Discovery is an aspect of games that seems to have been focus-grouped into oblivion. On the E3 show floor it’s nearly impossible to find a demo that doesn’t have instructions blasted all over the kiosk or boundless in-game prompts, both of which are fiendishly determined to sabotage any semblance of intuition or exploration. Exposition fits the paradigm for those particular games, but discovery often remains a feature too scared to come out of its shell in the harsh world of 2012.
The Unfinished Swan, the first offering from the twelve person team at Giant Sparrow, is all about discovery. Though the game has been in development for well over three years, a debut trailer was made public only recently. And it didn’t make much of any sense. Not unlike PixelJunk Eden or Dyad, I had no idea what I was looking at, but I knew I wanted to play it.
So imagine my delight when Giant Sparrow’s Ben Esposito handed me the controller and politely said, “I’m not going to tell you anything.”
“That’s f—ing great,” I replied.
And so begins The Unfinished Swan. For the first ten seconds or so I sat there staring at a white screen because I had no idea the game had moved onto a point to where it was playable. I then moved the analog stick, started pressing buttons, and discovered I had the ability to hurl balls of black paint everywhere.
Tossing paint revealed walls, fences, hallways, and small islands. I could only proceed and progress by making walk-able areas visible. I didn’t know whether I was inside a mansion or fell into a marsh, and it didn’t particularly matter (though the gold frog that hopped out, mind you the only colored object in the black and white world, would suggest the latter). Oddly blasting the environment with too much paint resulted in a loss of detail, and it seemed like “shading” my surroundings with a light coat was the best way to make the game world look, well, pretty.
In any case I hummed along and tossed out globs of paint at a rapid pace. Dead ends were occasionally met, but with a bit of intuition I made my way through the landscape, eventually concluding at what appeared to be a sizable entry room with a gold crown. From there I eventually fell through the floor, found a multicolored hot air balloon, and completed the demo.
It’s worth mentioning that The Unfinished Swan isn’t all vague axioms. A tangible narrative revolves around Monroe, a boy who was allowed to take his deceased mother’s painting, the titular Unfinished Swan, with him to an orphanage. The painting disappears, and Monroe falls down the rabbit hole, so to speak, trying to recover it. That’s perfectly adequate (and very somber) but honestly I was more intrigued when Esposito relayed that the architecture behind the first level illustrates a little bit about a character Monroe meets during his journey to recover the painting. Building a narrative through world, rather than exposition, is difficulty, but if any game were primed to take a swing, it’s this one.
Oddly, when I finished my demo Esposito mentioned that no other level would be like this one. The rest of The Unfinished Swan is under wraps (and I hope it stays that way, honestly I’ll gladly accept ignorance), but it’s sure to take a divergent leap in style and interaction. Esposito referenced the opening moments when you play a brand new game, and that period of lush discovery rarely extends beyond fifteen minutes. Giant Sparrow’s unofficial goal is to recreate those fifteen minutes with every level, and I can’t wait to see if they can realize their ambition. A release date hasn’t formally been announced, but hopefully we’ll see The Unfinished Swan before the end of 2012.
