstrad Action
1st November 1991Swap
Are you a budding Einstein or are you only good at lifting heavy things? Did you know that the human brain weighs 13kg and contains 10,000 million neurons (each of which is connected to an average of 60,000 others)? Can you write music or build bombs? Would you like to increase your IQ and beat the bozos?
Or, more to the point, have you got nothing better to do with your time than play some inane colour-swapping game? If your answer to most or all of these questions is "half past three and bring that rubber chicken", then Swap could be the game for you.
The basic idea is to clear the screen of all the coloured squares (or whatever) on it. You do this by clicking on the join between squares to swap them over - any adjoining squares of the same colour disappear Got that? There's also other stuff to help you, like the avalanche thing which makes all the squares left hanging in mid-air fall downwards. Oh yes, and some supplementary tiles by the side of the board which you can drag over and place on-screen when things get tricky towards the end of the game.
There are 90 levels in total, but you don't usually play them all in order it depends how smart you are. For example, your reviewer jumped straight from level 1 to level 32, and then to level 72, but that's only because he have a brain the size of a house and an intellect unmatched in modem civilisation. (And, er, he did do so badly on level 72 he went straight back to the start again!)
Advanced levels have extra features, such as different shaped tiles (triangles, hexagons), ultra-small tiles (bad news, man), no avalanches (serious bad news, man), time limits (aaagh!) and... the credit system.
The credit system will reduce you to a gibbering wreck, and it's got nothing to do with not being able to keep up the instalments on your video. Basically, each swap costs two credits, and each tile waxed gets you one credit. It's hard, man, with a capital "hard".
Fortunately, the practice mode gives you an opportunity to practise with whatever options you choose (shapes, time limits etc). And you'll need to practise.
Swap is a funny old game. At first glance, it looks like the dullest game in computing history. At second glance, you realise it is the dullest game in computing history. But the MENSA-style instruction manual does such a good job of persuading you that the game is an outright challenge to every claim of intelligence that you've ever made, that you keep wanting to play it again and again. Even though it's completely boring! Weird.
Second Opinion
Boring? That's an understatement! Every time I tried to play it, I got distracted looking out of the window or getting bits of fluff out of the keyboard...
First Day Target Score
Stick with it!
Verdict
Graphics 86%
Not a sprite in sight, but impossible to fault.
Sonics 71%
Really nice grinding and beeping noises.
Grab Factor 26%
Controls are unresponsive and it's hard to understand at first.
Staying Power 80%
You keep going back to it. Why?
Overall 72%
This is the most uninteresting game ever seen. And it's great!