The Firmament demo

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Tagged: firmanent, gdc, vr, cyan

This morning, I got to play the demo (or "playable teaser experience") of Cyan's planned next game Firmament. This is the first time it's been demoed in public, as far as I know, and I got in within the first hour of the show. So that's some bragging rights for me!

(Nobody cares about me bragging. Okay.)

Firmament is a first-person puzzle adventure game which Cyan announced as a project three weeks ago. As I noted in my previous post, the game is not yet in production. They're hunting for funding. This demo is all that exists, aside from the teaser trailer on the web site. They brought the demo to GDC to show it off and drum up interest.

This demo is VR-only; they've got an Oculus Touch hooked up for people to play with. The game itself is marked "platform TBD", which is the only thing they can possibly say at this early stage. It's probably fair to say that they're designing it with VR in mind, but that doesn't mean it would be VR-only or even VR-first at launch time. (If it ever gets funded at all, right?)

Anyhow, I will describe the experience. I got myself wired up, figured out how to zap the "play" button, and found myself in an ice cube. Big icy cave full of ice cubes. Then a big brass mechanical fork-thing got in my face and chipped me out of the ice.

(Ryan Warzecha warned me, as the game launched, that a machine was about to make me uncomfortable. Fair enough. Is this the VR equivalent of a 3D movie snowballing you in the face? A shock experience to show off how immersive the tech is, regardless of whether the player needs to be shocked? I'm not complaining here, I'm just saying that if you start your demo by apologizing for it, it might be a sign that you should rethink matters.)

Once de-iced, you figure out how to move around (standard VR teleport) and then leave the room. The next room is a frozen dining chamber with a corpse and a polyhedral drone, which wakes up and starts hovering around your head. (The ghost character in the trailer was not visible in this demo.)

You can grab the drone and stick it into various sockets to open doors and generally activate machines. You can also point at a distant socket, and the drone will fly over and plug itself in. If you raise your hand over your head, the drone will fly back towards you from wherever it is, unplugging itself if necessary.

(The drone pathfinding was simplistic; the thing tends to get lost if you move around a corner. Early demo problems, sure.)

The bulk of the demo consisted of climbing an icy mountain, using the drone to lower bridges and so on. You also get to pull some levers. (VR hand controllers!) It pretty clearly acts as a tutorial; by the time you've unlocked the teleport pod at the end, you've demonstrated all the basic drone interactions. The pod takes you to a mechanical hub chamber (visible in the trailer video) and that's the end of the demo.

In fact, the demo cuts off after five minutes, to give the next fan a chance to play. I didn't make it to the pod myself. But I watched a few other people.

I chatted a bit with Ryan Warzecha and Karl Johnson. Items of note:

The demo represents about two months of work. Yes, Cyan laid off some people last month; they're currently at about ten developers. If they get funding for Firmament, they'll staff back up. Ryan noted that he's been laid off from Cyan three times, and he's always happy to go back when they can afford to hire him.

Yes, the PSVR port of Obduction is still going. (I think they said it was in validation at Sony, but I may be misremembering that.)

As noted on the Myst web page, Cyan has gotten agreements and funding to re-release all of the Myst games (for modern Windows machines). They don't have dates for any of this; they'll continue to make announcements throughout this year. They also have some kind of nice swag in mind, and a 25th-anniversary physical package.

That is, I think, all the news.

As for my own reaction: the Firmament demo looks great. Dusty interiors, snowy exteriors, towering machinery, swirling snowflakes. Cyan has definitely gotten the hang of the Unreal engine, and can use it to produce high-detail worlds in a pretty quick time-frame.

The demo contains only the simplest puzzles, as you'd expect from a tutorial scene. There's no sign of an overarching puzzle mechanic like Obduction's spheres. You just have the drone. I have no idea what they have planned for the game, and they aren't saying.

I am still not a VR convert. The demo was an immersive experience, but it wasn't any more immersive than Obduction or Quern or any of the other games I've played on my (non-gigantic) TV. Or I should say: for me, games on my TV are fully as immersive as VR! That's just how my brain works. I can fall into a TV screen... without getting my head all cramped and sweaty... and run to the bathroom any time I want. So that's how I will continue to play games. You play your way.

More Cyan news as it pops.