Last year Cyan Worlds – the studio behind Myst, Riven & Obduction – held a successful Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign for a new project called Firmament, raising over £1.3 million USD in the process. A launch was initially slated for this month, however, a recent campaign update has now pushed that window back massively.
From its initial outset Firmament was always billed as a grand narrative adventure and as development has continued the team notes: “we wanted to build out a richer world, new kinds of gameplay, and a bigger story arc.”
So of course expanding upon the original idea means delays, a very long delay in fact: “With that in mind, Firmament’s Estimated Delivery date of July 2020 was- as it turns out- a wildly optimistic one,” explains a Kickstarter update post. We know some of you had your heart’s set on playing Firmament this summer, and we’re genuinely sorry that you’re not going to be able to play it yet! We’re really bummed about that too!
“Although there is no Release Date to announce today, we can tell you a couple things with some level of certainty: Firmament is not coming in 2020. And unless the stars align (which we all know happens rarely in game development), it is unlikely that Firmament will be coming in 2021.”
That means 2022 at the earliest. While that does mean quite a wait for backers, Cyan Worlds does have a good legacy of titles rather than some fly-by-night studio. “We’re making something bigger than a studio our size would ordinarily be able to produce, and because we’re an indie without a deep pool of publisher money to draw from, the only way we can accomplish something ambitious like Firmament is to invest extra time it will take to do the work.”
For the Kickstarter Cyan Worlds confirmed there would be support for a range of platforms including VR headsets like Oculus Rift S, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR. The way the market is moving currently in two years a whole new selection of devices are likely to be available possibly including PlayStation VR 2.
As the studio continues to release further updates on Firmament, VRFocus will let you know.