It’s been a long, long time coming. But after a long Kickstarter campaign, troubles with publishers, delays and just about everything else, the makers of the Myst series have finally released the spiritual successor to the iconic first-person puzzle series.
Gamers donated more than $1.8 million to Cyan back in 2013. It was meant to be a grand return to form for Cyan, a studio with a long history of running into difficulty with publishers at the last minute.
Unfortunately, history repeated itself. Not long before the game’s original deadline was due to be hit, Cyan announced to backers that they had to downsize the scope of Obduction after their would-be publisher reneged on a prior agreement.
That was in October last year and a lot can change in nearly 10 months. Fortunately, development on the game continued. And lo and behold, almost a year after the game was originally scheduled for release, Obduction is out on Steam for almost $40 ($US29.99).
Those hoping for Mac support should be pleased to know that it’s coming out shortly, although those who backed the Kickstarter will get early access to that. A Oculus Rift-supported port is also in the works, with Cyan saying that “it needs a bit more optimisations and some UI polishing”.
There’s no word on when the VR version is coming out, nor whether it’ll be playable with the HTC Vive down the road.
Comments
12 responses to “Myst’s Spiritual Successor Is Finally Out”
Hm. Might wait till the weekend to see if GoG have a promo on it.
Regardless this is a must buy for me.
Just keep in mind apparently resolution scale is set to 50 by default when you fire it up, and the presets won’t change that — so bump it up to 100 and it’ll look like normal (which is v. sharp).
That is very odd
Yeah, not sure what’s happening there. Might have been patched by now, but if you’re playing just keep an eye out for it.
I don’t follow; what is this that you are speaking of about the game?
Work has been up and down so I never got the chance to stay on top of the game in terms of news.
It’s a setting in the video options when you fire the game up. For whatever reason, some people found the resolution scale was set to 50 — so half of what it should be — on launch, making the whole game look blurry and a bit crap. Just turn it up to 100 and you’ll be sweet.
??? OK, that has got to be the strangest setting I’ve ever heard of. Thanks for the heads up.
Just checked out some screenshots on steam and the game looks beautiful. Thanks for the PSA, I had totally forgot about it.
Was playing that till 3:45am this morning. Loving it. I cut my teeth on Myst, Riven, Exile, Revelation, as well as Starship Titanic, Return to Zork, and a few others, and Obduction feels like the Myst series on an acid trip, even more so when you teleportation is introduced. It feels like a Cyan title but it needs some patching, particularly with the controls and the photo viewing feature, though I was thrilled that it has full Xbox, Steam, and VR controller support.
I backed this and will be playing it when I get home. My first Kickstarter that’s borne fruition!
Did you get an in-game Backer Reward item? If so, what should we keep an eye out for?
There was a roadsign somewhere and when I looked at it, it said backer reward. But I’m not sure what the point of that was, really.
Anyway, The game has some issues with the controller (not working in menus, chiefly) so I might just wait for a patch before playing much more. Great atmosphere, though.