Swann's Song

Swann’s Song is a simple visual novel. An old man and a young boy arrive at a pond with a swan and engage in a conversation about life, loss and growing up. The background is primarily static, and gameplay consists of clicking through dialog. There is background music with some environmental sounds, but no voice acting. There are dialog and script choices to make but I don’t believe that these drive the overall conversation in an alternate direction. At the end of each chapter, you are prompted to enter a thought. I don’t believe that these have any purpose other than offering the player a moment of pseudo-participation in the conversation. On the Steam store page, the developer is clear that the game has a single ending. This would confirm that the player’s choices or inputs have no tangible impact. The game is designed to be played in a single sitting (i.e., progress is not saved) and will take you just under an hour. If you follow the prompts and finish the story, then you should earn 100% of the achievements. I found the pace of the conversation to be much slower than the speed of my reading. Thus, it felt like most of my time was spent waiting for the next bit of text. I would have preferred that the script/conversation advanced at my click speed rather than inserting a delay before my click was processed. If you enjoy clicking through a slow-paced conversation of “deep thoughts,” then perhaps you will enjoy Swann’s Song. For me, Mr. Swann was somewhat stereotypic. He is an old person, looking backwards, with regrets. As I become an “older” version of me, I would prefer to look ahead with optimism and gratitude. [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/]Follow [b]IndieGems[/b] if you enjoyed this review and want to see more like it.[/url][/quote]