Indie studio Ivory Crow Games have released a new demo for Chrono Weaver, a single player game that lets you make copies of yourself to solve physics-based puzzles.
Set in a mysterious science facility filled with mind-bending puzzles, you use your trusty slingshot and time travel device to find solutions to seemingly impossible tests.
If you’ve noticed a few familiar influences in the new trailer, you’re not wrong. Here’s how the studio described Chrono Weaver to Road to VR:
In our game you play as a test-subject starting a new job, with unknown origins and a simple goal: Smash the Data Disk. Guiding you along the way is a flying robot named Yoto, a quirky character who manages your journey and helps make sure you don’t get too lost along the way.
The gameplay loop has a vibe similar to Portal, going from puzzle to puzzle with short bursts of story and mystery in between. The game teaches as you go along, so there is no true tutorial, instead it grows in difficulty, introducing mechanics and weaving them together creating exciting and challenging puzzles. Other games that are similar to it in VR are The Last Clockwinder, We Are One, and Transpose VR.
While there’s no release date yet, the two-person indie studio has released a demo that shows off a good slice of the game’s time-bending fun. Notably, this is a completely overhauled demo from the one distributed during Steam VR Fest back in December.
The demo is said to take between 30 minutes and an hour long to complete, which you can download for free for both Quest 2/3/Pro and SteamVR headsets. If you already played the original demo from December, the studio says you’ll need to replay it from the top, as saves don’t carry over.
Still, the studio says that with all the changes “it is basically a brand new experience so we think you will enjoy it.”
RIVEN (1997), the sequel to iconic point-and-click puzzle-adventure MYST (1993), just got the VR treatment in its new remake. Unlike Myst, which felt a little too game-y and obtuse at times, Riven plays a lot more like a modern title, which thanks to Quest and SteamVR support, is true in every sense of the word now. Granted, you’ll need to look past some VR implementation issues which keep it from feeling like a ground-up VR native, although however you play, you’ll be exploring a fascinating world that’s both puzzle-dense and undeniably beautiful at every turn.
RIVEN Details:
Available On: Quest 2/3, SteamVR Reviewed On: Quest 3, Quest 3 via Link Release Date: June 25th, 2024 Price: $35 Developer: Cyan Worlds
Gameplay
I know Riven pretty well by now, having shuffled my way around its five PlayStation 1 discsa number of times as a kid. This is the first time popping back in as an adult though, so I kind of get the chance to not only relive a bit of the past, but rediscover puzzles long forgotten, this time in the immersive first-person view of a VR headset.
While I really can’t stop nostalgia coloring some of my experience with the new 3D-rendered Riven, I’ve spent enough time in VR to know where things fit on the VR-port-continuum. Some games feel unnecessarily forced into working with VR, some are indistinguishable from VR-natives, and somewhere in the middle are great games that still feel like ports, but that’s okay because they bring enough to the table on their own. That’s where Riven sits—great game that works pretty ok in VR.
If you’re playing it for the first time, you’re in for a patently Cyan experience of deciphering codes, shuffling puzzle pieces around, and visiting (and possibly re-re-revisiting) places, doors, and enigmatic set pieces to figure out the world around you. That’s reason enough to play if you’ve never had the chance. Riven’s puzzle can be tough for the uninitiated, but ultimately more rewarding than Myst thanks to its heaps of environmental storytelling that feels less formulaic, and a lot more organic. More on that in the Immersion section.
Image captured by Road to VR
If you have played before though, many of the game’s puzzles and gadgets are slightly modified from the originals, likely due to the spatial nature of real-time 3D graphics as opposed to the single-frame point-and-click original, which was much more static in how its presented interactive elements. A 27-year-old walkthrough guide that works with the original may still be useful to help with the broad strokes, but you’ll definitely notice differences here and there, with some puzzle elements simplified, or complicated in new ways separate from the original.
One thing that hasn’t changed is there’s still a ton of walking and looping around to do, which is just a feature of the game due to its wide and varied puzzles. You’ll spend a good amount of time circumnavigating one of the game’s five islands for the umpteenth time turn on a thing, to return to a puzzle across the map to see what it did. Then again, that’s just the old school charm and hands-off approach Riven brings to the table.
Image captured by Road to VR
Not only that, but the old school approach to game design makes you rely upon your own spatial memory. There are no map markers, signs, or ‘helpful’ NPCs to guide your way—an aspect of the game that still makes it one of my favorite experiences.
And unlike Myst, you can go a pretty impressive distance through the game with only a few hard roadblocks to stop you, making progression feel very natural. Then again, Riven is beloved for being more organic in level design, and less formulaic than Myst overall, feeling much less like of a jumble of toys, and more like Cyan’s modern titles Obduction (2016) and Firmament (2023).
Image captured by Road to VR
Knowing Riven’s past, I shouldn’t really complain about loading times—they’re certainly faster than shuffling through a broken jewel case filled with PS1 discs—however on Quest you’ll be sitting there for a while waiting for levels to load, the longest of which is the initial startup screen which the game warns “could take a few minutes” to do (it does). From there, whether on Quest or SteamVR, vehicle transitions will constantly toss out 10-second loading screens, which doesn’t sound like much, but happen on both sides of transfers between islands.
Another niggle: there’s no practical way to write down notes so you can remember clues or sketch out solutions, which is precisely what you’ll need to do to decode stuff. You can take a screenshot with the game’s built-in camera system, and that’s about it. I just wish there was a spatial pencil so I could annotate found letters, or somehow keep myself from taking off the headset to write stuff down.
Immersion
I had a chance to play both on Quest 3 natively and PC VR versions. Here’s the breakdown between the two, which most anyone can guess.
On the Quest version you’ll notice a ton of low-res textures and geometry that dynamically chunk-loads into place the closer you get to it. Once things are in place though, at times Riven can be one of the prettiest games on the Quest platform. That’s if there aren’t any NPCs around, which are bloated and a little too cartoony for the game’s lush, natural environment.
Image captured by Road to VR
It also seems Cyan is throwing the entire toolbox of Quest performance tricks at you at all times, including what feels like always-on asynchronous spacewarp and glaringly obvious fixed foveated rendering.
Since it was primarily developed for the flatscreen PC crowd, the PC VR version is a fair bit ahead of the Quest 3 native in terms of visuals. Even on ‘Epic’ settings though, you’re bound to notice some oddly applied shaders that make shadows dance about and move when they shouldn’t, and also discrepancies in how shaders work in both eyes, leading to some pretty visible mismatches in shadows and lighting. Still. chunk-loading of areas is mostly minimal and textures are fairly high, making it rightfully a more graphically intense version of the game.
Like Myst, Riven suffers from middling object interaction, which is a shame considering how many items are strewn about in the game. Oftentimes I’d find myself trying to interact with something, only to find out I wasn’t pressing it correctly, or it wasn’t interactive at all in the first place, making it more of a guessing game than it should be. Here’s me fruitlessly grasping at a weird banana-kiwi thing, then trying to grab a strangely unusable pencil on the same table. Again, I wish I could use that damn pencil.
There is a physical inventory though where you can keep the various books you collect throughout the game, although you can’t use it for anything else.
Whether you’re on Quest or SteamVR, something that never fails to impress is coming to a precipice or turning a bend to find a new, breathtaking scene in front of you. Riven is all about natural beauty, punctuated with megalithic structures that don’t feel nearly as abandoned and lonely as Myst did.
There’s wildlife, sprawling villages, shrines, and plenty of environmental storytelling here to dig into, putting exploration at the forefront. There’s even inhabitants in the world, albeit too skittish to interact with such an obvious outsider.
Comfort
Riven features the full gamut of comfort options in addition to some quality of life options that make things a little easier, but likely less immersive as a result. Traveling between islands is always done on some sort of vehicle, which can be a little jarring for some since it’s fast and a bit jerky.
You can turn vehicles transitions off entirely though, essentially letting you jump right to the next island’s rail station, or put in the option to make windows dirty, which helps ground you a little more in the vehicle’s cockpit. The game also offers similar options for instant traversal of stairs and ladders, which otherwise a manually climbable.
I went hands-on with Silent Slayer: Vault of the Vampire, an upcoming horror-puzzle for Quest from Schell Games that tasks you with defusing various arcane traps protecting a coven of sleeping vampires. Much like the studio’s pioneering VR puzzle franchise I Expect You to Die, any false move means certain death, but you’ll need to think twice before fumbling your trusty vampire-busting tools since there’s always a jump scare waiting for you on the other side of inevitable failure.
In my preview of Silent Slayer, I got a chance to play through the first three levels of the game, which are basically tutorials that introduce the world, your growing assortment of tools, and three of the coven’s vampire foes. In total, there are apparently nine levels, although I haven’t set foot outside of the third to give you an accurate impression of what the first 30-ish minutes of the game has to offer.
Like I Expect You to Die, the studio’s upcoming horror-puzzle is played equally well standing up or sitting down, requiring little to no room-scale movement on your quest to play what is essentially a spooky version of the kid’s board game Operation, which similarly tasks you with precisely manipulating little doohickeys with the utmost care to not trip the metaphorical buzzer—or in Silent Slayer’s case, a screaming vampire.
Before the fun begins though, you’re first tasked with reassembling a sort of totem inscribed with the crest of your next enemy, called a ‘Bind Stone’.
The broken stones give a few clues on how they’re put back together, although you may be scratching your head a bit as you follow broken contours and match edges to reveal different geometric forms to unlock each sequential level. The stone could be a pyramid, a prism, or anything, making for an interesting little roadblock of a puzzle that forces you to pay close attention to detail—an important skill you’ll learn once you’re face-first with the blood sucker du jour.
And back at your home base, you’re also given a talking book which not only narrates the game’s story, but provides detail on every vampire, and every tool given to you for each mission. More on that later.
The real meat of the game though comes when you’re transported to your target, and put in front of the ghoul’s closed coffin which features a few initial mechanism to undo before you can get to the stabby bit. You’ll need to gingerly pull out locking crossbars, slowly manipulate keys, and pull out nails with a provided mini-crowbar—the latter of which requires you to pry up nails just enough so you can grip them with your free hand. Go a little too far, and the nail will fall, alerting the vampire inside and raising his awareness bar.
Once you’ve opened the top bit of the coffin carefully, keeping quiet and being very precise is the name of the game. Of course, your bookish pal is there to lend a hand, but also adds some color commentary on how you need to hurry up, and what to watch out for.
Using the game’s various physics-based tools bring a lot of solidity and gravity to every move. You’ll use things like clippers to sever tripwires, a heart-detection tool to mark where the vampire’s heart lies, and your trusty stake to pierce the next protective shell. Even that last bit can be a challenge though, as shown by my less-than-precise stab seen above.
If you can make it that far, you’ll be left with two more tasks—at least as far as I know from playing three levels. Trace the vampire’s crest in the air to deactivate the final, unseen trap, and stab the sucker right through the heart. Job done.
From a technical standpoint, Silent Slayer is a visually engrossing and well-refined game that totally fits in with the high production value you see in I Expect You to Die. I still have a lot to learn about the game though, as some previously released images reveal a significant ramp in difficulty with promises of a much higher density of traps and corresponding tools than I experienced in my hands-on. Those look like a lot of keys, which means a lot of very pensive inserting and turning. That image below also shows a long pry bar, which I imagine will mean I have to be super careful with some far away nails.
Image courtesy Schell Games
That said, jump scares weren’t extremely terrifying, since you always know they’re coming after a major screw up. That’s just a piece of the overall puzzle though, which thus far has been a fun experience in learning how each trap works, and finding out just how reactive the world really is. Seriously, if you put down a pair of clippers on your workbench too indelicately, you’ll make a noise and alert the undead within.
I’m also looking forward to learning more about the overarching story, which I hope matures throughout the game’s nine levels. I can’t say I was paying too much attention to the backstory during my playthrough of the first three levels, as I was busy learning how to work the games various tools, which are doled out as you move to tougher vampires.
In all, Silent Slayer appears to be everything it says on the tin, although I’m really hoping it tosses some gratifying twists my way, as looking plainly at the map presented you in the book makes it feel just a little too linear of an experience so far. You can read more about my impressions in the full review though, which ought to be out sometime this summer when the game launches on Quest 2/3/Pro. In the meantime, you can wishlist the game on Quest here, currently priced at a 10% discount off its regular $20 price tag.
First time VR studio MikeTeevee is soon to release Shores of Loci, a 3D puzzle game backed by gorgeous and fantastical visuals. The game is set for an Early Access release on Quest 2 via App Lab and SteamVR on May 24th.
Though production company MikeTeevee has been around since 2011, the studio has never released a VR game before Shoes of Loci. Along with the game’s initial release on App Lab (also coming to SteamVR), you might expect the studio’s debut project to be rough around the edges. On the contrary, after previewing the game myself I found a polished experience that offers up enjoyable 3D puzzles with a backdrop of sharp and fantastical visuals that are a cut above many games you’d find on Quest 2.
At its most basic, Shores of Loci is like a fictional version of Puzzling Places. While the latter has you snapping together scans of real buildings, Shores of Loci instead slices up totally imagined (and quite beautiful) little dioramas.
A completed puzzle in ‘Shores of Loci’ | Image courtesy MikeTeeVee
Shores of Loci is enhanced by a surrounding environment that’s beautifully rendered and art directed—from the last glimpse of sunlight reflecting at the very edge of the horizon to the towering structures that surround you like silent giants—even on Quest 2 it all looks great.
A completed puzzle in ‘Shores of Loci’ | Image courtesy MikeTeeVee
The game effectively uses VR as a canvas for the imagination and serves up some very striking and creative visuals, like a scene transition that sees the entire world before you enveloped as if being consumed and then regurgitated by a black hole (it’s more peaceful than it sounds, I promise).
Shores of Loci’s puzzling offers a slightly more organic feeling than Puzzling Places, perhaps because of the way that the 3D models you fit together have volume inside of them instead of being hollow textures. In any case, the fundamental gameplay is quite similar in that you’ll need to use a combination of traditional puzzling skills (edge shapes, color matching, etc) with some spatial reasoning to reach the point that you get to snap that final, satisfying piece into place.
Alongside its lovely visual backdrop, Shores of Loci also has some great audio design, with peaceful music and satisfying sonic feedback as you progress through each puzzle.
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For anyone that loves puzzles, Shores of Loci is an easy recommendation. You’re getting some fun 3D puzzles and a fantastical visual feast to go along with them. And you won’t need to wait long to try it yourself; Shores of Loci launches on App Lab and SteamVR on May 24th, priced at $15.
Developer Pontoco debuted a new trailer for its upcoming VR puzzle game The Last Clockwinder, alongside announcements of new funding and publishing partnerships.
The trailer, embedded above, isn’t too dissimilar to the one we saw back in December. It shows off the basic premise of the game – create an automated chain of robots to solve puzzles, fueled by gestures and actions that you perform in VR that the robots can then mimic perfectly to create a supply chain.
Pontoco also noted that the concept for The Last Clockwinder didn’t start out as one designed for VR. “We didn’t set out to make a VR game, initially. But we stumbled on this mechanic, and the more we played with it, the more we realised we had to make this game,” said the studio, in a prepared statement. “We wanted to make an automation game, but where you were the machines.”
The studio also announced two new partnerships this week, one of which is with Cyan Ventures. The core Cyan team is best known for its seminal adventure game, Myst, as well as upcoming VR title, Firmament. But the Ventures arm is a publishing team that’s also working on other VR titles like Area Man Lives. The other partnership is with Robot Teddy, a consulting and funding team that worked on Superhot VR and is also helping bring Among Us VR to headsets soon.
The Last Clockwinder is still set for release later this year in the summer for both Quest 2 and PC VR.
Squingle is a psychedelic indie puzzle game that’s available now on PC VR and Quest. It’s also the perfect example of a game that probably wouldn’t be allowed onto Quest’s main ‘curated’ store because it’s difficult to understand at a glance, despite being brilliantly creative and highly optimized to run at 120Hz on Quest 2. Luckily, thanks to App Lab, you can get your hands on the game whether or not it fits Oculus’ vision.
Squingle is one of those games that you can look at and still not entirely understand what you’re actually seeing. But once you get your hands on the game all becomes clear: it’s a clever, trippy, and fun puzzle game that plays to VR’s spatial strengths.
To put it simply, the goal of Squingle is to guide a pair of spinning balls through a pipe. Sounds easy enough, right? Well like any good puzzle game, Squingle starts simply enough but introduces more difficult concepts as you go—like a button that reverses the spin of the balls or one that changes the axis of the spin. And the pipe? It’s actually a bit more like a cosmic bowel that undulates with twists, turns, and parallel tunnels.
There’s something really satisfying about moving the balls through the bendy, bubbly tubes. Without knowing exactly where the edge is (because it has some amount of flex), you wind up leaning heavily on feel (aided by haptics)—rather than sight alone—to know if you’re in danger of being penalized for bumping too hard into the edge of the track.
Beyond being a creative puzzle game that leverages VR’s strength of spatial input, Squigle is also quite beautiful in its own psychedelic way. The luminescent, trippy visuals are pristinely sharp and shiny, even in the Quest version—not to mention the game can even be kicked up to a smooth 120Hz refresh rate in the options menu.
All in all, Squingle is a small but fun and unique title with excellent technical merit. But it’s precisely the kind of game that would probably have a difficult time getting onto the main Quest store due to Oculus’ curation.
Thankfully, Oculus App Lab finally gives developers an official back door onto the headset, which means games like Squigle at least have some avenue to prove their value to customers. With any luck, maybe a look at the cold, hard data will show Oculus that this obtuse looking game is actually quite the gem. And maybe, just maybe, that will give Squingle a real shot at making the jump onto the main Quest store.
Schell Games today announced that its long-awaited follow-up to I Expect You to Die (2016) is set to launch on all major VR headsets August 24th. The spy-themed puzzler is already looking like a worthy sequel, offering fun and interesting ways to die, plenty of easter eggs, and a story that would be the envy of any would-be writer of a James Bond film.
I Expect You to Die is one of those early VR titles that seemed to have figured out the formula. It was popular when it first came to PC VR headsets in 2016, and it consistently ranks in the top 20 paid Oculus Quest apps to this day.
While there’s been plenty of DLC along the way to keep players coming back for more, I’d say the reason it continues to impress newcomers is owed to its clever puzzle design, fun and unexpected deaths, and a truly superb of world building that really brings the game’s spy-themed universe to life. Not only that, but all of it’s done from the seated position, which is a sort of unique bottleneck that forces the game to always serve up something new and surprising—typically in the form of a deadly gadget or unexpected plot twist.
Image courtesy Schell Games
Now, nearly a month out from launch, we’ve gone hands-on with I Expect You to Die 2: The Spy and the Liar both through its publicly available demo and a sneak peek at the first three levels too. I can’t say too much beyond what you can figure out from the demo—no spoilers here about the story or any specific puzzles—but it’s safe to say it’s really shaping up to follow in the original’s footsteps.
The sequel’s first three levels are strong openers to what I can only assume will be another twisty-turny, back-stabby adventure. It’s got six missions in total, but also includes speed run and souvenir card systems for the sake of replay value.
So far the first half of the game has been chocked full of interesting spy gadgetry and interactive objects, which oftentimes are more than meets the eye. Oh, and Star Trek TNG’s Wil Wheaton voices a guy. He may be more than meets the eye too… Wheaton, that is. I said I wouldn’t spoil anything.
Image courtesy Schell Games
Like the first game, you’ll need to fish around for clues but also tread lightly as to not inadvertently die by drinking something poisonous, running out of breathable air, or being sliced in half by a casual laser beam or two. You’ll need to get creative and use your brain to solve multi-step puzzles, sometimes accomplished in more than one way, and really truly try not to explode yourself.
I played on Quest 2, and it’s clear the studio is at home developing for the standalone format. Set pieces are well realized, and frankly look better than many PC VR games I’ve played in the past.
I’ll be saving the rest of my thoughts for when the full game comes out on all major VR headset on August 24th, where it will be priced at $25. Schell Games is putting out pre-orders on a few platforms starting today, which brings the game to a 10% discount for Oculus Quest and PlayStation VR. Anyway, make sure to check back then for our full impressions next month.
Puzzling Places is already on Quest via App Lab, Facebook’s unmoderated outlet for Quest games and experiences, however now developers Realities.io announced the 3D puzzle game has been officially accepted to the Oculus Store.
The developers of the photogrammetry-based 3D jigsaw puzzle game announced the news yesterday in a Tweet, stating that the game is targeting a Fall 2021 launch window.
We have an important announcement to make…
Puzzling Places is accepted to release in the Oculus Quest Store!!
If you own a Quest, you can check out the game on App Lab or SideQuest right now, which in its prototype form includes six freebie puzzles. The developers are currently supporting their work through Patreon, which includes access to many more puzzles.
Realities.io say there is still plenty more to announce about the game leading up to launch including upcoming puzzles as well as more content partnerships.
The game is also set to arrive on PSVR sometime in the winter of 2021. Check out the trailer below to see the game in action.
Eye of the Temple is an upcoming VR game that takes full advantage of the room-scale abilities of your VR headset, letting you walk, dodge, and duck your way through a vast temple complex. You use your own two feet to make your way through, which really brings you closer to the feeling of truly being Indiana Jones. Oh, and there’s a torch and whip. And a hat.
The game’s ‘First Steps’ demo, which is available for free on Steam, offers a pretty generous amount of gameplay. It took me about 45 minutes to finish, of course with a few deaths and back-tracking to account for. There’s an almost overwhelming amount of extra things to do and pathways to explore, and that’s just the demo.
If the full game, which is said to arrive on PC VR headsets sometime in 2020, can manage to serve up the same level of wonderment in a bigger package, we may have a really interesting and well-realized game on our hands. Moreover, we’ll have one that really pushes the capabilities of room-scale locomotion.
If you’ve ever been to a large-scale VR attraction like The Void, the principle behind Eye of the Temple is essentially the same: even though you’re physically walking in a 2 m² area (20 ft²) in your house, you’re shuffled around the in-game world in such a way that you never leave your playing area. This is done in a number of clever ways.
Firstly, the game makes heavy use of moving blocks which are just big enough to stand on and transport you through the world. These can take you horizontally through the puzzle-like configuration of multiple blocks to reach specific goals, but also up and down to different levels within the game. It’s a good way of getting you to travel longer distances than you normally would with only so much space in your living room, office, or bedroom.
And believe me: you’ll need all the space you can get, lest you want to violently bump your desk, closet, or priceless Ming Dynasty-era vase.
The second method is even more clever, although it definitely felt the weirdest in terms of overall comfort. Rolling pillars are there to move you forward in game while you physically move backwards, as if you were trying to balance on a cartoon tree trunk spinning in water. This, in practice, lets you reset your standing position while moving forward in the game, although it really just felt like another cool skill-based trap to traverse.
I also saw a minecart track which wasn’t accessible in the demo, so you might consider that three really fun and engaging ways of moving around so far.
As for non-block based locomotion puzzles, the most difficult of which is a room with a very Indian Jones-themed ceiling drop, you’re also given a torch and bull whip, the latter of which unfurls automatically when you reach a far-away lever or other puzzle element. The whip will definitely take you a while to get used to; I flailed around and missed targets more than I care to admit.
The torch is used in puzzles too (find the fire at point A, light the torch and get it to point B to activate something, etc) but it also adds a cool exploration vibe to it all, as the torch’s light dances around dynamically and helps bring dark indoor spaces to life.
Indie developer Rune Skovbo Johansen started work on Eye of the Temple back in Spring 2016—basically the very beginning of room-scale gaming. Since then, it seems many VR games have taken a turn towards seated play, and methods that rely more on artificial locomotion to get users moving in-game, making this both a unique, and uniquely well done adventure-themed puzzle game so far.
If you want to keep tabs on the full game, you can wishlist it on Steam here. There’s no specific launch date yet outside of ‘2020’, so we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled in the meantime.
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.
Puzzling Places is accepted to release in the Oculus Quest Store!!
