The Swapper

Far in the future, humanity has begun exploring space with the aim of gathering resources. One space station discovers a planet with a promising resource. They also stumble across what may be an intelligent life form on that planet, a sort of rock that the scientists speculate are telepathic.

The explorers bring the rocks—called "Watchers"—on board their ship, but of course, things begin to go downhill.

The game sees one of the station's inhabitants trying to escape to safety by using a special cloning technology derived from the Watchers.

The Swapper's themes include the ethics of human experimentation, problems with scientific curiosity, and the morality of interfering with sentient beings.

The game saves automatically at the beginning of puzzles.

The game is fairly difficult, but rewarding.

• Is human experimentation ever ethical? What if the people consent to it? What if they are going to die anyway?
• Should people ever interfere with sentient beings (or other cultures, for instance) that they don't understand? Is there a reasonable way to make first contact?
• Science fiction stories where humans encounter aliens often work as a metaphor for Europeans encountering other cultures—either they enter into conflict with one another, or humans (Europeans) destroy the other. What are some problems with this metaphor? Do you think the Swapper plays with this metaphor?