Surreal adventure title ZED began life back in 2016 as a successful Kickstarter campaign for Eagre Games, with virtual reality (VR) support one of the stretch goals. Even though that particular goal wasn’t achieved ZED will be coming to HTC VIve and Oculus Rift. And this week, Cyan Ventures, the new publishing arm of Cyan, has confirmed that ZED will finally launch on Steam in less than two weeks.
ZED is very much a weird and wonderful adventure set in a world of an artist suffering from dementia – desperately trying to reconnect fragmented memories. Developed in association with Skymap Games, you explore the dreams of the artist’s crumbling mind in hopes of helping him assemble enough meaningful images to leave behind a loving memento and final legacy for his granddaughter.
The videogame will be the first published by Cyan Ventures, a new division which launched in November 2018. Cyan Inc. is best known for its puzzle adventures Myst and Riven, most recently releasing Obduction whilst completing its own Kickstarter campaign for Firmament.
“It’s exciting to release ZED as the first, in what we hope is, a series of artisan indie titles,” said Rand Miller, CEO of Cyan in a statement. “Cyan Ventures was created to connect our amazingly supportive Myst fan base to inspiring artists like Chuck at Eagre Games. We hope that ZED, with its graphically mesmerizing narrative, will resonate with our fans and audiences worldwide.”
“I am thrilled to be working with Cyan Ventures,” adds Chuck Carter, founder of Eagre Games. “It is awesome to be working with a publisher as vested in the visual fidelity and compelling story as us. They believed in our vision and helped us move ZED across the finish line, from its Kickstarter inception to a deeply moving story of an unexamined life.”
The vision of Carter, ZED was co-written by Joe Fielder (Bioshock Infinite, The Flame and the Flood) and David Chen (Metal Gear Solid series, Narcosis).
ZED is due for release on 4th June 2019 and will be available on Steam, GOG, Oculus Store and VivePort. VRFocus will continue its coverage of both Eagre Games’ ZED and Cyan’s Firmament as more details are released.