The Unfinished Swan
Fair · Narrative · 2020
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
BUY IT.
Fair at $3.74, the lowest Steam price we have tracked since Sep 2020. Buy it now if you want it.
- Length
- 2.5h 4.2h to 100%
- Value
- $1.50/hr
- Reviews
- 84% of 2,034 positive
Full price
Today
Watch this gameOne alert at a price you pick.
Buy now or wait
Discounted in each of its last 8 seasonal sales.
- Next sale
- Winter Sale, Dec 17 to Jan 4
Sources: IsThereAnyDeal, Valve.
What drives the score
How to read this
Grades run S to D, read from the buyer's side. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. How the grades work
About the game
From the creators of What Remains of Edith Finch. Enter the surreal world of The Unfinished Swan and explore a mysterious, hidden kingdom by splatting paint to reveal the world around you.
Minimum specs
Minimum on the Steam store: 4 GB of memory, Nvidia GeForce GTS 450, 1 GB | AMD Radeon HD 7770, 1 GB, 8 GB of storage. Windows only.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $3.74, set in April 2026. 55 discounts in the 6 years on record, a median of 67 percent off across all of them, roughly 5 weeks apart.
On value it sits in the top 9 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 79 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 78 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Call of the Sea ($4.99, scores 75) beats it on value, while it beats Manifold Garden ($19.99, scores 64).
More about The Unfinished Swan
Of the 612 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 5 come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written September 2020 to October 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 64 percent of the 540 reviews written there were positive, against 84 percent overall, and those are 29 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
68% start to 6% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
What players say
This game is fairly short, but like its successor, it's steeped in metaphor. It's eerie at times, but it's always purposeful. If anything, it feels like you've been transported into a children's book made for adults. My only gripe is that the story feels too minimalistic at times, though I suppose that's part of the purpose. Much like our character throwing blobs of paint on a literal world of canvas, we the players...
2 more reviews, 1 not recommended
The Unfinished Swan is a beautiful, deeply touching artistic achievement that effortlessly captures the melancholic wonder of a bedtime story. The narrative follows a young, lonely boy named Monroe whose mother has recently passed away, leaving behind hundreds of incomplete canvases. Allowed to keep only one painting to take with him to the orphanage, Monroe chooses his favorite, a depiction of a beautiful swan that...
Beautifully Unfinished, Rather Too Literally The Unfinished Swan begins with one of those ideas that makes you think somebody has actually been creative instead of merely rearranging the standard box of video-game furniture. You explore an initially white world by throwing paint at it, gradually revealing your surroundings. It is clever, unusual and genuinely intriguing. The puzzles are varied without becoming...
Steam reviews, mixed to its ratio and rotated daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
The Unfinished Swan scores 65/100 on the BANG Score (fair value) as of Oct 19, 2026. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1206430/the-unfinished-swanReviews set the ceiling, and price against real length moves the BANG Score inside it. How it works, and where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 26, price as of Oct 18. A number here look wrong? Tell me and I will check the inputs.