Myst (2020) developer Cyan Worlds announced today that its VR remake of the game is finally due to launch on PC later this month.
Update (August 17th, 2021): The Myst VR remake is officially set for an August 26th release date on PC, Mac, and Xbox. The PC version will support both VR and non-VR modes. A new trailer with footage from the PC version shows how the graphics have been enhanced over the Quest version (which already looked rather good given Quest’s limited power).
A price hasn’t yet been announced but we expect it to mirror the $30 price point of the Quest version. On PC the game will be sold on Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG, and will support VR no matter which storefront it is purchased through.
The PC version will include both VR and non-VR modes, and if you’re still eyeing VR from the sidelines with your Mac, the game will support MacOS too (though only in the non-VR mode).
'Myst' PC Screenshots
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Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
The VR remake of Myst hasn’t been priced on Steam yet, though we’d expect it to mirror the $30 price point seen on Quest.
While the original was played as a point-and-click game, the VR remake of Myst reimagines the world in an interactive form, complete with books to pick up, levers to pull, and doors to slide open.
In our review of the game on Quest, we found the real-time presentation to be a breath of fresh air compared to the static frames of the original 1993 version. The game also sticks closely to the original source material, which is nice for nostalgia, but if you’re a newcomer to the iconic game you may find its puzzles rather obtuse for the modern age.
Myst is highly regarded as one of the most important PC games of all-time and now the original developers have rebuilt it for VR for a brand new generation. Read on for our full Myst VR review.
In the first hour of Myst VR you realize you should grab a notebook for recording clues to help solve the mystery. This was true when the groundbreaking game came out in 1993, it was true for the versions released for various consoles and, later, for phones. It is also true for the newest version of the game you can play in VR — rebuilt with levels of detail likely to elicit an “oh wow” from folks who already have rich memories of Myst’s locales despite never actually “visiting” its islands.
That’s the magic of Cyan Worlds’ classic puzzler — its visuals and overall atmosphere created vivid memories despite severe computational limitations. So what to say then of the same game now that VR transports you there so much more completely? The same is still true — its visuals and overall atmosphere still create vivid memories despite severe computational limitations.
And it might just be one of the best unofficial co-op experiences you can find with an Oculus Quest.
Myst VR Review – The Facts
What is it?: Single-player puzzle game set on a mysterious island. Platforms: Quest / Quest 2 Release Date: December 10th, 2020 Price: $29.99
Myst VR is really a single-player game, of course, but the honest truth is that it was always hard and could test the patience of a single human well past the point of quitting. This is a game about paying attention to your environment and trying things out until you figure out what works. So you’ll hear stories of families sitting down around the old computer in shifts with a pencil and paper notebook charting out their clues and theories as a shared journey. Myst can be played similarly in VR.
Sure you could take a book from the library on Myst island and walk over to manipulate a puzzle with the reference book full of clues in your free hand, but I played Myst VR on Quest 2 in a much more satisfying way.
I cast my view from VR so my oldest kid could see it too. She also played along using a phone loaded up with realMyst — the earlier real-time version of the game. She used a notepad at first but then we realized she could just take photos of my screencasting as a quicker way of note-taking. So we tore through the ages of Myst VR together that way.
Myst VR’s environments are realized with impressive beauty. In one of the game’s areas I caught myself staring at the sun for the longest time like Luke Skywalker on Tatooine. It also features excellent sound design and lighting, but even on Quest 2 you can see pop in of higher or lower quality textures that can be pretty distracting depending on your tolerance for it. I also accidentally teleported into a wall once and restarted the game to get out of it.
You can pull up a walkthrough from the 1990s and still use it to work through parts of the mystery again in virtual reality, or if you want to be extra confounded, you can activate puzzle randomization instead.
Myst VR Review – Comfort
Myst VR includes a number of movement options including teleport with snap turning for maximum comfort. There’s also fast travel for climbing ladders or going down stairs. As you’re likely to traverse the environments many times looking for clues, activating these options can make the game very comfortable for long play sessions even while seated.
The puzzles have also been reconstructed for more intuitive 3D interaction. For example, where there were a pair of red valves to turn and change the orientation of a clock in the original game, in the new version there’s a dial with a short and long hand to move into the position you want them on the clock. Those types of changes are definitely welcome and help to reduce unnecessary frustration.
Myst VR Review Final Impressions
If you’re looking to explore Myst for the first time — or perhaps play “co-op” with family like I did — Myst VR is a definitely faithful, upgraded, and solid port of a landmark game that’s hard not to recommend everyone play at least once. It might be a little straining and lonely after a time, but that’s always been true of Myst.
Originally released on Macintosh in 1993, Myst immersed players in a first-person adventure that was truly ahead of its time, both visually and conceptually. Real-time 3D rendering was still in its infancy back then, so there was something unique about Myst’s rich pre-rendered environments and its simple (but effective) story, which was told across 2,500 point-and-click stills. Cyan, the same studio who help pioneer the adventure game genre with the original Myst, have now rebuilt the game from the ground-up for traditional monitors and VR headsets, launching first on Oculus Quest. Peeling back the nostalgic sheen, it’s clear there’s still something special about Myst, although it’s undoubtedly a product of its time.
MYST Details:
Available On: Oculus Quest (SteamVR release TBA) Release Date: December 10th, 2020 Price: $30 Developer: Cyan Reviewed On: Quest 2
Note: My first and only encounter with Myst was in the mid-90s, and I never finished it as a kid. Much of the game is completely new to me, so I’m approaching the review as an (almost) entirely new player. Some of our readers have probably played Myst before, either the original or the remaster on PC from 2000. I’ll also be diving into the game’s overall implementation on VR headsets.
Gameplay
I remember only brief glimpses of Myst as a kid in the ’90s. I would quizzically peer over my mom’s shoulder, not really knowing what the hell was going on as she worked her way through the game’s many puzzles on her home office desktop. Eventually I got into puzzle adventures with Riven (1997), the sequel to Myst, but only after I got my own computer and my brain was decidedly less mushy and stupid.
The original Myst (1993) | Image courtesy Rock, Paper, Shotgun
I was 10 years old when I first, and probably last saw Myst in the flesh. My mom admits she never finished it; she was too busy writing novels and trying to not go insane from the constant moving around the country with two rambunctious kids in tow, a built-in feature of my dad’s former life as an officer in the US Air Force. My nostalgia for Myst is pretty surface level, since I never actually played the game and only have fleeting memories of spaceships, switches, and two fantastical brothers locked inside books who would shout at you. They didn’t seem very nice.
Forget the nostalgia though. Playing the new Myst on Quest feels a bit like teleporting inside a giant mechanical clock that someone’s intentionally broken, and then filled with scraps of paper on how to fix it. You can’t break the clock any worse than it’s already been broken by fiddling with its gears, but you can’t fix it that way either. You need to look everywhere and write down clues. If you’re looking for a new challenge, the new Myst also lets you randomize puzzle solutions.
Image courtesy Cyan
For a modern game, sometimes the linearity of Myst’s puzzles seem positively obtuse though: find a hidden note to find a hidden code to push a button to reveal a lock to open a door. It’s no more difficult than assembling an IKEA shelf—lose a plastic widget though, and you’ll be stuck in an infinite loop of despair until you can find it, slot it into place, and continue on your journey. That’s not to say that all puzzles are like that. A few are genuinely cool and make you think.
But in many cases, puzzles can be (putting it mildly) less than fun at times for new players. I can see how nostalgia may fill the gaps for anyone who wants to experience it all over again though, but in the plush, interactive environment of real-time graphics.
Image captured by Road to VR
However fastidious, there’s still something to Myst, and even more so now that it’s in VR. In an age of constant voice overs and omnipresent ‘helpful’ NPCs telling you where to go next, I found the old school approach to game design to be surprisingly refreshing on some level, and actually more immersive at points. I was alone—truly alone—and if I wanted to get off this damn island, I would have to dig deep and do something I normally hate to do in games: read and pay close attention.
Image captured by Road to VR
Reading in the game is actually a pretty natural experience, making books more like real objects that draw in your curiosity than on-screen manuals that you mechanically click through until you get to the good bits. A central library houses all of the game’s books, which does some of the heavy lifting in terms of world building. And the books aren’t written guides as such; some have clues and diagrams and some just tell the story of the benevolent Atrus and his two boys, Sirrus and Achenar.
Image courtesy Cyan
Without spoiling the plot, his kids are rotten turds in their own special ways. Locked inside their own books inside the library, you have to complete each of the game’s four worlds (called ‘Ages’) to retrieve pages from each of their books. Who should you release with the final set of pages? Well, that’s up to you. There’s four different endings based on your last choice, and you can save whenever you want to experience them all.
Despite the interesting environments, sometimes fun puzzles, and the game’s pedigree as a pioneer in the space, there’s still a few things that don’t translate to VR, or any modern gaming platform for that matter.
Image courtesy Cyan
A few of the puzzles are obviously based on trial and error, requiring you to write down every time you’ve found yourself in a dead end. That’s infuriating, and even more so when you’re desperately trying to stay in-headset so you don’t break the delicate spell of immersion. More on that below.
In all, it took me around eight hours to complete Myst, with another hour spent experiencing all of the different endings, and going back to prod around gadgets for Easter eggs or alternate solutions (there don’t seem to be any). I have mixed impressions of Myst. Some puzzles are great, some are infuriating time-wasters built to test your resolve.
Immersion
One of the biggest things you’ll notice is how the world has been rebuilt for real-time gameplay. You can physically pick up books, pull levers, and slide open doors. Object interaction is really very basic though; your hand disappears when you grip an object, becoming an orange orb that only returns to its grey plastic mitt when you’ve released something. Physical objects also magically snap back to their anchored location when you let go of them, which is understandable, if not a bit immersion-breaking when you just want to switch a book or note between hands.
Keeping close to the source material, there aren’t any other beings inside the world besides a few errant butterflies flapping around back at Myst though. Since it’s pretty barren in terms of complex animations, it feels like Cyan had a good overhead to keep things looking nice on Quest. It’s a bit sterile, but for a remake it’s a particularly well done.
Image courtesy Cyan
But like the original, there’s still no real inventory or way to take notes in-game, which seems counterintuitive given the player’s physical agency in VR. Cyan says they’re adding an in-game note-taking feature soon—but for now, you’ll be stuck going about decoding the game’s complex puzzles with old fashioned pen and paper. Nose gap, be praised.
Photo captured by Road to VR
You can take snapshots of clues using Quest’s native system-wide camera tool, but you’ll have to constantly pop out of the game to scroll through your library: a real pain in the ass in terms of immersion. Unless the game lets you draw with virtual pen and paper in the upcoming update, you’ll still need the real thing when it comes to the Selenitic Age, which houses the worst, most pointless maze in the game.
One of the shining moments in Myst though is the game’s sound design. In puzzles that work with running water, positional audio is key to keeping you on the right pathway, as you follow successive networks of pipes around the map. It also lets you know when a far-off mechanism was tripped correctly, and in which direction you may find it.
Comfort
Myst features both variable snap-turn and smooth turning. You can also toggle smooth forward locomotion and teleportation on the fly, which can be helpful when ascending winding staircases, which normally make me queasy. There aren’t any vomit-inducing rides to worry about either, so Myst can be a very comfortable experience.
Watch out for staircases | Image courtesy Cyan
That said, you’ll probably find yourself running at full clip from one clue to the next, or running back to a switch you forgot to put to head on to the next level. The game’s walking speed feels a tad too slow, and its running speed a tad too fast for comfort.
Thankfully, Myst can be played either seated or standing, as it includes and both an auto height detection feature and manual adjustment to keep you where you need to be.
First released back in 1993, Cyan Worlds’ classic adventure game originally launched for Mac OS and spearheaded the boom of the CD-ROM. The game sees you travel to the island of Myst via a special book. Utilizing point-and-click mechanics, it became an incredible success with 6 million copies sold, leading to sequels, adaptations, and numerous ports, most recently on Nintendo Switch back in May. Remakes also followed that allowed for free roaming with further interactivity as well as a slew of follow-ups from other studios taking heavy inspiration.
Cyan Worlds’ first VR game, Obduction, is a sort of spiritual successor to Myst and applies many of the principles and ideas it popularized in the 90s to a modern VR game setting. Since then Cyan has published VR games like Zen and continues working on their next new project, Firmament. In the meantime though, we’re getting a full-blown remake of Myst specifically for VR
Confirmed this will be “built completely from the ground up for Oculus Quest”, this new edition also promises “modern art, sound, interactions, and optional puzzle randomization for those who are up for a greater challenge”.
It comes after news that their other VR project, Firmament, has been delayed until 2022, and recent years have seen the studio pushing virtual reality with Obduction, alongside their own publishing venture. As such, we reached out for an interview with Cyan Worlds CEO, Rand Miller, who was kind enough to tell us more about this exciting new evolution of the classic IP.
Myst VR: Modernizing a PC Gaming Classic
Henry Stockdale, UploadVR: Firstly, thank you for joining me here, I’m a big fan of the original Myst. For any readers unaware of your game, could you please introduce yourselves?
Rand Miller: Sure! I’m Rand Miller. My brother and I created the original Myst game in 1993. It did pretty well. I’m still actively involved in Cyan, the company we formed, and Cyan has continued to focus on creating narrative-rich, exploration games.
UploadVR: Myst is such an iconic adventure game, one we’ve seen numerous ports, sequels and remakes for previously. What inspired you to create a VR edition?
Miller: VR is just such a no-brainer for Myst. The whole idea of the game has always been to lose yourself in that virtual world. Over the years, the technology has provided better and better ways for us to make the experience more immersive – and VR is definitely a giant leap.
UploadVR: We previously saw Myst updated in 2014 with realMyst: Masterpiece Edition. Was there a reason you’ve built this VR edition from the ground up, as opposed to adding VR support for that?
Rand: 2014 is like 100 years ago in tech years. 🙂 Since that time we’ve learned a lot, and we’ve gained experience in various development environments. Our Creative Director Eric Anderson, and Development Director Hannah Gamiel both felt like it would be best for the product to build it from the ground up in the Unreal Engine. It was important for them that this Myst version not just include VR for various platforms, but that it serve as the graphical and interactive high water mark for all Myst versions moving forward, It truly is a complete reconstruction from the ground up.
UploadVR: Compared to previous editions, how does Myst VR play, can we expect any big differences to gameplay?
Rand: There are quite a few variations from the original Myst. Most of them have to do with taking advantage of VR hand controllers and playing in VR space. For example, to enter the combination to the safe in the cabin the player doesn’t just push a button – they grab a knob and turn it. So much more natural. Also, VR necessitates building parts of the world differently – like making interactive items in an area that are easily reached whether players are standing or sitting. We didn’t want to force players to bend down to interact with controls. We also made some global choices on things like doors – they all slide to open and close. This avoids that VR frustration where you pull on a hinged door and it opens awkwardly into you.
UploadVR: It’s also been confirmed that the VR edition will feature optional puzzle randomisation. Can you give us more details about how this works?
Rand: When you start a new game you have the option to play the game without the solutions that have been around since the original version. I must admit that I love the fact that I have most of the puzzle solutions memorized, but it definitely means that I don’t really experience the full game. This option gives a little more opportunity to play Myst with fresh eyes.
UploadVR: Cyan Studios has built up a reputation within VR recently through games like Obduction and the upcoming Firmament, alongside your publishing arm Cyan Ventures. Your studio is clearly invested in the technology, but what are your thoughts on the current state of virtual reality?
Rand: When I experienced VR on a Vive for the first time several years ago, it was clear that it was something special. Not just the sense of being in a space with 6 degrees of freedom, but the incredible use of hand controllers. But of course it was still expensive enough to be somewhat of a niche market. From Cyan’s point of view, we weren’t as interested in compromising the Myst experience for VR that didn’t have 6DOF or hand controllers. We started making VR games (like Obduction) and we learned so much with the experience, but we continued to wait for a sweet spot that would have the power to present Myst well, with 6DOF and hand controls, at an accessible price point so we wouldn’t exclude large numbers of our fans. From our point of view, the Quest was a turning point. We feel like the Quest as a baseline for the current state of VR has made VR a viable option for indie developers like us, and we’re pivoting in various ways to see where VR leads.
UploadVR: Was there anything you’ve learned from Obduction’s development that’s been applied here?
Rand: Where do I begin? We learned so much – the hard way. Probably the most important take-away was that designing the game for flat first, with VR in mind, was not ideal. It would have been much easier to implement the VR version by designing for VR with flat in mind. That’s the approach we’re taking with Myst, and with Firmament, our second Kickstarter game, and it’s already improved the development experience.
UploadVR: Within Cyan’s recent Kickstarter update, we were told that the innovations and optimizations being made for Myst would also benefit Firmament. Could you tell us how?
Rand: Well, so many ways. I’ll start with our art pipeline. We learned an amazing amount during Obduction and built some tools that helped streamline the asset production. But we took the entire exercise and based our Myst production on it, seeing how it played out in the whole process. As a result we’ve been able to tune our ability to build assets quickly and beautifully, but that still run well on various platforms. Myst has allowed us to test and hone that process. Then there is the variety of things we’re learning about interface elements in VR that started with Obduction and is proving valuable as we improve on Myst. These lessons are already playing a part in how Firmament is being developed.
UploadVR: So far, Myst is confirmed for Oculus Quest at launch on December 10th. Is this just for the original headset or can we expect an enhanced version on Quest 2?
Rand: The version of Myst that launches for Quest, plays even faster on the Quest 2, but it’s a similar experience. We’ll be looking into specific options for improvements for the Quest 2 after launch.
UploadVR: We know that the PC edition is planned to release after the Quest version launches, including 2D and Rift support, but when can we expect this to happen?
Rand: We can’t say for sure, but we’ve been building the high-end assets simultaneously to make the development of the other platforms relatively straightforward. With that said, I expect it’ll take several months to tune and polish the PC based VR and 2D versions.
UploadVR: Do you plan to release a PlayStation VR edition?
Rand: We’d love to release versions of Myst for as many platforms as we can. But as an indie company it’s wise for us to see how our planned versions do before making other specific commitments.
UploadVR: Lastly, is there any message you’d like to share with Myst’s fans?
Rand: We have the best fans in the world! We’ve waited to make Myst for VR until it could be experienced by as many of our fans as possible, and I can’t wait for them to experience Myst the way I’ve had the chance to for the last few months. The adventure becomes your world now more than ever!
We first learned about Myst getting the VR treatment back at the first-annual Facebook Connect in September of this year. It’s exciting, but not necessarily surprising given Cyan’s previous development of Obduction and Firmament, as well as publishing titles like Zed.
Arguably, Myst is the most important PC game of all-time. It ushered in a new era of gaming, legitimized the CD-ROM, and pushed boundaries in bold new directions. In many ways, VR is aiming to do the same thing for video games and technology as a whole, so it’s fitting that Myst would bring it all full-circle with a true made-for-VR adaptation.
The official Facebook blog post explains further:
“Reimagined and built from the ground up for VR, Myst lets you explore a beautiful island shrouded in mystery and intrigue. With new art, sound, interactions, updated accessibility, and optional puzzle randomization, newcomers and loyal fans alike are in for a treat. Purchase of the game will also include an exclusive Myst-themed Oculus home environment.”
Myst (1993), the iconic point-and-click puzzle adventure from Cyan Worlds, is coming to the Quest platform later this year, and on SteamVR headsets “soon.”
Update (September 17th, 2020): It appears Myst will also be coming to SteamVR headsets in addition to launch on Quest later this year, as Cyan has just thrown up a Steam page and GOG page indicating that VR will be an option in addition to the PC flatscreen mode. The PC version is said to arrive “soon.”
Original Article (September 16th, 2020): Announced today at Facebook Connect, Cyan says it’s new version of Myst is a “reimagining” of the classic game, which will include modern sound, art, and interactions.
The studio also says there will be the opportunity to play the game with optional puzzle randomization, which ought to offer a healthy challenge to anyone who’s already played before.
Here’s all of the screenshots that were shared with Road to VR so far:
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Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Image courtesy Cyan Worlds
Although you shouldn’t infer too much from screenshots, it appears the studio is bringing a fine level of detail to the game.
Of course, Myst for Quest isn’t the studio’s first stab at VR, having already brought its VR puzzler Obduction (2017) to PC, SteamVR headsets, PS4 and PSVR. The studio’s upcoming VR title Firmament is scheduled to arrive sometime after 2021.
Cyan says the VR version of Myst was built “completely from the ground-up for Oculus Quest.” While it hasn’t admitted as much, it’s very likely going to be a Quest platform exclusive (see update).
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.
Cyan, the studio behind iconic puzzle adventure games Myst (1993) and Riven (1997), garnered their fair share of success with their April 2019 Kickstarter campaign, which sought to bring to life their next VR-compatible title, Firmament. Now Cyan says the long-delayed game finally has a release date: May 18th.
According to a Kickstarter backer update, Firmament is now set to launch on May 18th, coming to PC VR headsets including Meta Rift and Rift S, HTC Vive, Valve Index, and Meta Quest headsets through Quest Link. A flatscreen mode is also available for play on MacOS and Windows. A previous version of this article claimed it was coming in March, however this is untrue, as the game is confirmed to release on Thursday, May 18th.
The studio says it’s also set to target PSVR 2, PS4 and PS5 at some point “down the line.”
Two months ago the studio released an extended look at some of the game’s preproduction footage, which we’ve included below:
Once targeting a July 2020 launch, Firmament has slipped again and is now targeting a Q1 2023 launch date. Here’s that statement is full; we’ve also included a 9-minute look at the work-in-progress game, embedded below this update:
“As a result of discussions with key team member and staff, Cyan is making the important decision to move the launch of Firmament to Q1 2023. The game is very closed to complete, and the development is rapidly approaching its final phase.
To our Backers, Fans, and Friends, thank you for your continuing patience and support. Your enthusiasm and excitement lifts our spirits daily. We cannot wait to share launch day news with you in (early!) 2023.”
Original Article (July 13th, 2020): Firmament’s launch window seemed a bit tight from the onset, however from an experienced studio that had previously created its latest VR-compatible puzzle adventure game Obduction to both PC VR and PSVR, it seemed not all together impossible.
The reality of creating a game however is admittedly “often quite a bit messier,” the studio says in a recent Kickstarter update.
Here’s a bit of Cyan’s reasoning behind the delay, which is said to push the game’s release date possibly to 2022.
With that in mind, Firmament’s Estimated Delivery date of July 2020 was- as it turns out- a wildly optimistic one. 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.
In the studio’s own defense, Cyan says it has “always been about shipping things when they’re ready to be shipped, not picking a date and then trying to shoehorn the game into the box in an artificially limited amount of time.”
Firmament is said to be “something bigger than a studio [of Cyan’s] size would ordinarily be able to produce,” and that it will include a “richer and more substantial story” than was previously planned.
Whatever you thought of Obduction (and its initially uneasy technical performance on both PC VR headsets and PSVR) Cyan has a good track record of delivering, leaving the only real concern to when Firmament will arrive, and not if.
Food for thought: a prospective 2022 release of Firmament is slated to happen well within the lifecycle of next-gen consoles and PC hardware—and possibly VR hardware as well—so there’s no telling what technical advances the studio will need to adopt along the way if it’s looking to significantly lengthen the development roadmap. I guess we’ll see in a few years. As it is, Firmament is targeting PC, SteamVR headsets, macOS, and PS4 & PSVR.
Bad news if you were hoping to play Cyan World’s Firmament at its projected release date on its Kickstarter campaign (in other words: this month); the game probably won’t be out for another two years.
This might come as a surprise if you’ve only been keeping a passing interest in the VR-compatible game. Cyan raised $1,433,161 for its ambitious new adventure game in April 2019, and the developer estimated delivery for July 2020. But as those that have been following backer updates will know, that goal has slowly slipped back over the course of the past 15 months.
“Although there is no Release Date to announce today,” the developer explains, “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.”
But this isn’t just a simple delay because the game’s taking longer than expected. Cyan has actually expanded the project since it completed its crowd-funding campaign.
“In late summer of 2019, the team made the tough call to take another pass at the overarching story and gameplay,” the post reads. “You can read more about why we did this in Eric’s update, Update #23, but the gist of it is that we wanted to build out a richer world, new kinds of gameplay, and a bigger story arc.”
Much of the game’s aesthetic is still in place, but the developer is now promising a much deeper game. The only issue is that this new vision for Firmament is only in the very early development stages.
“We understand how frustrating a (non)answer like this may be for some of you, but we are standing firm in the idea that it is better to not commit to a hard ship date until we can be reasonably certain we will be able to hit the date, while also completing a game we can be proud of,” Cyan wrote.
It’ll probably be a long while before we hear from Firmament again, then. But, on the bright side, at least this probably means we’ll have the chance to play it on better VR headsets. For now the game is intended for PC VR devices and PSVR on PS4. Any bets on that latter target slipping to PSVR 2?
Well here’s a welcome bit of news. Untethered, an incomplete episodic VR series that seemed destined to die alongside the Google Daydream platform it was exclusive to, is being reimagined for other headsets as Area Man Lives.
That Dragon, Cancer developer Numinous Games is returning to develop this new project, which is backed by Cyan Ventures, the funding arm of the developer behind Myst, Obduction and Firmament. Area Man Lives seems to use the same environment seen in episode 1 of Untethered and a similar mechanic; you embody a radio DJ in a small town in the USA.
The game requires you to physically speak out loud when recording radio shows, including interviewing callers. Check out the announcement trailer below though, admittedly, it doesn’t actually tell you much about the core game.
But Area Man Lives is a mystery game at its heart. As you listen to people dialing into your show, you begin to notice a strange pattern of events developing in your coastal community.
This is generally along the lines of what happened in Untethered, though the second episode was quite different. Numinous had been working on a third episode of the series but revealed in late 2018 that it had lost its funding, presumably from Google itself as its Daydream efforts started to decline. The episode was put on hiatus and, frankly, we didn’t expect to see it resurrected. Based on screenshots, it looks like this version will feature full hand controls (the original only incorporated Daydream’s single motion controller).
As it stands, the game will be coming to Oculus Quest, PC VR headsets and “a handful of other headsets”, which we hope means PSVR.
You can wishlist Area Man Lives on Steam now. Excited to see Untethered return? Let us know in the comments below!
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