The Unfinished Swan is a game about exploring the unknown.
The player is a young boy chasing after a swan who has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished kingdom. The game begins in a completely white space where players can throw paint to splatter their surroundings and reveal the world around them.
The player is a young boy chasing after a swan who has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished kingdom. The game begins in a completely white space where players can throw paint to splatter their surroundings and reveal the world around them.
Before I bought this, I had found the visual style for this quite intriguing and I'd heard that the game essentially had no combat so it definitely piqued my interest.
As the introduction says, the game does throw you into an entirely white space - and when you move the left stick it is still white. Not a textured white, but a pure white (maybe not by RGB levels so don't quote me on that) and one without any shadow to give it depth. A genuinely flat, featureless environment until you find the "shoot" button and then a black spot arcs away from the centre of the screen until... splat. Splat, splat, splat. There is no way you only pressed the button once.
The paint balls that you fire will cover the surface in black - and again a pure black so it is like a high resolution ZX Spectrum game. What this allows you to do is to work out from the perspective of the splats, what the features of the landscape are and how you can get around. As you start to play, there is an inevitability to the screen becoming black as it is addictive to paint the screen but you soon realise, as in life, there is a balance to the dark side and overdoing it is counter-productive. The initial "rush" of power is replaced.
As you progress, the story is told in the style of a fairy tale and as you pass checkpoints, you can activate picture frames in order to trigger the next part of the narrative which is told as a voice-over as you retain full control (as seems to be the modern way). The voice-over is very much in the style of a children's fable with appropriate vocabulary and intonation which I found quite sweet. The story (not sure that "plot" is the right word here) itself is also quite big, bold and simple and matches perfectly with the feel of the aesthetic. To match the visuals and the story, the soundtrack [link] is also excellently put together and totally coherent with the rest of the game capturing the children's storybook feel and giving it the lightness and darkness required at just the right times.
The game itself has you chasing after the swan of the title and is based around the story of a number of paintings left behind after the death of a painter - the favourite being an unfinished swan that you are chasing. Or maybe "following" through the landscape.
As you follow it down the garden path, there is a wonderful moment where you eventually come to a point where you have risen from your starting point and can look back upon your path as it doubles back on itself. And in that moment, you realise that you have created, with your filth and darkness, a beautiful image of a path picked out in the whiteness. I think this is the strength of the "curated" image as I feel this is - although you have free movement throughout and you can create any path you want, the director has funnelled you into the space so that you will look upon your own wonders. It is a lovely moment and is the single vision that drew me into the game.
The fundamental mechanic of the black on white does change for the subsequent chapters so does the concept of the game yet, in fact, the visual flair is retained even without this. In some respects, it harks back to old videogames, especially platformers, which would have worlds with changing visuals and subtly altered mechanics - all games had to have an ice world! The other mechanics are as arresting but not as clearly trailed but they captured my imagination in different ways. One world, for example, has you entering a prototyped version of a level that you have already seen with a few changes affecting both the prototype and final version.
The game itself is fairly short at about 3 to 4 hours to play through once although there are other things to find (balloons are scattered around and can be freed) and bonuses for doing so, they are genuinely bonuses in that they just feel like toys to play around with.
The length of the game allows the different ideas enough time to play with but not too long so that they get too boring (although one is particularly repetitive) and the game is not challenging once you understand the given gaming mechanic in a chapter. As a result, it is a great game to play for the inexperienced as there is no combat and very little, if any, twitch reflex sections. I found that this makes it a relaxing experience with the ability to wander around at your leisure in a beguiling and beautiful world not one to be sniffed at.
I really enjoy these shorter, "indie" style games that set out with a particular goal in mind and have the right mix of ideas and execution. As a result of the length, I think, they are coherent and feel as if they have been put together in one continuous project rather than bringing disparate teams and ideas together to form a whole.
I played on the PS3 and you can buy the game here[link].
The trailer is below:
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