Swan Song is a musical clockwork puzzle game that’ll pull on your heartstrings

Rachel Watts, 6 October 2025

Since I started playing The Room series, I now have a love of mechanical puzzle boxes. There’s something really satisfying about tinkering away with the delicate clockwork - the turning of gears, springs, and weights - seeing everything work together and watching the different parts seamlessly fitting into a larger whole really scratches a particular itch for me. So, when I saw the screenshots for the upcoming puzzle game Swan Song, I knew I had to wind up the demo and give it a whirl. 

In Swan Song, you’re tasked with guiding a little swan figurine from one side of a music box to the other. To do this, you need to place musical notes on a piece of music sheet, their placements and sequence determining which platforms activate and when. Platforms can rotate, move up and down, and slide left and right. When you wind up the key, the melody plays out and the pieces move according to your instructions, hopefully helping the swan through the level and to the goal.

I’ve not seen musical notation used in this way before, and in Swan Song, it works really well. Even with all the moving parts, Developers Business Goose Studios (love that name) has ensured that everything is communicated clearly. The sheet music and clockwork pieces share colour-coded symbols, letting you see which beat will affect which mechanism piece. When you wind up the music box and let it play, the notches on the music sheet will glow in rhythm with the beat, and the corresponding piece will also highlight. It’s super easy to follow.

Even with the musical theme, you don’t need to be musically inclined. Timing and placement are key, but the twinkling tunes of each music box puzzle are simple enough to follow. It’s also turn-based - the swan moves, your pieces move, the swan moves again, then it’s your turn - again, making the whole process easy to follow. The result is a string of satisfying puzzles where your problem-solving is rewarded with seeing the swan dance across the music box.

The first handful of puzzles task you with placing individual notes, but as the difficulty ups, you’ll need to assign music notes that are ‘tied’ together. Placing these joined quavers adds a new element to puzzle solving, as now each note has a specific placement, unlike the free-form single notes. Another clever addition is the inclusion of a clockwork hunter who will fire bullets. To deal with this moustachioed villain, you need to either rotate them or make sure they're out of range when they fire at your feathered friend.

Swan Song finds satisfaction in automation. It reminds me of other factory automation games, but it's presented here in a more concise form. Puzzles never take more than a few minutes to solve, and new mechanics are introduced at just the right times to keep things interesting. I think the idea of using a delicate music box as a space for automation-based puzzle-solving is so creative. I had quite the laid-back time playing the demo, cup of tea in hand, watching my swan hop across a pathway of mechanical stepstones I had placed.

The only thing that's irked me a little is how puzzles reset when you input the incorrect solution. When you place the notes in the wrong order and let the music box play out, the lid shuts, and everything resets. I like to feel some sense of progress when I’m puzzle-solving, so having to repeatedly place the music notes I knew were right was frustrating.  I would prefer it if just the top half of the puzzle with the swan resets, leaving me to amend the music piece placements below it. That way, I can retain my progress with the notes that were correct while resetting the swan back to the beginning. A small hiccup, but nowhere near enough to stop me from playing the whole demo.

Alongside Swan Song’s puzzle-solving is a story told through objects. Whenever you solve a handful of puzzles, the lid will close and, instead of a puzzle, there’ll be an object to inspect: a letter, cassette, note, camera and the like. I won’t reveal too much, but it adds more layers of emotional meaning to the music box. The space where the music box is will also change, from hopefully rays of light from a nearby window to a darker scene complete with the soft trickling of rain. It creates a subtle, evocative atmosphere without directly interrupting the puzzle-solving.

I’d like the reset loop to be a little more refined, but overall, I would recommend Swan Song. I appreciate the creativity of using a music box as a puzzle object, and am keen to see what other obstacles and challenges await me in the full game. There’s no release date for Swan Song yet, but wishlist the game on Steam to stay informed of any updates.