The Unfinished Swan finds Monroe adjusting to the death of his mother, who made many paintings of animals, but never finished any of them. Monroe could only keep one, a swan whose neck wasn't complete, but one night, the swan leaps off the canvas, and Monroe sets out in pursuit.
The chase leads him through a fairy tale world of castles and giants, towers and ships carried through the skies on balloons. Though some of the views are staggering, the world is frequently monochrome, save the swan's gold-yellow footprints. However, Monroe can chuck paint around to bring some color to his surroundings.
The paint helps him in pursuit of the swan, though the ways it helps varies. In earlier levels, it distinguishes the path. In a world where everything is white, how could you tell the wall from the hallway, or a wooden slat bridge from the pond it crosses? Well, by throwing paint around until the differences becomes clear.
Later, when the paint color shifts to a light blue, it acts like water. Plant life will grow towards it, providing vines Monroe can use as handholds to get from one place to the next. Still later, you enter worlds like blueprints through picture frames. There you use paint around to mark the dimensions of boxes or blocks, which appear in those spots in the real world once you return. I didn't enjoy that part; I'm not much for that sort of spatial puzzle. Never a big Lego or building blocks guy. My junior high computer lab had some game where you tried to construct a bridge across a waterway, and once you were done, the game would send a truck across to see if you did a good job. I never once managed to build a bridge that actually stayed up.
So gameplay where I need to create a series of stair steps, high enough to get me where I need to go, but not so high I can't jump onto them, but also extending across chasms, but not extending so far they block the next thing I need to build, was not enjoyable.
Not that there's any massive penalty for failure; if Monroe falls to his doom, he simply re-spawns at the beginning of that particular room. There are a few places where giant spiders lurk in the shadows, and they can bite Monroe, but other than making me feel bad I let this kid get hurt, there's no downside. There's no damage meter; there is one point where you need to climb before the water level rises (though again, you just re-spawn if you don't), but otherwise you're not working against a clock or anything.
It all feels like a dream that also somehow explains to Monroe his parents' lives, though it's hard to tell what's a metaphor and what's meant to be the real. There are gold letters stamped here and there, and if Monroe hits them with paint, they become a page in a story of a selfish king. The king made kingdoms for himself, but resented when his subjects demanded he add shadows so they weren't bumping into things. He eventually made himself a queen, who was uninterested in any of the gifts the king showered her with, except a paintbrush she used to paint animals she never finished. She left without warning, and the king, with no subjects or loved ones, started a monument to himself - Bender would be proud - until his magic paint powers faded.
Monroe meets the king, who refers to himself as Monroe's father, at the very end, as the king describes a dream he had - which you play through - where all the things he built were being covered in paint some boy was hurling about. The king gives Monroe his magic brush and says he needs to go home, and once there, Monroe paints a complete picture of a swan with two babies.
What does all that mean? Was his dad actually a king, or just some guy who was really creative, but only created for his own benefit? Who thought of everything as his, and that's why Monroe's mother bailed? And she loved painting, but the whole experience left her too soured on art to ever finish anything? Or she just painted for the fun of it, so it didn't matter that she finished? But the game says, after Monroe finishes his painting, that he knows him painting would make her happy.
Also, at one point prior to Monroe meeting the king, during the mess with me trying to make platforms, Monroe reaches a telescope in a tower that lets you peer back into the "real" world at a moon or planet in the night sky. We see two people holding hands. His parents reunited, even though the king is still inside the head of his own monument at that time?
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