As I booted up Swarm, there were two options laid out to me on the right hand portion of the screen: “Press A to select” and “Do not press Y.” Naturally, I chose the latter and watched the death of my first Swarmite. Up close on the welcome screen, the slaughtering of the Swarmites is actually kind of disturbing. Normally in the game, you have an isometric view that makes the Swarmites look more like ants and their deaths more like you focusing a magnifying glass on them. But here, the Swarmite in full screen, it killed the whimsical detachment I hoped I would achieve while playing the main game.

The setup is pretty basic. “Momma” needs a new hat, and the “Hat Boss” is the one who’s got it. Before you can get to the hat boss, you’re going to have to collect some DNA first. Each level available, excluding boss levels, has 5 pieces of said DNA. That’s about all the explanation I could find. The name of the Hat Boss was descriptive enough, I suppose, but why collecting DNA is what allowed me to face the hat-wielding boss was without explanation.

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