This Kafkaesque Steam Next Fest demo visits a towering walled city

rockpapershotgun.com:

Dear Esther meets Amnesia in The Silent Swan, an open-world walk-o-story set inside a mysterious walled land with two towering empty cities. It has a demo in the Steam Next Fest and I think I want more? I was drawn in by screenshots of vast Gothic architecture, put off by frustrating slowness, then kept interested by the mysteries of our fella adrift in his former home. It does, at the very least, have pleasingly giant buildings rising from fog.

The Silent Swan is set around two cities within a vast wall. It's a mighty impressive look, and and absolutely the reason I tried the demo. Our fella is returning home after 17 years on the trail of his missing wife. Something happened, and the cities now stand empty, forbidden, forgotten, fabled. No, I don't think it's Attack On Titan, though I would be delighted by that twist. It does feel a bit like a Kafka or Borges story to me, with our man increasingly lost and confused in a surreal city he no longer recognises, tormented by strangers who either know everything about him or don't even recognise his presence, and caught in events he doesn't understand. I've little interest in the whole 'I love my missing wife' thing but I like the mood.

Exploration is slow. Very slow. You walk slowly, you jump lowly, and the distances are farly. Even the 'quike' four-wheeled bicycles you can ride around some places are slow. (Speaking of: I was curious about how slowly the pedals turn, so I ran the numbers and our man pedals full-pelt at a knee-annhilating 24rpm.) But you can, if you want, scale 34 floors of a spiral staircase up a spire rather than take the lift. You can also run into the woods towards distant vast buildings where grow mere pixels taller as you hold W for minutes. At this