Spunky spirits test the power of witchy and demonic friendship in this hybrid dating sim/puzzle game.
What is Spirit Swap?
In the game, you play as Samar – a Spirit Swapper living outside the coastal town of Demashq. In your role, you must ensure that little troublesome multi-coloured spirits from a dimension beyond yours aren’t allowed to cause any issues in your world before being sent home.
Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To is primarily a dating and friendship sim. However, your matching skills will be tested throughout the game’s story using puzzle gameplay. Gameplay should feel familiar to fans of titles like Tetris Attack, Pokemon Puzzle League or Planet Puzzle League.
The Gameplay Split in Spirit Swap
The main mode in this one is the game’s single-player campaign which is split into two sections.
The first section is relatively short. In it, you play as Samar where you learn the basics of the puzzle gameplay, meet the major characters and learn about Samar’s obsession with her favourite band 5HAG VISION and their upcoming concert in town. As you “Spirit Swap” against your friends, you will also collect items that will provide block-clearing powers. These powers have various effects from clearing blocks in a specific shape or casting a specific effect on the blocks in your zone.
Once you have met all of the major characters and understand the basic gameplay, the game opens up and becomes much more about the relationships and friendships with the other characters. The second part of the game was weighted much more toward visual novel and dating sim elements. I hit the first credits sequence where the game is more focused on deepening friendship around the ninety-minute mark of playing.
The game also has an endless puzzle mode and a 2-player mode as well.
Two Elements Fitting Together
As mentioned previously, puzzle-solving is based on the model established by Panel De Pon. Spirits will come up from the bottom of the zone. It’s your job to create matches of three or more. Do so with your 1×1 cursor to complete horizontal swaps within the zone. Make more impressive matches and you start dropping garbage into your opponent’s playfield. At the same time, your opponent will be also dropping garbage. These garbage blocks need to be matched once before separating into spirits that can be matched again.
When I compare Spirit Swap to other games in the genre, the average round time seems pretty short. Instead of a single match or a best-of-3, the game has adopted a first-to-3 model for their encounters. On the lowest difficulty named “Chill”, I found myself breezing through matches at times in under a minute.
I do wish that the game had more difficulty options though. As someone who has played other games in the genre before, I felt right at home with this one on the “Chill” difficulty. The “Spicy” difficulty was a pretty hard step up though where I would lose the best-of-3 almost every time. Now, there is an option to skip a specific match if it’s giving you trouble and accessibility options as well, but I do wish that this one had more granularity in the level of difficulty.
Modelling Healthy Relationships
The witchy, queer demonic characters were very well designed and written in this game. Dating sims are not typically my genre of choice, but I found that the character designs were charming and modelled positive body image with a variety of varied body types. Not only that, but the dialogue modelled healthy dating and friendship communication.
The characters all seemed like they weren’t afraid of a little therapy.
For Fans Looking for Some Well-Written Romance
For players interested in this one at a cursory glance, I would say that this one leans more heavily into dating sim and visual novel gameplay and is less about the Panel De Pon style gameplay than I was expecting. So if you’re coming to this for puzzle gaming first and foremost, you may want to temper your expectations since the puzzling is relatively one-note. But if queer and witchy relationships are a space that you’re looking to explore, then Spirit Swap: Lofi Beats to Match-3 To will tickle your fancy.
UPDATE: After publishing the review, a representative from the team reached out to say that a difficulty adjustment balance is being made in the coming days. Stay tuned for that!
A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for this feature. Reviewed on PC.
Looking for another different kind of puzzle game? Check out our final impressions of Pinball Spire!
Jacob is a creator marketing professional, and a fan of video games. He hosts/produces the Left Behind Game Club and is a co-host of Crossplay Conversations. At conventions and bars, he also hosts Video Game Trivia.
