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Vancouver-based developer Hothead Games have only been producing games for a few years, yet they’re already starting to build up a reputation for quirky, original gaming titles that fill in the gaps between big blockbuster game series like Modern Warfare and Gran Turismo. Their latest game is Swarm, a puzzle/platform/action game that requires you to work your way through ten levels of carnage controlling a swarm of creatures known as Swarmites. What makes Swarm stand out from many other games is the nature of the creatures you control – as well as thinking and operating independently, they also move as one entity through swarm behaviour, which is where you come in.

Although at first Swarm looks like a puzzle game, it really is much more of a platform game than anything else. You control the swarm and have to guide it through each level picking up points and bonus DNA sequences, while trying to keep at least one Swarmite alive all the way through the level. The Swarmites die very easily but it’s not usually much of a problem as you can top up your swarm with more Swarmites at checkpoints along each level. In fact, the game encourages you to kill off some of your swarm, just to see how many ways they can die, and often the fastest way to progress is by sacrificing part of your swarm. The challenge of the game doesn’t come from saving your swarm but actually from picking up enough points through each level so that the following level is unlocked. As you collect points you increase your point multiplier, which is then lost if you lose all of your Swarmites. It pretty quickly becomes obvious that the only way to rack up enough points for the later levels is to make sure you don’t kill off your whole swarm at any stage – if you do you can restart from a checkpoint but seeing as you’ve lost your multiplier it’s much more effective to just restart the level.

Your basic controls for the swarm are movement, obviously, but you can also expand the swarm, contract it, create vertical towers of Swarmites, throw objects, smash through obstacles, jump, and give your swarm a speed boost. Almost all of this is done with the left analogue stick, the L2 and R2 buttons, and the X button – it can take a while to get used to the multiple functions for each button but it eventually becomes very intuitive. In a similar fashion to puzzle games like Lemmings (albeit with direct control in this case), it can be very satisfying to control your swarm and get them to do whatever you want. You can smash open explosive crates and then quickly expand your swarm to collect all the resulting pick-ups, then contract your swarm before having them all leap over a burning barricade. You can build them into a massive tower and fling them onto tall platforms. Or if you’re bored you can drive them all into a giant circular saw. There are plenty of styles of play, though each obstacle will ultimately need to be tackled in the correct manner.

Successfully playing through the levels is mainly a matter of balance – run through too quickly and you’ll miss the points or kill all your swarmites trying; run too slowly and you’ll fail to pick up enough of a multiplier and time bonus to unlock the next level. The game positively encourages you to replay earlier levels, and often the only way to progress is to first play through a level to work out the best method of collecting enough points, and then to replay it until you can do this in quickly enough and without killing your swarm. This does make Swarm a much longer game than the initial ten levels would suggest, but it also causes problems too. Often there is so much going on that you can’t keep track of your swarm and they can end up all dead without you realising what was happening. It also gives a repetitive edge to the game, that makes some of the later levels a real exercise in patience as you repeatedly replay levels until you fluke your way through or get bored and replay an earlier level instead.

Graphically, Swarm is a pleasant enough looking game, especially for a PSN title, and it generally runs very smoothly. It’s clearly no Uncharted 2 but then it’s not supposed to be. The levels are mildly varied in style, but not really enough considering how many times you can end up replaying some of the later levels. The sound effects are good, and add to the intended comic effect when your bewildered Swarmites end up being roasted to death or sliced up into tiny pieces.

Swarm is definitely not a game which takes itself too seriously, which makes a refreshing change. Even on the start menu, instead of just the standard “Press X to start” instruction, it also states “Do not press Triangle” – needless to say, pressing Triangle has consequences for the poor, unsuspecting Swarmite standing happily in the middle of the screen. There’s plenty to like in Swarm’s gameplay, but there’s also plenty to cause frustration. For most people, it could be something fun and interesting to play between bouts of FPS games like Crysis 2, but probably not much more than that.