I quite enjoyed the Lara Croft GO and Hitman GO puzzle titles that had me pondering what my next move would be while surround me with a beautiful aesthetic and adding storyline to the intrigue. Those games would be wonderful on the Nintendo Switch. Any game like that would be amazing on the Switch, right? Unfortunately, Swim Out by developers Lozange Lab got the puzzle part right but missed on almost everything else.
Swim Out puts you right into the action sort of speak. You are shown a grid-patterned area that look like a swimming pool. You are a swimmer (colored blue) that wants to get out of the pool. Other swimmers are your obstacles (colored red). The other swimmers have patterns that you have to memorize and ignore and they come with different mechanics dependent on the type of swimming on the grid at the time. In fact there are 12 different types of swimmers so the puzzles can become complicated if you don’t remember their patterns from before. With me so far? Make it past them and you will find a ladder that will allow you to exit the pool. Let the games begin.
There are 100 levels to swim across and you will always find yourself stuck a couple of times needing to sit back and ponder what to do next. Make sure you turn the sound off though while you are waiting because the background sounds are truly annoying. The sounds of people swimming, walking around, showering and making loud noises do not make for an attractive ambience. There definitely needed to be background music because this is a game where you sit and think.
The aesthetic is very bright with not much in terms of animations. Everything is basically idle waiting for you to make the next move. This isn’t a bad thing but since this is a 2D puzzle game there isn’t much to look at. You press a direction and then your swimmer goes in that direction and you find your way around the pool avoiding everything else.
The game tries to add more to some puzzles by adding interactive items such as a beach ball, a floating board or noodle and some flippers. You can collect the beach ball and use it to hit another swimming to stun them for a few turns to get around them. The floating board and noodle both extend your body to cover two squares instead of one, which is actually a disadvantage. The flippers allow you to move two squares at a time. There are 12 items in total that you can mess around with. This matches mechanics from the GO games and are nice to see as an addition to the swimmers as obstacles
There are also environmental disruptions that happen on some of the levels. Sometimes you can see a wave coming in from the side and this may stun you if you get in the way. Sea creatures such as crabs can become an obstacle and stop you in your tracks.
An issue I found in this game early and often was the inability for the game to give me feedback when a puzzle could no longer be solved. There are specific areas where a beach ball needed to be used on one single person and nobody else. If you use the beach ball on someone else then the game allows you to continue. Some of the puzzles are broken up into separate pools and you have to traverse from one pool to another to get items to bring back to other pools. Well, if you use the item before you are supposed to, the game just allows you to think it was okay and you may end up swimming around frustrated for a while. This is especially frustrating when you use the item early, go to another area, get hit by an obstacle and just restart in the same area with the obstacle already used. The level should restart.
Swim Out isn’t a terrible game. It has addicting tendencies and you will want to learn the patterns of every level just so you can get to the next. Unfortunately for its flaws (lack of story, dull environments, lack of background music, static animations and very frustrating restart sequences), this title doesn’t compare to other puzzle games out there except for one thing: the price. On the Nintendo Switch, this game goes for a measly $5. At that price point it is definitely worth it if you are looking to fill a puzzle game whole in your library.
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