Another day and another Rogue-like with platform elements
appears in an already saturated market. However, The Swindle tries to do things
a little different by setting itself up as a heist game. It is certainly an
engaging prospect and something not as prevalent as many of the other templates
for Rogue-like games. Attach the steam punk setting and it is clearly trying to
set itself apart from the crowd as you plan your next move from a big airship
in the sky.
The basic premise behind the game is that you have one
hundred days to break into the most high security location in the game. Your
first heists will be against small and under guarded targets and you gradual
work your way up to more secure locations which offers both more reward and
more danger. Every time you die, complete a heist or run back to your airship
you lose a day.
The money you accumulate needs to be spent on upgrades for
your thieves, airship and to unlock security clearance which allows you to move
onto bigger and better locations for looting. There are a wide range of things
to improve from abilities like jumping and hacking to adding equipment such as
bombs and devices to keep away the cops.
If you are discovered during a heist an alarm will be
sounded which alerts all the security measures in the level to your presence.
From that point on the best thing to do is try and grab as much easy cash as
you can and run back to your airship. If you hang around for too long the
police will arrive in a hovering gun ship thing which proceeds to blast through
the level until it reaches and kills you. When you die you lose all money found
in the level and this is then unrecoverable.
There’s certainly potential here but there are a number of
things which stop The Swindle being as enjoyable and compelling as it could be.
The main issue is that the controls feel lose and awkward. Jumping and climbing
around can be a pain and even after you have upgraded your thief things don’t
really improve that much. This isn’t helped by a lack of impact behind actions
which gives the player very little feedback with regards to things like
successful strikes on opponents and when you have landed on walls or other
surfaces.
There’s also a problem with the random nature of the level
design. In numerous amounts of our runs we came up against things which were
simply impossible to pass which meant we had to head back and lose a day
without acquiring any gold at all. While it’s ok to have the ability levelling
system, having the main money computer stuck in a level with no corridors
leading to it is incredibly annoying. Games like Spelunky also use the random
generator but there is always a way to proceed and in a game with a tight time
limit such as this the system could use some tweaking as at the minute there
are too many occasions where levels are either too repetitive or lack access to
their bounty.
The final hurdle is that colour blind gamers are really
going to struggle with this. Aside from red and green being used for
dangerous/safe colours there are sometimes just too many enemies lurking around
on sections of the level to pick out smaller objects like mines clearly. We
counted a good twenty five out of a hundred runs where we had absolutely no
idea what killed us.
Faults aside there is undoubtedly an interesting game here.
When you get involved in a good heist the tension builds as you edge around
hoping not to be discovered. Hacking a computer, stealing the funds and then making
a mad cap chase back out is also a great feeling and highly rewarding when
you’ve had to think on the fly as you go.
Overall, The Swindle is a good idea and an inventive setting
let down at times by an awkward control scheme and levels which don’t always
seem to populate in a logical or constructive way. It’s good to see new twists
being added to the Rogue-like formula and a promising foundation to build upon
for future updates or a sequel. At the minute though it provides an interesting
distraction but nothing that is likely to keep you interested in the long term.
Overall 6/10
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