Review: Swagman (BWS)

At the time of release, Swagman was certainly an oddity in the days where developers were pushing for the biggest polygon count possible (though things probably haven’t changed that much), especially considering Core had just re-invented 3D gaming with the legendary Tomb Raider. Of course such a blatant throwback to the days of 16-bit gaming seemed doomed to sink into obscurity as soon as it was released, and indeed very little information about the game is available on the Internet aside from that it exists; it doesn’t even have a Wikipedia article. Since we at Gamestyle make it our mission to bring the obscure side of gaming to light, we thought we would give this forgotten chapter of Core’s history the once-over.

Story comparisons to NiGHTS into Dreams are inevitable, but the whole tone is rather more grim. All is not well in the small town of Paradise Falls, which the evil Swagman has chosen as prime real estate to expand his territory. One fateful night, he captures the Dreamflight army (good fairies who protect sleepers from the forces of evil), puts all the townsfolk in a never-ending slumber and begins to drag the town into his abyss of nightmares. As the only two people still awake, eight-year-old twins Zack and Hannah are the only ones left to fight the Swagman, rescue the Dreamflight and save the town.

The influences of the game mechanics are pretty easy to spot, as it bears many hallmarks of The Legend of Zelda and cult classic Zombies Ate My Neighbours. The world is viewed from a strange, slightly-angled top-down viewpoint, and at first the game resembles a typical arcade adventure, as the first stage tasks you with rescuing Hannah by searching the twins’ house, fighting the Swagman’s henchmen, finding keys and pushing objects around to advance. You also need to collect a lot of bugs from Zack’s bug collection, since they plot a safe course over the Abyss at key points in the game.

Once you gain control of Hannah and you start to move beyond the house, the game gains a heavy puzzle element, as you need to use the skills of both twins to get them safely through the stages. The puzzles mostly revolve around the twins standing on a series of pressure pads in a specific order, but some of them are actually pretty fiendish; we remember one reviewer at the time was actually begging for a walkthrough at one point!

We find it easy to see why, for this is an extremely hard game. In terms of length it’s actually not very long, but it’s still one of the hardest short games we’ve played. You only get a maximum of eight hit points and it’s often very easy to lose health; some enemies and traps later in the game can actually take off as many as four hit points if they touch you, and refills get rarer as you progress. What also doesn’t help is that many of the areas are suspended over a swirling Abyss, which is instant death if you fall in. Checkpoints also get more scarce, but thankfully you have unlimited continues. It’s hard in the way that it feels really satisfying to nail a tough section, but on the flipside it may end up being too challenging for some tastes.

The biggest cause of death will almost certainly be falling, whether it be into the Abyss or other hazards. The unusual perspective often makes it difficult to judge your jumps accurately in the various platforming sections, even though your character casts a helpful shadow, so its all too easy to mess up and fall (sometimes falling through what you thought was solid ground). While not game-destroying, these platforming elements are easily the weakest part of the game.

One other aspect of the game to be talked about is the areas set in the Swagman’s realm (or the “Terrortories” as the game calls them). When Zack or Hannah enter these realms through mirrors, they turn into monsters called Dreambeasts and gain unique abilities such as Zack’s fire breath and Hannah’s double-jump. The problem with these areas is that they are really under-utilised; you only visit them a total of seven times during the course of the game, they’re all rather short and many of them just act as connecting points between different parts of the real-world areas. The phrase “missed opportunity” springs to mind here.

As far as aesthetics and presentation go through, the game really can’t be faulted. Taking a number of visual cues from Tim Burton films such as Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas, the graphics and art design look great. Everything is lush, colourful and suitably weird. There are even a few neat uses of 3D graphics, such as when a pair of snooker cues float close to the camera before crashing down on the character.

The sound effects are rather nondescript, though there are some good evil chuckles and blood-curdling screams included. Where the game really excels is in the music; the use of piano and orchestral pieces creates a brilliantly eerie tone, and always sets just the right mood throughout. It is simply beautiful, and ranks among our favourite game soundtracks.

Swagman was released on both the PlayStation and Saturn, and minor differences in graphics and audio aside both versions are identical. The PlayStation version is common and can be found for a fiver, but the Saturn version was only released in the UK and is extremely rare (you don’t want to know what we had to do to find our copy). While the high difficulty is as likely to infuriate as it is to enthral, it is often clever, looks and sounds fantastic and is satisfying to play. If you’re curious enough, it’s worth finding a copy; just make sure the closet’s securely locked if you plan on playing at night.

Rating: 7 / 10

Words by Drew Middlemas