Spirit Swap sells itself as a chill, low stakes/lo-fi match-3 puzzle game with relentlessly cheerful vibes. It is also a head-to-head fighter with neither justice nor mercy in its heart.
You could play this to wind down after a long day. You could also play it to tear apart your closest human relationships. Spirit Swap contains multitudes.
Granted, some of that’s on me. If I’m playing a match-3 puzzle game, it’s probably Bejeweled 3 or one of its legions of imitators. Compared to those, Spirit Swap has its own unique rhythm, which I’m told is closer to 1995’s Tetris Attack than anything else. That’s been messing with me. Even after several hours in-game and clearing Spirit Swap’s story mode, I keep trying to set up combos that it isn’t equipped to permit.
Naturally, that isn’t Spirit Swap’s fault. It is what it is, and there’s no point in criticizing it for what it clearly isn’t. However, it does accidentally illustrate how the game is built around what’s effectively an identity crisis; it wants to be an old-school arcade throwback and a calming relaxation app and a queer dating sim, all at the same time. It’s a balancing act, and sometimes it spills over.
In Spirit Swap’s story mode, you play as Samar, who lives in the woods outside the coastal town of Demashq. Every night, Samar wanders around banishing spirits who’d otherwise wander into Demashq to cause mayhem, through (what we’re told is) a painless “swapping” process.
One day, Samar goes into town to check on her friends, who’re all dealing with their own mundane crises: overwork, a recent breakup, feeling unappreciated. Each of them is also up to their ears in spirits, which shouldn’t have been able to get this far into Demashq, so Samar swings into action.
Despite that description, there isn’t much actual conflict in Spirit Swap’s story. You wrap up the “besieged by ghosts” issue within an hour or two and then proceed to scheduling hangouts with Samar’s friends and associates, a few of which might potentially develop into a romance. In between each scene, you swap some spirits as part of informal competitions with Samar’s friends.
In each round of Spirit Swap, rows of shaped blocks appear from the bottom of the screen and move up over time. You can only move them horizontally, but arranging 3 or more of the same block in a row banishes the spirits and makes them disappear. In competitive rounds, you can also flood your opponent’s screen with garbage blocks by pulling off big combos, which lowers the amount of space they have to work with.
It might take you some time to wrap your head around Spirit Swap’s mechanics, especially if you’re like me and you come into it with some baggage from other games in the same lane. It’s a deliberate throwback to an era when falling-block puzzles weren’t automatically considered a casual-friendly genre, particularly when and if you play it against other people. It’s easy to learn, but timing, foresight, and reaction speed all count for a lot.
On the two lowest difficulties, you should be able to cruise through Spirit Swap on autopilot, which is arguably where the game thrives. It’s a big plate of comfort food by design, featuring a broadly diverse cast of characters who’re all effortlessly comfortable in their own skin. Samar herself has no real problems, her friends are all lovable dopes at worst, and even the spirits do nothing worse than make the occasional mess. If you want something to plug into so you can wall off the world for a while, Spirit Swap has got your back like a jacket.
On higher difficulties, however, Spirit Swap turns into a surprisingly competitive experience that takes some visible inspiration from arcade fighters. I ran through the story mode on the second highest difficulty, on the assumption that I’ve got some puzzle chops, and the CPU promptly handed me my teeth. I had to buckle down and figure out how Spirit Swap’s systems worked before I started making headway, and even then it was touch and go.
That was more than I expected I’d get. I went into Spirit Swap thinking I was in for a casual-friendly puzzle game that would depend heavily on its music and overall vibes. That’s not an unfair description, and you can have a perfectly good time with Spirit Swap if you’re looking for a joyously queer dating simulator or something to chill you out at the end of your day. I’d like to be able to change the music in Endless mode, but that’s the only suggestion I’d make.
Spirit Swap also has some surprise potential as a head-to-head multiplayer game, however, and that ended up being more interesting to me than the rest of the overall package. It could use a few tweaks to add some depth, but I could see this developing over time into a solid new entry in the puzzle-fighter genre.
[Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To, published and developed by Soft Not Weak, is now available for Xbox and PC via Steam for $19.99. This column was written using a Steam code sent to Hard Drive by a Soft Not Weak PR representative.]
