The Unfinished Swan is now finished and I think it’s a pretty amazing game. You probably shouldn’t take my word for it though.

See, making a game is like having a baby. You put a lot of yourself into it, there’s a mad scramble to push it out at the end, and once it’s out there’s no way you can ever be objective about it. So I’m not the best judge of whether this game is any good.

What I can say though is that it’s definitely the game we wanted to make.

We set out to create a game about a sense of wonder, about what it feels like to discover astonishing new things. We wanted to create an experience where as soon as players started getting the hang of something the game would shift and they’d be on to something new. I’m still surprised we managed to pull it off because making a game like that is crazy.

In contrast, most games take a few core gameplay mechanics and then spend their whole time exploring how those mechanics work together and separately. Coming up with interesting mechanics is hard so there’s a lot of creative and financial incentive to keep a game focused on just a few of them. The result is that most games are about developing a sense of mastery, of what it feels like to become an expert.

The Unfinished Swan isn’t about being an expert. It’s about how it feels to be a child discovering a brand new world.

Having just finished our very first game, that’s a feeling all of us at Giant Sparrow can sympathize with. Like the game itself the process of making it was messy and full of surprises.

And we never would have finished it without the incredible support we’ve gotten from Sony. We also want to thank thatgamecompany, who are the reason that support exists. Their fantastic work proves what a small team can do with a bit of time and encouragement.

Most of all, we want to thank the PSN community for being so supportive of strange new experiences. Your enthusiasm for games of all kinds — even games that are unlike anything you’ve ever played before — is why Sony is able to keep taking chances on unusual games like Journey and The Unfinished Swan.

Thanks, everybody!

Now we have an answer: you can buy The Unfinished Swan on October 23rd exclusively on PSN for $14.99. And if you’re a PlayStation Plus member, you can get the game a week early — October 16th.

In the meantime, there’s still a lot to learn about the game. You’ve met the King, now get to know us: the team behind it all. In the first of a series of developer diaries, we’ll lift the curtain and give you some background on Giant Sparrow, the beginning of The Unfinished Swan and how we landed on PlayStation Network. Check it out:

Leading up to launch on October 23rd, we will be back to dive in and show you all you need to know about The Unfinished Swan. For more news about the game you can check out the Giant Sparrow company blog.

Can’t wait for you all to play the game!

Like a lot of other great artists, our King is a little crazy.

He’s the one who created the entire world that players will be exploring in The Unfinished Swan. And I don’t want to give too much away, but the King built a lot of cool stuff. If you like all-white statue gardens, giant labyrinths, or colossal monuments to the King then you’re in luck.

Unfortunately, most people don’t like those things. At least not in their backyard. Turns out living in the middle of a giant labyrinth is pretty inconvenient, which is why just about everyone in the kingdom eventually moved away. But the King is the sort of guy who goes right on building the stuff he wants no matter what other people think about it. Whether or not that’s a good thing depends on your point of view and — like I said — how you feel about giant labyrinths.

If you’ve ever heard of The Unfinished Swan before I’d like to start by saying I’m sorry.

Back in 2008, when we posted videos of the prototype online, a lot of people got really excited. And then a few years went by without another word. So if you’ve been wondering “whatever happened to that weird black and white painting game?” thanks for waiting!

If this is all new to you, here’s the gist: The Unfinished Swan is a first-person painting game that begins in a totally white space. You throw globs of paint to explore the world around you. In the game you’re a boy named Monroe who’s chasing after a swan. The swan stepped out of a painting and has wandered off into a surreal, unfinished world. Here’s what it looks like:

So what have we been doing these last few years? Judging from our blog, mostly we’ve been having team lunches and then posing for photos. Which is partly true. But also we started a company called Giant Sparrow and then signed a deal with Sony to make The Unfinished Swan for PSN.

For those of you familiar with Sony’s relationship with thatgamecompany, it’s the same kind of thing. Sony calls it an “incubation deal.” In addition to giving us funding they also provide office space, equipment and advice (often in the form of this cheerful graphics programmer from the God of War team). The best part is that we get to focus all of our energies on just making a game.

That’s great because it turns out that making a game is hard. But it’s almost done and we’re super excited to start talking about it.

One of the biggest challenges we had was figuring out what the game was going to be about. The idea of painting a white world is pretty abstract. You could make all kinds of different games about that. A lot of people who saw it a few years ago assumed it was going to be a horror game. And it totally could have been. But after splatting stuff for a few months we realized what we liked most about it was the sense of wonder it created. We liked not knowing what was out there.

So we made a game about creating a sense of wonder. Our goal is to give players strange and beautiful experiences they’ve never had before. We want to give people genuine surprises and then keep on surprising them the whole game. The painting a white world stuff is actually just the first 15 minutes. After that, things get really weird.