The Swapper
Worth it · Action · 2013
Steam Deck VerifiedThe verdict
BUY IT.
Worth it at $14.99, a BANGER if it drops to $6.43.
- Length
- 5.1h
- Value
- $2.94/hr
- Reviews
- 94% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 1 GB of memory, 1 GB of storage. Windows only.
What if someone knew your mind better than you did? The Swapper is an award-winning, narrative driven puzzle game set in the furthest reaches of space.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
December 2017 is where it bottomed out, at $2.24. 77 discounts in the 13 years on record. They run about 85 percent off, roughly 7 weeks apart. Today it is at full price. The last sale was about 12 weeks ago, and on this game's rhythm the next one tends to arrive within 7 weeks. It becomes a BANGER at $6.43, a level the record has reached 71 times.
On value it sits in the top 2 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 86 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 98 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Seen ($0.99, scores 79) beats it on value, while it beats The Way ($14.99, scores 40).
This site sampled 436 of its Steam-purchase reviews; none were written by buyers who refunded it, sampled from reviews written March 2020 to September 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 73 percent of the 727 reviews written there were positive, against 94 percent overall, and those are 14 percent of everything written about it.
It carries Valve's Deck Verified rating and runs 5.1 hours, about as long as a handheld game wants to be.
The drop-off
11% start to 5% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
6 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Great game. Great puzzles, atmosphere and themes. There's no character progression, or ability unlocking, so you'll have the tools to solve all the puzzles right from the start. Contrary to many of the comments, I'd advise people to not look up for guides or solutions, and just try another available puzzle or take a break if feeling stuck. You'll find yourself solving a single puzzle with an incremental and...
The Swapper is one of those rare titles that truly showscases just how exceptional gaming is as a medium for storytelling. What initially comes across as a whacky, out-of-body puzzle game quickly evolves into a story that rivals and exceeds the likes of Alien or The Thing with its extraterrestrial unknowns. Who are The Watchers, how did The Swapper come to exist and are clones still part of you even if they perish...
Nice and simple puzzle game, with strong mechanics that will be nicely used until the very end, every time a little more challenging. Lore is kinda interesting but the main point by far are the puzzles.
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
Cite this score
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The Swapper scores 70/100 on the BANG Score (worth it). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/231160/the-swapperThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 16, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.