It has been two years, two long trips around the sun, two birthdays for each developer, and two birthdays for each of our launch-date players ever since we published The Silent Swan. As such, it also seems appropriate that this post should be preceded by two apologies.
The first apology is for the radio silence from the dev team for most of this last time period.
The second apology is for any lack of updates, and the persistence of several major that can still softlock the game to this day.
The Silent Swan is a university project that due to a myriad of reasons that include the stubbornness (and lack of experience) of its developers, as well as pressure from many of its testers to make the game something more than a walking simulator, grew beyond our abilities to contain it. It is the same story for most videogames, really, particularly indie ones. A borderline unnavigable sea of mutually colliding elements like ambitions to make a great game, visions to make a unique game, conflicting feedback from its testers, conflicting ideas from the developers of what it should be, and the sheer difficulty of simply persisting, sink most projects long before they see an actual launch date.
In retrospect, the fact that we managed to publish The Silent Swan at all seems quite miraculous.
There is a price we paid for that, as there is a price to be paid for everything. But all the time spent, and the sweat and the tears we shed throughout its three years of development are not that price. We did that willingly, and now that the game is out, proudly.
Rather, the price we paid and still pay is the embarrassment of not having offered a game that, regardless of its design or the fun of its gameplay, is at least technically sound. As hard as we tried to get there, as many bugs as we fixed in the weeks, days, and hours both before and after the launch of the game, we didn’t quite manage it.
And now that so much time has passed, much to our pain as gamers ourselves, we will never be able to do it.
The Silent Swan is fully playable and completable. Its achievements are all obtainable. However, a short but grave list of bugs might lead to not everything being possible to be done in a single run.
This will remain as such for the foreseeable future, but on this second anniversary, we wanted to disclose it to everyone for the sake of full transparency.
We once again express our deepest regret and apology for this reality, but we also sincerely appreciate everyone who has been supportive and offered feedback.
Last year we published a free, 6-minute-long videogame entitled Arima Lodge, with a much higher level of polish and consistency all throughout. If the reader had not known of it before now, we hope they can give it a try, and take its free price and higher quality as a humble gift of gratitude from our team, as well as sign of our devotion to do the best we can at all times.
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When in mid-2024 the Praenaris silently announced her cease of operations, it had been thought that she would one day be found at the bottom of some deep-sea trench, fused into the seabed as a barely indistinguishable clump of algae, mollusks, and small vertebrates that found within her a new haven safe from larger predators.
However, lately rumors have started circulating from certain eyewitnesses that speak of a large brigantine, far off in the high seas where no fisherman would ever consciously venture. They say her sails are furled, many of her timbers are disassembled, and her masts creak in disrepair. But that, in spite of her unkept appearance, her bow still surges high above the waves. Furthermore, some few who have come across this phantom vessel in the night claim that, within the insurmountable vastness of the sea, where there is no land in sight and only the splashing of the waves against the ship’s hull breaks the silence of the deep dark, a lonely light can sometimes be seen shining from within the brigantine’s bridge. Who or what occupies her none know, for none have dared to step upon her deck.
But the wisest among the fishermen might relate these appearances to a ship that supposedly ceased operations in 2024, and might believe contrary to popular belief that, after all, the Praenaris is still out there, with people manning her, and meetings being convened within her chambers. Perhaps she will moor somewhere again soon, carrying cargo from distant lands.
Perhaps.
All we can do is continue gazing toward the distant ocean and the haze that hovers about its firmament, waiting for the appearance of those tall masts proudly rising skyward within the great blue.
The Praenaris Team
