An Abstract Swan Song

Microsoft's XNA program has fostered some interesting ideas, though for a community-drive game-development platform that's been in the works for more than four years, and out in the wild for almost one year, there haven't many public results. The only XNA-developed game to hit the Xbox Marketplace so far has been Schizoid, a conceptually interesting game that I think ultimately proved too high-concept for its own good. I liked some of the stuff that was shown off during Xbox Live Community Games preview back in February, particularly The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai and JellyCar.

Kotaku recently uncovered a rather interesting XNA game currently being developed by one Ian Dallas called The Unfinished Swan. It uses a paint-the-world mechanic that may seem cribbed from something like Okami or de Blob, but the way The Unfinished Swan uses it as a fundamental aspect of navigating the world seems like a fresh angle.  Honestly, this video represents the game's vision far better than any description I might offer.



Hopefully there's more to the game than this short demo reveals, though I could imagine something pretty compelling about exploring all the different angles of one specific, unique mechanic, a la Portal. There's no current release date for The Unfinished Swan, though it sounds like Mr. Dallas is aiming to have the game wrapped up by March 2009. Also, as a weird aside, it turns out this guy also wrote a video-game-themed episode of Spaceballs: The Animated Series. I've never seen the show myself, so I can't say if that's a pro or a con, but it certainly makes this whole undertaking a little more intriguing.

I have my doubts about one of these indie downloadable games capturing people's attention like it was the next Grand Theft Auto, but there's definitely a place in the industry for them. I just hope that XNA doesn't just dwindle into another NetYaroze.