Swarm Review

This. This moment, right now... remember it. Because after you’ve played ten minutes of Swarm, not only are you going to be wishing your were as calm as you were then, you’re also going to wish you hadn’t started - not in a bad way. More of a `oh-crap-where-has-the-last-hour-of-my-life-gone` kind of way.

The premise is simple; you have a set number of Swarmites at the start of the level with which you have to collect pieces of DNA in order to score points, and then return to their crashed blue blob with the intention of saving their race. It sounds easy enough, but that’s before you meet some of the sick and twisted ways in which your Swarmites can be disposed of. Saw-blades, bear-traps and platforms being hit by falling volcano debris are just a few of the ways the game will intimidate you into making further mistakes, losing more of your little blue pals in the process.

The game plays like a cross between Lemmings and Overlord, with you controlling them directly - like the minions of Overlord, but relying on your instruction to keep them out of harms way, like the Lemmings series. After just a short period of playing, there was a definite sense of ‘just one more go’ creeping up. A higher score could be obtained. Easily... Restart level. Try again. Lose Swarmites. Swear a bit. Restart Level... and so on. There’s certain parts of a level that will require you to have a certain amount of Swarmites. If you haven't enough when you get there, you either need to find a ‘respawner’ or restart the level. It’s a tough choice, but if you want the high-scores then a decision will have to be made.The levels have a certain flair feeling slightly cartoonish and fun whilst keeping the appearance of being inherently dangerous to your 50-strong team.

In all it’s possibly one of the simplest ideas to hit gaming in a while. But it’s also bloody good fun. There’s a lot worse that you could spend your money on than Swarm and with plenty of game time on offer, with being able to better your high scores it should last you sometime.