Journey and TheUnfinished Swan are available in one beautiful bundle, wandering onto PS3 for $15 via the PlayStation Store. They're siblings in the gaming realm, both offering individualized, introspective gameplay, though brought about by disparate worlds and mechanics.
"We're incredibly happy to have The Unfinished Swan bundled with Journey because our game owes such a big debt to Journey and all the other games from thatgamecompany," says Giant Sparrow president Ian Dallas, creator of The Unfinished Swan. "It's not too much of a stretch to say that our game wouldn't exist without them. I think it was the warm reception for Flow and Flower that gave Sony the courage to fund our game, made by another team of inexperienced folks with unusual and impractical ideas."
Journey was our No. 1 game of the year for 2012, for offering a "joyous illustration of how games can effectively stir and converse with players." TheUnfinished Swan, we found, is a whimsical, fantastical journey through the nostalgia of childhood amazement. Joy, whimsy and fantasy - sounds like a good bundle to us.
The Unfinished Swan originally had a river-painting mechanic and a playable library full of unfinished books, but Ian Dallas and the team at Giant Sparrow couldn't figure out a way to make these aspects fun, he told Joystiq at GDC. The river-painting tool allowed players to throw paint and create puddles 10 feet deep, and "it seemed cool. We had a whole playable prototype, it worked, it was there," but it wasn't fun, so Dallas removed it.
The library of unfinished books would have been a space with "a million letters everywhere, running around," with tomes that contained the first chapter of brilliant novels, wonderful opening sentences or vague ideas only, nothing complete. While this would have been pretty, Dallas said, it didn't have a place in the game.
The blueprint mechanic almost didn't make it into the final build of Unfinished Swan, but it made the cut, so, "Yay!" Dallas exclaimed.
Giant Sparrow isn't in charge of the Unfinished Swan brand anymore, so if there's a Vita port on the way, Dallas isn't aware. Sony isn't obligated to tell him if there's anything in progress, but it's generally up-front about these things; Dallas knew about the Unfinished Swan DLC for PlayStation All-Stars nine months ahead of time.
"I would be ecstatic if there were ports," he said. "If someone wanted to make a port of the game, it's awesome that we don't have to do that. I don't know if there are ports or what the plans are, but that's one of the nice things about having a publisher."
As for that leak about "Edith Finch," Giant Sparrow's purported next game, Dallas can't say much. "We may have contracts, there may be a publisher involved, they may have people with feelings that may get hurt from time to time," Dallas said. "We can safely announce that we have an unannounced game that we're working on. I'm very excited about it."
The publisher that Giant Sparrow "may" have might be Sony. Dallas said other publishers - Nintendo and Microsoft, specifically - are generally open to publish indie games but not fund them, while Sony goes all-in. "We've been so happy with Sony," he said. "It's amazing that Sony can do that and really put faith in these things. God bless Shuhei and Scott Rody and all these people.... They just really want to make interesting games."
Journey took top honours at this year's BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) game awards, with five different gongs going to thatgamecompany for Artistic Achievement, Audio Achievement, Best Online Multiplayer, Best Game Design, and Best Original Music.
The Unfinished Swan picked up two awards, for Game Innovation and Debut Game. Dishonored won the award for Best Game in 2013, and iOS tactile puzzler The Room picked up an award for the Best British Game.
Valve's Gabe Newell was given an Academy Fellowship award for his storied career, while the "Ones to Watch" award (meant to showcase the best young game dev talent) was given to a game called Starcrossed, made by students working with the Dare to Be Digital competition.
#yearinbeauty
As much as we all love visual eye-candy, there are times when less is more. If done right, you can leave more of a visual impact using simple splashes of black on white than all the technical tricks in heaven and earth. More »
This launch trailer for The Unfinished Swan guides you through some of the intriguing scenery in the serene game. The Giant Sparrow-developed game is out now on PSN, and our review indicates that it's not one to be missed.
#bestofmetacritic
Welcome back to "Backhanded Box Quotes," a collection of measured, thoughtful criticism from the user reviews of Metacritic and elsewhere. More »
The Unfinished Swan is now finished and I think it’s a pretty amazing game. You probably shouldn’t take my word for it though.
See, making a game is like having a baby. You put a lot of yourself into it, there’s a mad scramble to push it out at the end, and once it’s out there’s no way you can ever be objective about it. So I’m not the best judge of whether this game is any good.
What I can say though is that it’s definitely the game we wanted to make.
We set out to create a game about a sense of wonder, about what it feels like to discover astonishing new things. We wanted to create an experience where as soon as players started getting the hang of something the game would shift and they’d be on to something new. I’m still surprised we managed to pull it off because making a game like that is crazy.
In contrast, most games take a few core gameplay mechanics and then spend their whole time exploring how those mechanics work together and separately. Coming up with interesting mechanics is hard so there’s a lot of creative and financial incentive to keep a game focused on just a few of them. The result is that most games are about developing a sense of mastery, of what it feels like to become an expert.
The Unfinished Swan isn’t about being an expert. It’s about how it feels to be a child discovering a brand new world.
Having just finished our very first game, that’s a feeling all of us at Giant Sparrow can sympathize with. Like the game itself the process of making it was messy and full of surprises.
And we never would have finished it without the incredible support we’ve gotten from Sony. We also want to thank thatgamecompany, who are the reason that support exists. Their fantastic work proves what a small team can do with a bit of time and encouragement.
Most of all, we want to thank the PSN community for being so supportive of strange new experiences. Your enthusiasm for games of all kinds — even games that are unlike anything you’ve ever played before — is why Sony is able to keep taking chances on unusual games like Journey and The Unfinished Swan.
#theunfinishedswan
Playing The Unfinished Swan feels a lot like being three years old. You make a terrible mess, and then when someone asks you "Why did you do that?" the only real answer you have is that, weirdly, it felt right. There was just something about that wall that begged to be drawn on with crayons, something about the VCR that just begged to have a PB&J sandwich in it. More »
Like a lot of folks, I first saw the tech demo for The Unfinished Swan when it made the rounds online in 2008. The idea stuck in the back of my head but it wasn’t until later when Giant Sparrow put up a job posting that I decided: I had to make that game. I had just graduated from college without much professional experience, so I did what I do best and made a game for them. You can check it out here if you’d like. The video cuts off because the end of the game says “Call me” and has my phone number on it. It got the attention of the Giant Sparrow team, and I ended up flying out to Los Angeles to work on the game. I was elated and a little shocked, but I came to learn that at Giant Sparrow, the player experience always comes first – and my little game was designed to create a very specific experience. Now, in October 2012, The Unfinished Swan is out in the wild (well, to PlayStation Plus members) and we’re proud that we were able to make a truly experiential game.
We had a very unique creative process. In planning out each level, we used a series of index cards representing emotional beats. I would then work with Ian to put together a rough version of the level. If something didn’t feel right, we’d cut it out and shuffle our cards. Hokyo sums it up really well when he says the experience of play is more like eating a meal than looking at a painting. We eat with our entire bodies, at our own pace, using all of our senses. The metaphor of food isn’t purely conceptual; both Hokyo and Ian’s love of food manifests itself in the personality of the King character. In one chapter, players explore the King’s dining hall, complete with an abandoned feast. Also, see if you can find a giant piece of toast hidden somewhere.
Working at Giant Sparrow has been a creative challenge. On one hand, we had a tremendous amount of freedom to experiment with new ideas. On the other, we were a very small team with limited resources, and working with a group of really creative people can be a game of compromises between tech, art, sound, and design. The best part about working with our small team was that the people posing questions were also the ones creating solutions.
Overall, The Unfinished Swan is a really personal game to all of us. We worked together for a long time and poured a lot of our own quirks and experiences into it. When you sit down to play, know that it was created from start to finish with your whole experience in mind. Go forth and explore.
Video games are good at a lot of things. Typically, they appeal to our baser instincts - usually the desire for power, in whatever form that may take, be it blasting aliens, slaying dragons or scoring touchdowns. What they do particularly well that isn't explored often enough, is rekindle our childhood capacity for amazement.
I think this is something that most invested players realize, whether they've ever articulated it or not. More than books or movies, games engage us, and the good ones pull us in. They can remind us what it was like to lift a rock in a garden, discovering the creatures that live underneath, or how it felt to dribble paint on a sheet of paper, fold it in half and reveal a butterfly.
The Unfinished Swan is the story of a child, Monroe. Its ability to plant players firmly in his shoes, to help us see the world as he does, is what makes it special.
The latest dev diary for The Unfinished Swan dips into the games (unsurprisingly delightful) music. The music was inspired by the game's characters, the boy Monroe and the strange King. Despite the title, however, the soundtrack appears to be devoid of honking, which seems a little disingenuous.
The Unfinished Swan is an unusual game with an unusual history. We wanted to give you an exclusive look into its history before it lands on PSN October 23rd — as well as some secrets you’d never guess. Find out where we came up with the idea, who helped make it happen, and some techniques we used to make the game feel just right.
Virtual reality: The Unfinished Swan started as a student project in the University of Southern California’s Interactive Media program. Originally it was meant to be played with a head-mounted display. Over time, the game eventually became a PS3 exclusive.
Showing our roots: The pond, which is the opening area of The Unfinished Swan, hasn’t changed since we entered the game into the Independent Games Festival in 2009. The reasons were partly to keep a homage to the area that got us started, and also because it’s a successful level layout.
Tiny team: Giant Sparrow started as a two-person company and grew to 12 people at one point during production of The Unfinished Swan. Being a small team provided a lot of advantages; we were able to try things big studios wouldn’t touch.
Auto-aim: When we were first testing the game, we heard more than once that players wanted some sort of gun that would shoot paint where they were pointing. We weren’t about to give Monroe – the main character of The Unfinished Swan – a gun but we did come up with a fix. It happens behinds the scenes: the game will adjust the arc of your throw to hit things that you’re pointing at.
Secret run: It’s very subtle, but if you walk forward for long enough, Monroe starts to pick up his pace. We added this for players who like exploring so there’s less time spent walking long distances.
Not quite white: The white color you see in The Unfinished Swan is actually not pure white, but a slightly warmer yellowish white. On certain LCD TVs, pure white shows up with a bluish tint – which is not very befitting of a storybook style.
Getting closer to the narrator: The voice of the narrator was originally recorded with temporary dialogue – it’s the voice of creative director Ian Dallas’s aunt. After auditioning other narrators, we weren’t able to find a voice as authentic as a real mother.
Legendary art director: The Unfinished Swan’s art director, Hokyo Lim, was previously the art director for League of Legends by Riot Games. While they are tonally very different, Hokyo’s strong 2D skills have translated beautifully to both League of Legends and The Unfinished Swan.
Stay a while: The Unfinished Swan has four different chapters, each with their own visual style and mechanics. Part of the design philosophy for The Unfinished Swan is to let players figure things out for themselves, so there are a few parts of the game that have never been shown before.
Becoming a minimalist: The Minimalist trophy, unlocked when a player walks through the opening area without using more than three splats of paint, was originally unlocked by not splatting a single ball. Ben, the level designer, could stumble through it using sound but when the rest of the team tested it nobody was able to figure out how to navigate without using paint. After changing it to three splats maximum, it felt like a more balanced challenge.
Want to find out more about The Unfinished Swan? Keep reading PlayStation.Blog for all the latest on this unique and beautiful game.
At its core, The Unfinished Swan is about the joy of creation and self-discovery. These themes revolve around two central characters: one young, who has dealt with great loss and loneliness, and one old, who must reconcile his current stage of life as well as his fate.
One of the initial conversations I had with Peter Scaturro, music supervisor at the Santa Monica Studio involved using the key components of the score to offset the melancholy of the story. I consciously steered away from anything that felt too sad, stark or desolate. Instead,
I focused on crafting a mood that was lush, curious, and warm. We wanted the music to serve as a companion for Monroe and the player as they explored the world of the game. To achieve this, I chose to highlight certain instruments and sounds that were inspired by the characters themselves. Monroe’s signature sound is played by plucked and mallet instruments like marimba and harp – youthful, resonant sounds that highlight his innocence as well as the storybook-quality of the game. The bizarre, pompous King is heralded by gritty, electronic harpsichord tones. I used acoustic sounds to imitate electronic, synthesized textures and vice versa – using analog modular synthesizers and extensive processing to evoke harpsichord and harp-like sounds. Too often, classical “thematic” scores are at odds with modern, texture-driven scores.
My goal was to blur the lines and try to find the best of both worlds: to use the opportunity I had as a composer not just to write a score, but to knit the fabric for this world, completely from scratch. Aside from live string orchestra, every sound in the score is original. The compositional process was about subverting all traditional rules in favor of something more textural, more free-flowing – like an ocean of sound. Classical theory and traditional harmonic structures are here, but they’re lurking far below the surface. In-game ambient music is always evolving, never confined to a static loop. I wanted the music to feel seamless with the gameplay, as if it is part of the environment.
And that brings us back to the joy of creation – there’s a certain naivety in so much of my favorite art. The Unfinished Swan was the perfect opportunity to explore that. I’m so excited to put this out into the world. It was an incredible experience working with Giant Sparrow and the SCEA Music Department.
We can all relate to Monroe’s mother and The King. The spark at the beginning of a project is what we love best about creating. The real work begins when we have to develop that initial idea into a finished product, and I’m confident that no one has played or heard a game quite like The Unfinished Swan.
The Unfinished Swan, a sort of first-person puzzle game in which you navigate by splattering the uniformly white world with paint, will arrive on PSN for PlayStation Plus members on October 16 in North America. The wider PSN release will occur one week later on October 23. In Europe, the Plus release will happen on October 17, followed by the full PSN release on October 24.
The developer diary above discusses the premise of the game, and how developer Giant Sparrow got involved with Sony. Mercifully, it also explains the title.
When you make a game about something unusual like, say, throwing paint in an all-white world, you expect to get a lot of questions. But we were surprised that the question we got asked the most turned out to be “when can I buy it?”
Now we have an answer: you can buy The Unfinished Swan on October 23rd exclusively on PSN. And if you’re a PlayStation Plus member, you can get the game a week early — October 16th.
In the meantime, there’s still a lot to learn about the game. You’ve met the King, now get to know us: the team behind it all. In the first of a series of developer diaries, we’ll lift the curtain and give you some background on Giant Sparrow, the beginning of The Unfinished Swan and how we landed on PlayStation Network. Check it out:
Leading up to launch on October 23rd, we will be back to dive in and show you all you need to know about The Unfinished Swan. For more news about the game you can check out the Giant Sparrow company blog.
#theunfinishedswan
This year's Tokyo Game Show has showcased many titles, but none of them has an ounce of the creativity shown in The Unfinished Swan. More »
This trailer for The Unfinished Swan from PAX 2012 delves into the Sony-published, Giant Sparrow-developed game's mysterious plot. While no specific release date has been revealed for this PSN-exclusive game, the game's official site indicates it will launch some time in 2012.
Like a lot of other great artists, our King is a little crazy.
He’s the one who created the entire world that players will be exploring in The Unfinished Swan. And I don’t want to give too much away, but the King built a lot of cool stuff. If you like all-white statue gardens, giant labyrinths, or colossal monuments to the King then you’re in luck.
Unfortunately, most people don’t like those things. At least not in their backyard. Turns out living in the middle of a giant labyrinth is pretty inconvenient, which is why just about everyone in the kingdom eventually moved away. But the King is the sort of guy who goes right on building the stuff he wants no matter what other people think about it. Whether or not that’s a good thing depends on your point of view and — like I said — how you feel about giant labyrinths.
#theunfinishedswan
Stephen nailed it earlier today when he said the PS3's "last place" standing is causing Sony to try some refreshingly different stuff. Latest example: this new trailer for The Unfinished Swan, which if you heard described as "oh a game where you wander around painting" sounds boring, but when you see it looks wonderful. More »
Hey everyone! I’m Ben, a Game Designer at Giant Sparrow. Last Saturday, a bunch of us took a trip down to San Diego for Comic-Con, where we held a panel that focused on the art of The Unfinished Swan. We want to thank everyone who attended — you’re all beautiful people. If you couldn’t make it to the panel, we’ve put together this highlight reel so you can watch all the good parts! The panel was hosted by Morgan Webb, who made sure things went super smooth as we discussed the ups and downs of developing such a unique game.
On stage we had Ian Dallas, Hokyo Lim, Max Geiger, and me. We showed off some never-before-seen concept art, and talked about how we developed the art style for The Unfinished Swan. We’ve been really quiet throughout development in hopes of preserving the game’s surprises, so it was refreshing to have the chance to speak with fans about our inspirations. Thanks for being patient with us! We’ve got more to reveal soon, so keep in touch with us on Twitter and be sure to comment here!
Like thatgamecompany before it, The Unfinished Swan dev team is being pseudo internalized by Sony in order to complete a PSN game exclusively. In so many words, the folks at Giant Sparrow got set up with "office space, equipment, and advice," in exchange for creating a PS3-exclusive title - the title in question being The Unfinished Swan.
But wait, haven't we seen a first-person painting game before? Why yes, yes we have ... way back in 2008 when it was still named "Whitespace." Holy moly! Giant Sparrow apparently signed a deal with Sony some time in the past few years and have been plugging away on The Unfinished Swan ever since. The team's first goal: establishing a story for their neat tech demo.
"The idea of painting a white world is pretty abstract. You could make all kinds of different games about that," creative director Ian Dallas admits on the PlayStation blog. What his team found most interesting, however, was crafting a tale around the "sense of wonder" the world gave them. "After splatting stuff for a few months we realized what we liked most about it was the sense of wonder it created. We liked not knowing what was out there." As such, The Unfinished Swan now follows the tale of "a boy named Monroe who's chasing after a swan ... the swan stepped out of a painting and has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished world."
Beyond the basic story trappings and painting mechanic, Dallas promises, "the painting a white world stuff is actually just the first 15 minutes." But then what? "After that, things get really weird." Well, OK then!
The Unfinished Swan has no release window just yet, but will eventually launch exclusively on the PlayStation 3's digital network.
Like thatgamecompany before it, The Unfinished Swan dev team is being pseudo internalized by Sony in order to complete a PSN game exclusively. In so many words, the folks at Giant Sparrow got set up with "office space, equipment, and advice," in exchange for creating a PS3-exclusive title - the title in question being The Unfinished Swan.
But wait, haven't we seen a first-person painting game before? Why yes, yes we have ... way back in 2008 when it was still named "Whitespace." Holy moly! Giant Sparrow apparently signed a deal with Sony some time in the past few years and have been plugging away on The Unfinished Swan ever since. The team's first goal: establishing a story for their neat tech demo.
"The idea of painting a white world is pretty abstract. You could make all kinds of different games about that," creative director Ian Dallas admits on the PlayStation blog. What his team found most interesting, however, was crafting a tale around the "sense of wonder" the world gave them. "After splatting stuff for a few months we realized what we liked most about it was the sense of wonder it created. We liked not knowing what was out there." As such, The Unfinished Swan now follows the tale of "a boy named Monroe who's chasing after a swan ... the swan stepped out of a painting and has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished world."
Beyond the basic story trappings and painting mechanic, Dallas promises, "the painting a white world stuff is actually just the first 15 minutes." But then what? "After that, things get really weird." Well, OK then!
The Unfinished Swan has no release window just yet, but will eventually launch exclusively on the PlayStation 3's digital network.
When you first begin playing The Unfinished Swan, you'll find yourself on a white screen devoid of any explanations or tutorials. You're never told what you're supposed to do. As you inevitably mash the triggers and face buttons and move around the analog sticks, the screen shakes in turn. Before you know it, black paint begins squirting all over the screen, giving you a mysterious path on which to proceed...
Auto-aim: When we were first testing the game, we heard more than once that players wanted some sort of gun that would shoot paint where they were pointing. We weren’t about to give Monroe – the main character of The Unfinished Swan – a gun but we did come up with a fix. It happens behinds the scenes: the game will adjust the arc of your throw to hit things that you’re pointing at.
Secret run: It’s very subtle, but if you walk forward for long enough, Monroe starts to pick up his pace. We added this for players who like exploring so there’s less time spent walking long distances.
Not quite white: The white color you see in The Unfinished Swan is actually not pure white, but a slightly warmer yellowish white. On certain LCD TVs, pure white shows up with a bluish tint – which is not very befitting of a storybook style.
Getting closer to the narrator: The voice of the narrator was originally recorded with temporary dialogue – it’s the voice of creative director Ian Dallas’s aunt. After auditioning other narrators, we weren’t able to find a voice as authentic as a real mother.
Legendary art director: The Unfinished Swan’s art director, Hokyo Lim, was previously the art director for League of Legends by Riot Games. While they are tonally very different, Hokyo’s strong 2D skills have translated beautifully to both League of Legends and The Unfinished Swan.
Stay a while: The Unfinished Swan has four different chapters, each with their own visual style and mechanics. Part of the design philosophy for The Unfinished Swan is to let players figure things out for themselves, so there are a few parts of the game that have never been shown before.
Becoming a minimalist: The Minimalist trophy, unlocked when a player walks through the opening area without using more than three splats of paint, was originally unlocked by not splatting a single ball. Ben, the level designer, could stumble through it using sound but when the rest of the team tested it nobody was able to figure out how to navigate without using paint. After changing it to three splats maximum, it felt like a more balanced challenge.
