Short version: This is a game about being anonymous eco-terrorist tasked with series of increasingly suicidal missions, using stealth and satisfying pew-pew to complete random goals. This is probably best game Sleeper Games delivered yet, and because of this is deserves more love. Like other titles of this studio, it is characterised by unique graphics and well-thought mechanics. But it's hard to love, even more than they usually are.
Longer version:
- Game offers very little in terms of narrative; it's intentionally laconic, only telling you bits and pieces through equipment descriptions. You have to like the gameplay. Nothing will divert your attention from it; no dialogue nor fancy graphics, and enemy talking is useful rather than narrative.
- There is fantastic roster of available items that give you plenty of options to mess around with your opponents. And yes, many weapons too, with actual customisation. This is something that was missing in Hyperspace Dogfights imho; it makes Swirl W@tch more personal.
- Giving point limit of how much you can take is a good decision. Balance of restricting your loadout only to best items, forcing to make trade-offs, it all makes personalisation more rewarding...
- Basic mechanics of stealth, spotting, melee attacks and variety of enemies are excellent. I really think Swirl W@tch is very mature as a final product, a complete experience that constantly challenges you to improve, learn and fail to become competent at basics, introducing new things and telling you nothing about them, encouraging you to learn. I saw the end credits and I don’t think I ever got actually good at this game. Patience is the key here – rushing it will most likely get you killed.
And yes, it is important to mention why new player may turn it off in frustration…
- Development focus was to make it replayable. Making it easy would ruin the fun; so instead difficulty level is absolutely brutal. If you ever want to see the end credits, you will have to do several high difficulty missions. They have three phases and if you fail, you lose all progress. Let that sink in. It's like you never attempted them; you got nothing from it. And it matters because...
- ...during harder part of the campaign if you got spotted you may very well die in about 10 seconds if you're unlucky, and in 30 seconds if you're doing good job at surviving annihilation. I actually enjoyed it in some weird way, but hitting a mine just before extraction and horror of realisation you just lost 57 minutes of your life is experience like no other. If you played Hyperspace Dogfights and thought you got catharsis after losing to final boss, you know nothing - because in Swirl W@tch you didn't even unlock anything.
- And thus began the grind. Oh god, the grind is real in this one. Since you don’t get anything from failed attempts, you may struggle to get anything new in this game. Maybe if you take it easy and earn it patiently in few easy missions it’s doable to max out the game without being unicum player, but for me, I only got items I wanted to try out the most. But some of those items actually help a lot in danger control, so you will eventually want to unlock something just to make it more bearable. And yes, because you have lot of missions to do, there is a lot of equipment to unlock. In 100 hours you probably won’t unlock it all.
This game never hit the mainstream audience and thus Sleeper Games went ham on political aspect. You are a guerilla, you do terrorist stuff like blowing up industry and breaking out political prisoners, you kidnap the guards for tech progress (xd) and generally resist capitalism in every way possible. I enjoyed it and smirked at some item descriptions, I knew what kind of irony to expect after Hyperspace Dogfights, but I can imagine some people can be surprised.
To sum it up:
This is excellent stealth game with good mechanics, challenging difficulty level and good replay value, rewarding if you actually know what you are doing, but very unforgiving. I wouldn’t call it too complex – I just think it’s tailored to a veteran player, because it certainly seems designed this way. My only concern is why you cannot bind slots to individual keys, I think it would do game a favour – allowing it to be played on Deck or with a gamepad.
