[Correspondent Ken Ellis continues his IndieCade 2011 previews with his hands-on impressions of Facepalm's The Swapper.]

The youthful duo of Facepalm Games came to IndieCade this year with their finalist (and award winner) The Swapper in tow, giving us an opportunity to check out their in-development puzzle platformer’s unique cloning mechanic at work firsthand. Set in space you, as the fearless spaceman, must journey through a god forsaken abandoned rock. Doors, switches, and eerie music try to block you in every way possible. Thankfully, you have your handy-dandy cloning gun. With it you can create up to four clones of yourself and switch your consciousnesses from one to the other if you would have the notion to do so.

The Swapper may be reminiscent of a certain Misadventures P.B. Winterbottom. Right off the bat, yeah they are a bit the same. Both are puzzle-based, and rely on a cloning mechanic to get through. However, The Swapper has a much darker tone than P.B. Winterbottom, and the puzzles are of a different breed as well.

For one, there is no time manipulation undertone to The Swapper. Everything is in real time including the clones. The puzzles in The Swapper sometimes uses a mechanic of lights that can interfere with the working of your swapper gun. Red Lights completely block the ability to swap between your clones, and blue lights make it impossible to clone anything in them. This can make some puzzles in the game very complicated and mind bending to figure out.

This game is for anyone who likes their puzzle games with a bit more gloomy/adult feel to them. The overwhelming eerie despair of the game lends an interesting feel to the game that some of you may take a liking to. The release date and platforms have not been determined yet, so keep an eye out. Here’s some gameplay footage provided by our camera, and my thumbs: