The game design sensibility expressed here feels very much in line with the deck on gaming stories I shared here recently. They took a novel game mechanic, extrapolated a theme out of that core player-game loop, and focused on delivering a rich thematic experience within that loop. What little narrative they included was just a scaffold erected around the real experience.

The way for games to become art is not to make us cry with rich characters. It’s to deliver an unprecedented sensory and skill experience that arises out of the most basic interactions of play.

A storybook, not a novel: How The Unfinished Swan took shape

The creative director of the upcoming PSN game The Unfinished Swan explains to Gamasutra how the narrative grew naturally from the world the developers built while experimenting.