Swigian is a rather linear and straightforward parser game where you play the role of an epic hero (epic villain?) wandering the wilderness, getting into fights, tidying somebody’s dungeon/lair, and finding your way home. It becomes clear towards the end of the game that the game is set in the world of Beowulf; unfortunately I haven’t studied Beowulf, and from the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, it is still not clear to me which character I represent, and how my actions fit into the epic poem. I played as one of the villains, presumably.
The game features very sparse room descriptions, no item descriptions, and consists mainly of progressing from room to room picking up and using items in a very straightforward manner. What writing is present is polished and evocative, at least. The only puzzles, such as they are, involve moving three items between three different rooms, and a game of guess-the-room-exit where the wrong choice means death (UNDO is fully implemented, fortunately.) On the one hand this style keeps the game moving, and guess-the-verb is neatly circumvented by the game telling you what command to perform if you should stray. On the other, I found it frustrating not being able to interact more with my environment, and I have to wonder what was gained in the choice of using a parser at all.
I suppose there is a pleasing parallel in using a primordial form of the mechanics of interactive fiction to tell a primordial tale… I don’t know. Perhaps those sufficiently erudite find hidden meaning in this game and are engrossed by it; I am not, and was not.