Zarf Updates

This morning, Cyan updated Myst (the 2020 release) to include the Age of Rime. This is a free update on Steam (Mac/Win) and Quest; the Xbox update is in progress.

Do I need to say more than that? Sure, why not. Context is life.

Rime originally appeared as a bonus Age in RealMyst (2000), the 3D-engine remake of Myst (1993). Rime was meant to provide some connective tissue between the stories of Myst and Riven. The Rime journals revealed a bit of Atrus and Catherine's backstory. They also alluded to the book-enhancing geodes which had appeared in Riven. Solving Rime's crystal-matching puzzle gave a glimpse of Riven as a reward.

(The crystal puzzle was then reiterated in Myst 4 (2004), providing even more series continuity. Yay continuity.)

For all that, the big draw of Rime was its beauty: an Age of ice, stars, and colorful auroras. We all hoped for a visit to Rime in the snazzed-up Unreal-based Myst 2020. Sadly, it wasn't there. Cyan mentioned it in 2022 and 2023, but without any real news of progress. Riven came and went; still no Rime.

But! A week ago Cyan dropped a tantalizing post on their social media:

The quoted link no longer exists, but for a few days it led to an ARG-style web-hacking game. The fans went nuts.

Cyan likes to drop these mini-ARGs occasionally as treats for their hardcore fans. They never contain serious announcements, and they never get much notice outside the Cyan Discord. (If you are on the Discord, check out the #🤔-ciphers channel for exhaustive discussion.) The endpoint was a bunch of glitched images -- I think this link is still viewable -- which alluded to the Rime journals.

Fun times, but, as I said, not a serious announcement. That came Tuesday in the form of a press release and social post.

[...] Fans can look forward to exploring Rime when the new Age becomes available for the Meta Quest platform as well as Windows and Mac systems this Thursday, March 20th at 10am Pacific, with an update for the Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S versions of the game to follow.

Only one problem: I'm at GDC this week. I had the extra fun of downloading eight gigabytes of Myst app to my laptop over hotel wifi. And then a four-megabyte update today. I fully expect to see a room-service charge for bandwidth when I check out.

Context, schmontext. How was the Age?

It's gorgeous! Ice! Stars! Auroras! I am satisfied. No spoilers beyond that.

The puzzles, journals, and geography have all been expanded a bit. Just as with Riven, it's the Rime you remember, but rethought and with added detail.

I admit that I was hoping for a bit of connective tissue between the Myst series and Cyan's next project. This is a "new game in the D'ni-verse", unconnected to the Atrus family saga. That's all they've said about it.

(Except that one of Cyan's recent merch pages contains "PREFALL" as an acrostic. As in, before the fall of the D'ni civilization. The fans went nuts, I tell you.)

Anyway, sneaking some clues into this Rime release would have been structurally apt. But they didn't do it. Or if they did, it was too subtle for me. Ah well.

I guess we'll have to wait for Mysterium. Check back in August!