I had never played Riven before. Its VR remake blew me away
If you've never checked out the world of Riven before, its new remake is an unmissable experience.
Riven’s upcoming remake is only happening because Cyan can do it justice
Cyan Worlds is remaking its PC puzzle game Riven: The Sequel to Myst. We spoke to the team to learn more about the challenges of modernizing a classic.
Don’t worry, the Riven remake won’t feature any AI-assisted content
Cyan confirmed its upcoming Riven remake will not feature any AI-assisted content, unlike the studio's 2023 game Firmament.
‘Firmament’ Review – Complex Puzzles & Visual Richness Lacking a Native VR Touch
Firmament was created in the spirit of Myst, the studio’s genre-defining puzzle adventure which maroons you in a strange realm with some very imposing architecture, all of which houses a smorgasbord of some patently challenging puzzles. In this respect, Firmament is kind of an old dog with a few new tricks, as it brings modern beauty and narrative finesse, although the game’s VR implementation sadly feels like a bit of an afterthought.
Firmament Details:
Available On: SteamVR, PSVR 2 (coming later)
Release Date: May 11th, 2023
Price: $40
Developer: Cyan Worlds
Reviewed On: Quest 2 via Link
Gameplay
Firmament: from Latin firmamentum—that which strengthens or supports. In an ancient cosmological sense, the word was also used to refer to the sky, or the vault of the heavens fixed above Earth. You’ll have plenty of time to ponder meaning that as you teleport between the four realms via the game’s conveniently located conveyance pods, which automagically shuttle you Dr. Who-style atop wind-swept mountains and steampunk botanical gardens just waiting to be explored (and fixed).
Firmament dishes out real moments of awe between serving up maddeningly complex puzzles—basically a Cyan Worlds game through and through. The game’s gigantic machines will leave you scratching your head as you run back and forth just to make sure the figurative pilot light is on. While you have some narrative-based voice recordings and found notes to go by, you’re basically on your own when it comes to puzzling, meaning you won’t be babied by a ‘helpful robot’ who feeds answers into your ear. You’ll need to pay close attention to everything, and really get a grip of all the pieces in play before you can make sense of things. Beating your head against puzzles rarely works, so you’ll be greeted by some very familiar frustration if you’ve played any of Cyan’s most recent games, like Obduction or Myst VR.
Anyway, here are some useful hints: Watch out for every ladder. Watch out for every socket. Keep your head on a swivel and mess with everything a little just to see if it moves, but not so much that you scramble puzzles beyond their intended solvability.
Interacting with the world is done by way of activating a swath of standardized sockets, which pair to your hand-held ‘adjunct’ tool—kind of like a remote-controlled sonic screwdriver that lets you tether and interact with machines. Some sockets only have a single function, like opening and closing a door, while others have multiple functions that you’ll need to flip through. More on that in the Immersion section below.
There is a lot of running back and forth, which feels more like a chore in VR than on traditional monitors. That frustration is compounded by moments when I wasn’t sure whether the game was borked, making me wonder whether it was me who screwed up or the game. It seems Firmament came well prepared for this eventuality at least, as you can safely reset back to a central location, which typically also resets puzzles too. While complex and mostly logical, a minority of puzzle solutions can be downright obtuse. I was provided with a solutions guide, which included hints as well as solutions, and I’m not ashamed to say I needed a few of those hints to complete the game, which I did in about nine hours.
In the end the juice is generally worth the squeeze with Firmament, as you’re whisked off to new, even more impressive areas of the game. While the ending left me feeling a little perplexed, the overall level of world-building is extremely high. I only wish I could be more present in the game and given more agency than casting my tether to manipulate glorified on-off buttons.
Immersion
Firmament is a sumptuous and potentially beautiful game that I wish I could be more present in. My aging GTX 1080 was able to play along decently on medium graphics settings in most areas, which is more than I can say for Obduction. Still, some of the inherent beauty of the game is marred by jagged edges and a muddiness in some areas that feel like it’s really pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. My GPU, which is probably the minimum spec for VR at this point, was much happier sipping along on all low settings, so make sure to curb your expectations if you’re running an older or less powerful setups like mine.
I touched on some of the frustration of puzzle solving above, or rather, when solving puzzles goes wrong, but there’s another frustration that has more to do with level design, and not whether things are actually working properly. While slick and in line with ‘AAA’ games in terms of graphics, level design is still very much rooted in the studio’s point-and-click past, which means you’ll have less physical agency than you’d probably think is rational given the expectation of working hands and feet.
In VR, I’m used to being able to not only do what I can in physical reality, like climbing and jumping, but even more. Some of the game’s level design feels like a step backwards in terms of what should be logically possible, like scrambling over a simple banister railing, or sidestepping a box to get to another area. I know that’s part and parcel of the studio’s puzzle style, but if I’m not offered some explanation beyond “no, you just can’t because of reasons,” it negatively impacts my perception of the inherent solidity of the world around me.
And while the world is so rich with possibility, the only meaningful way to interact with it is by using your adjunct tool to manipulate sockets, save a single other tool you’re given that disperses ice and other crusty bits in your way. This raises the question whether Firmament is making good use of VR beyond giving you a more immersive view of the game. Sadly, it doesn’t. It feels more like a flatscreen game with an optional VR mode that hasn’t really informed many of the game’s puzzles or much of its level design. While the amount of backtracking from place to place isn’t such an issue on traditional monitors, it feels way more like a chore in VR.
And yet, all of the frustrations of Firmament never seemed to completely overwhelm me. The game’s score is excellent, complementing both its strong voice acting and mostly well-reasoned narrative. I only wish it were just a little more sympathetic to the modern VR gamer, and a little less of an optional mode that basically works, but not as well as you’d hope.
Comfort
The game’s a bit at odds with standard VR movement schemes. While teleport and smooth movement are options, the game default movement scheme puts turning on one stick, and forward movement on another—something I’m not generally used to. Besides a few cart ride-style vehicles, the game is ultimately comfortable enough for most players.
‘Firmament’ Comfort Settings – May 18th, 2023 |
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Turning |
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| Artificial turning | |
| Snap-turn |  |
| Quick-turn |  |
| Smooth-turn | |
Movement |
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| Artificial movement | |
| Teleport-move | |
| Dash-move | |
| Smooth-move | |
| Blinders | |
| Head-based | |
| Controller-based | |
| Swappable movement hand | |
Posture |
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| Standing mode | |
| Seated mode | |
| Artificial crouch | |
| Real crouch | |
Accessibility |
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| Subtitles | |
| Languages | English, Italian, German, French, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish (Latin America) |
| Dialogue audio | |
| Languages | English |
| Adjustable difficulty | |
| Two hands required | |
| Real crouch required | |
| Hearing required | |
| Adjustable player height | |
Myst Island Becomes A Walkabout Mini Golf Course This Year
Fans of Myst can visit the mysterious island with friends almost 30 years after release of the original game to play a round of mini golf together.
The course inspired by Cyan’s landmark puzzle game is slated for release later this year as paid downloadable content in Walkabout Mini Golf. It’ll come with all the same features as other DLC releases, including cross-platform multiplayer from Quest to Steam and a guest pass that allows just one player with the purchased course to bring along their friends for a round. For developer Mighty Coconut, the partnership adds considerable momentum to its efforts to license properties for adaptation into theme park-like multiplayer mini golf courses following the previous announcement of a course inspired by 1980s Jim Henson film Labyrinth.
Myst, of course, was born in 1993 as a puzzle game set on a beautiful island players advanced through one click at a time. The title has been rebuilt multiple times, first as a real-time 3D environment and most recently for VR. Mighty Coconut’s head Lucas Martell sat down with us in our studio and shared some details about the upcoming release and the status of development at Walkabout.
“Our goal is not to recreate Myst itself and we need a different sort of set of things for physics and everything. So it’s going to be fairly accurate to the original, but we are going to have to be recreating a little bit of it and also there’s a few changes that we’re going to have to make to the island just to make it work as a mini golf course,” Martell explained. “So I think that that’s something that fans will get and understand, and we’re trying to be respectful and reverent of what was created, but at the same time, it is the mini golf theme park version. So there are some times where we need to move some rocks around and we need to open up a couple of spots to let people have the fun, but it’s still gonna be very, very recognizable as the island from the game.”
He confirmed the course will start on the dock — the same entry point for Myst since its start.
“We reached out to the folks at Cyan and it just happened to turn out that they had all been playing Walkabout anyways, so they knew about us, we obviously knew about them, and as soon as we started talking about it, it was clear that just like they have such a great mindset around it,” Martell told UploadVR. “It was great because they’re like, ‘oh no, we want you guys to have the freedom, make a few of those tweaks, it doesn’t have to be exactly the same thing.’ And we’ve all said that we don’t want it to try to step on the toes of what Myst did. We want this to be an homage and just a love letter to the game.”
Check out a 5-minute cut of our interview in the video embedded above. We didn’t include it in the Myst-focused video, but Martell confirmed to us that active work continues on an iOS and Android port of Walkabout Mini Golf that will feature cross-platform multiplayer with other versions. Mighty Coconut have more than half a dozen courses in development and are beginning to work on ideas that won’t release until 2023.
Firmament Is Your Next Confirmed PSVR 2 Game, But PSVR Version Canned
Your next confirmed PSVR 2 game is Firmament, the newest title from the developer of Myst.
You might have heard of Firmament already. It was actually announced all the way back in 2018 (and we even played it back then). In 2019, the game launched a Kickstarter campaign, where it raised just shy of $1.5 million. It is developer Cyan Worlds’ latest expansion of the adventure formula it helped shape with 1993’s Myst and subsequent follow-ups including Obduction and 2020’s Myst remake. Last we heard, the game had been delayed to 2022 but expanded in scope.
Firmament PSVR 2 Version Confirmed
But, in an update today (first spotted by Distrito XR), Cyan confirmed the game is now coming to PS5 and will have support for PSVR 2 to boot. The PS5 version will release this year but PSVR 2 support may arrive later down the line depending on when Sony’s headset actually ends up launching. This makes Firmament one of only a handful of officially confirmed PSVR 2 games, including the recently-revealed Horizon Call of the Mountain. Keep track of every confirmed and rumored game for the platform right here.
Firmament actually passed a stretch goal for PSVR support during the original campaign but, while the game is still planned for PS4, Cyan also confirmed that PSVR 1 integration was no longer possible. In its stead, anyone that backed the PlayStation tier for the campaign will be given both the PS4 and PS5 version, meaning they’ll eventually get PSVR 2 support instead.
The game’s also coming to PC, where it will support more headsets. Given the project started before the launch of the original Quest, and the fact that the PSVR version has been canceled, we wouldn’t expect a release on Meta’s standalone headset either.
Will you still be looking to play Firmament on PSVR 2? Let us know in the comments below.
The VR Drop: Unjamming Secret Mysteries
Welcome to another weekly look at the virtual reality (VR) videogames set to debut across multiple headsets in the coming week. There are some big titles to round out August with Schell Games’ popular escape room franchise returning and Cyan Worlds’ iconic ’90s puzzler hitting PC VR headsets.
I Expect You To Die 2 – Schell Games
Get ready to immerse yourself back into the world of espionage and death-defying escapes as Schell Games is set to launch its long-awaited I Expect You To Die 2: The Spy and The Liar. It carries on directly from where the original left off, putting you back in the shoes of a daring secret agent trying to stop Dr. Zor and the Zoraxis organisation from taking over the world. The adventure will take place over six missions, from theatrical venues to the classic private jet.
- Supported platforms: PlayStation VR, Oculus Quest, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Valve Index
- Launch date: 24th August
Mondly: Practice Languages in VR – ATi Studios
Originally released back in 2017 for the now-defunct Google Daydream, Mondly is a teaching tool where you can learn 29 languages. Supporting English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Arabic, Russian, Korean, Chinese and many more, Mondly drops you in realistic events to make the learning experience more natural.
- Supported platforms: Oculus Quest
- Launch date: 26th August
Traffic Jams – Little Chicken
Keep your wits about you and don’t let the traffic build up or let pedestrians get run over in Traffic Jams, a comedic take on keeping city streets running. Set across a variety of locations around the world including Paris and New York City, it isn’t just wayward commuters and vehicles you need to watch out for, events such as “cheese bowling” will crop up and then there are the spontaneously combusting buildings and the occasional meteorites to deal with.
- Supported platforms: PlayStation VR
- Launch date: 26th August
Myst – Cyan Worlds
A puzzle classic that first arrived back in 2020 for Oculus Quest, Myst has been reimagined specifically for VR featuring new art, sound and updated accessibility options. Developer Cyan has also included a puzzle randomization option benefiting veterans and new players alike.
- Supported platforms: Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and Valve Index
- Launch date: 26th August
Myst’s PC VR Version Arrives Next Week, Cross-Buy Confirmed
The long-awaited PC VR version of Cyan classic, Myst, launches next week.
The iconic adventure game launches its latest remake on PC on August 26. It’s coming to Steam and the Oculus Store and, yes, it’ll have cross-buy with Quest on the latter. The studio confirmed as much on Twitter with a new trailer that you can see below. This version of the game will have full support for PC VR headsets. In fact you can already try the VR version on Oculus Quest, where the remake launched as part of Quest 2’s launch window in late 2020.
We thought the remake worked really well in VR. “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,” we said in our review, giving the game a ‘Great’ rating. “It might be a little straining and lonely after a time, but that’s always been true of Myst.”
But what about a possible PSVR version? No news so far, but the game is coming to Xbox platforms, which gives us hope it could hop over to Sony’s console and headset sometime in the future. Elsewhere, Cyan is still working on its next follow-up adventure game, Firmament. It’s going to have full VR support but it probably isn’t arriving anytime soon.
Will you be playing Myst on PC? Let us know in the comments below!
The PC VR Version of Myst Arrives Next Week
Puzzle titles don’t get much more iconic than Cyan Worlds’ Myst which saw a virtual reality (VR) edition arise last year for Oculus Quest. The studio then confirmed a PC version was on its way, supporting both VR and non-VR gamers. Today, Cyan Worlds has revealed it’ll be rolling out a PC, Xbox, Windows and Mac versions in just over a weeks time.
This new version of the puzzle classic was been completely redesigned for modern gaming systems using Unreal Engine, featuring new art, sound, interactions, and even optional puzzle randomization. The VR version does, of course, have additional interactive elements to make the Myst experience as immersive as possible.
While the 2021 edition of Myst looks and sounds better than ever, the videogame still retains all the original areas and challenges fans know and love. Hence the randomization option to mix things up if you know the title really well. So the narrative stays intact, where you uncover a magical and mysterious story of two brothers and their ruthless family betrayal.
The simultaneous launch will see PC (2D/flatscreen), PC/VR, Mac, and Gamepass (Xbox One, Xbox Series, and Windows) all supported. When it comes to the Oculus Store version the studio mentions in a press release: “Crossbuy will be enabled on the Oculus Store for Myst, so users who purchased the Quest Platform version will have access to the PC version on the desktop Oculus App, and vice-versa.”
The Steam edition will be the only one that supports both 2D and VR by the looks of it. So players can dive in for the fully immersive version which can be played on Valve Index, HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, or keep things simple in 2D. Cyan has included plenty of comfort and graphics options to suit PC players.
Reviewing the Oculus Quest version of Myst VRFocus said: “There will always be that nostalgia value for Myst to draw on and many players of a certain age will likely relish being able to truly step into this world for the first time. It’s no longer the groundbreaking experience it once was, yet Myst can still challenge players in its own unique way.”
Myst is due for launch on the aforementioned platforms on 26th August 2021 priced at $29.99 USD. Cyan Worlds has said it plans on releasing the videogame for other platforms at a later date, hopefully, that could mean PlayStation VR at some point. For continued updates keep reading VRFocus.
‘Myst’ VR Remake PC Release Date Revealed Alongside New Trailer
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.
Original Article (June 22nd, 2021): The VR remake of Myst launched initially on Oculus Quest late last year. At the time it was clear that the game would eventually come to PC as Cyan Worlds had already published a Steam store page for the game. Granted, it wasn’t known exactly when the game would actually launch on Steam.
Today the studio answered that question on Twitter when it announced that the PC version of Myst will see a release date in Q3 (which means at the end of September at the latest).
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).
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.
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