The Silent Swan Reviews

Very nice game that is basically a walking simulator with a couple of light puzzle elements. The story is very poetic and a bit obscure but comes to a satisfying conclusion. Sometimes there is some lack of direction and some jank. The most impressive element is definitely the large city with its structures, roads, bridges, and staircases. There is a big chance that if you like the screenshots of the store page, you will also enjoy the game. Just be prepared to do some reading of dialogues (no voice acting), but the experience is definitely worth it.

The Silent Swan clearly pulls significant inspiration from games like those from the Chinese Room, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and What Remains of Edith Finch - A story-driven walking simulator. Now, what made those titles work was excellent writing, music, voice acting, and craftsmanship all of which The Silent Swan lacks. Well, that's a problem, right, because it doesn't have any real gameplay? Yes. It's a big problem. In The Silent Swan you will walk around buggy, poorly crafted, confusing, nonsensical, messy environments with poor graphics but enchanting art direction - I bought the game based on the haunting atmosphere in the images, after all. There is no voice acting, so the only audio is highly repetitive footsteps and generic 'sad piano' music and you're constantly pulled out of the experience to read lines and lines of, frankly, complete gibberish dialogue. The game also has no respect for your time as it has large, open ended environments with no directions given, but doesn't reward exploration whatsoever. There is no point to look off the beaten path and doing so is a big waste of your time - you will find nothing anywhere, then have to walk back. If you arrive at a big tower full of elevators that you can interact with but aren't operational and there is no other obvious path forward you think 'Oh, I need to explore this are to figure out how to activate these elevators.' You're wrong! Just wander around until you find a way to wander around some more to take you to a path to wander around and the game will 'progress.' Sadly, good artstyle cannot save a rushed mess like this.