Stepping into a formless bleak void, Unfinished Swan tasks you with a seemingly simple goal: paint your path and find a way through.

The world of Unfinished Swan is white. Plain white. There is literally nothing to look at. The only landmarks come in the form of the occasional abstract shapes – a crown here, a letter there – and these are to be the your guiding star in an otherwise shapeless landscape. Collectable balloons round off the series of colourful encounters which populate an otherwise entirely monochromatic environment.

However, you are not completely without tools. At your disposal is the ability to fill-in the world with endless amounts of black paint. One shot here, another shot there, and the world goes from entirely white to a world of shapes, corridors, staircases and statues. The world of Unfinished Swan is rife with beautiful digital architecture as far as the eye can see….once you have painted it into existence.

The trick is to use your world-forming paint sparingly. One shot of paint and a simple white surface explodes into life – the ball passes through the slats of a fence, covering the distant wall in black, giving you a wall to plot your travels by. Another shot against the fence obscures your once beautiful sight, the entire environment now dense with black.

Unfinished Swan challenges you to walk a fine line between embracing the vacuous white void, and entirely filling it with a torrent of darkness. Use the paint too sparingly and you will never find your way – too eagerly and the world transforms from a formless white mass to a formless black one instead.

All the time, as you are guided through by the occasional message on a wall (revealed, naturally, through use of the paint), or the occasional gold item (which when painted reveals itself to be just one of a stream of architectural treats), swan prints litter the environment taunting you to follow the swan.

During the preview build at the Eurogamer Expo, one standout moment in particular was stepping out into a courtyard and absent-mindedly launching a torrent of paint into the void. No sooner had I hit the trigger than a paintball landed upon a unicorn statue, the splatter teasing the curves of the still beast. Sadly, before the moment could entirely sink in, a second click of the trigger caused the statue to become an impenetrable obsidian abomination. The world is pure and virginal and you must corrupt it to get through.

The monochromatic treat of Unfinished Swan begs you to explore, however, punishes you for adhering to gaming trends such as exploring (or painting) every corner, as such actions will destroy any hope of finding your way. Once you work out the ideal distance to leave between each paint blast, you slowly create a world yearning for you to explore it.

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