Firmament

I was consistently impressed with how it looked, and kept thinking back on how individual stills of it look *just* like something I would have expected from Myst or Riven. The art style is remarkably consistent with their previous work. If nothing else – Firmament is very easy on the eyes.

The sound design and music are similarly great. They don’t take center stage for the most part, but they fit in very well thematically. The main tool used by the player is also very satisfying to control and snaps into place just right.

To contrast, I think that the ease of the puzzles is by far its largest weak point. Players of Firmament are likely experienced puzzle game enjoyers, many skewing older from the days of the original Myst. None of the puzzles really required breaking out a pen and paper, or approaching from multiple angles, making deductions based on hints in the environment, going back and try again while working on another puzzle, considering the problem again and again, maybe sleeping on it a day or two. Those things make the “Ah-hah!” moment so very satisfying, and it’s just not here in Firmament for the most part. Almost everything is straightforward and many are more or less just brute force.

That low difficulty also compounds to make this a very short game – about 7-8 hours for most. A bit of a shame for the price tag.

There are some complaints about the technical state, but for *most* players these are minor and they will be resolved in the coming weeks, so I think it’s not particularly worth dwelling on.

There are other nagging smaller issues – like a couple times where a third-person camera was really required and the forced first-person-only hurt it, as well as awkward controls. And sometimes the game doesn’t communicate great with the player. But those are relatively minor in the grand scheme.

I truly love Cyan games, and I want to see more. I just hope that if they make another, it offers a bit more meat on these absolutely gorgeous bones.