Firmament

A Masterclass in Atmospheric Mystery. Cyan Worlds has always been the gold standard for "environmental storytelling," but with Firmament, they’ve traded the dusty books of Myst for a cold, mechanical, and deeply moving steampunk odyssey. If you are looking for a game that respects your intelligence and rewards your curiosity, this is it. The Magic of the Adjunct The standout feature is the Adjunct—a clockwork gauntlet that acts as your only interface with the world. Unlike other adventure games where you hoard a backpack full of random items, Firmament focuses on this singular, evolving tool. It makes the gameplay feel tactile and grounded; you aren't just clicking icons, you are physically tethered to the massive machinery of the Realms. Visuals That Breathe The graphics are nothing short of breathtaking. Whether you’re staring into the frozen, jagged peaks of Curievale or the lush, overgrown structures of St. Andrew, the sense of scale is immense. Cyan has managed to create "impossible" architecture that somehow feels heavy, real, and ancient. It is, without a doubt, one of the most visually stunning puzzle games ever made. A Story That Stays With You Beyond the gears lies a deeply touching narrative. Guided by the spirit of The Mentor, you slowly peel back the layers of what these "Realms" actually are. It starts as a lonely exploration and ends as a profound reflection on legacy, duty, and the cost of maintaining a world. The Verdict Firmament is a rare breed of game. It doesn’t hold your hand, and it doesn’t rush you. It invites you to sit, think, and marvel. For fans of the genre, it’s a beautiful reminder that nobody builds worlds quite like Cyan. Final Rating: A stunning, soulful journey through the clockwork clouds.

I finished the game with somewhat mixed feelings. On one hand, I was glad to experience Cyan’s signature style again, with environments and atmospheres that strongly reminded me of Myst and Riven. While the graphics aren’t particularly impressive, the overall presentation is still very pleasant and works well visually. However, the core of the game, its puzzles, felt less refined and generally simpler than in those earlier titles. Some sections can become a bit frustrating, especially due to frequent backtracking and occasionally confusing progression. The story is gradually revealed throughout the game but remains quite unclear. Even though the ending provides some explanations, I would have appreciated a clearer narrative from the beginning. The soundtrack is fairly subtle, but it complements the experience well. Despite these issues, I found the gameplay enjoyable overall, with a few moments that felt genuinely original, and I still had a good time with the game.

I had to wait for so long to play Firmament because my old pc was too crappy... now finally the time came, and.... It was quite a disappointment. I am a huge fan of Cyan, I´ve played them all. I was hoping that it had at least the complexity of Obduction, but maybe because they developed it to be played with VR (so impossible to take notes), it was really too easy, and quite frankly also too small, not enough to explore in my opinion, especially given the price tag. I hope they go back to the old ways: less focus on the graphics, more focus on the story and the puzzles.

6 hours in I honestly can't recommend. I'm playing in normal desktop mode but the game is clearly designed for VR. You only have one way to interact with the world which is such a shame. You will spend a lot of time walking around, backtracking and waiting for lifts and transporters and will feel no tactile connection with the world. You will be tantalised by beautiful scenery and fascinating objects like giant pipes, valves, levers, books, boxes, plants, mechanisms etc but know that none of it is relevant. There is no incentive to pay attention, notice details or to dwell in a spot so that you don't miss something. If it's not another round hole to connect to your "adjunct" (electro-mechanical amulet) to you may as well just travel at run speed everywhere to get from one adjunct hole to another. As you speed around the world your annoying guide's voice will pipe up seemingly at random with some uninteresting waffle that comes across less as guidance and more as self-indulgent story telling to a captive audience who can't turn it off. 30 years on, I still long for the experience of isolation, mystery, tactility and meaningfully integrated puzzles of Riven.

This game has beautiful engaging scenery as do all of Cyans games. The puzzles are well thought out and while some people may complain of how much back-and-forth you have to do to solve the puzzles; I am old-school, way back to the original Myst days so I all of that doesn't bother me at all. I think for any Cyan fan, this game should be in your library. My ONLY complaint, which I find is a "trend" in most games today, is that that Cyan decided to go with a depressing, masters/slave story to drive the narrative of the game. Why? We deal with this in real life all the time, and the narrative is much overdone these days. Why do we also have to have that in a game as the driving factor? We play these to ESCAPE real life...

If Steam would let me give a "neutral" rating, I would. I've been a big fan of Cyan Worlds since Myst first released in 1993 but Firmament just fails to live up to its predecessors and pretty much every way. The narrative is pretty sparse until a text and voiceover dump at the very end of the game, and the puzzles are lacking in variety due to the player having only a single tool that is used to solve every single one. There are some interesting spatial reasoning puzzles in here, but for the most part it's simply a matter of finding the right order of plugs for your steampunk gauntlet to interface with. This usually involves a lot of time spent running back and forth between said plugs. I finished the game in a little under 7 hours (my 7.4 hours recorded includes some time having to redo a puzzle because of a system crash unrelated to the game) so at $35 this was already a bit of a stretch in terms of value, but then the end credits announced that basically every piece of art, text, and voiceover was "AI-assisted". I know this game was released in 2023 and genAI was still pretty new, but there really should be a disclaimer on the store page. Together it all adds up to a game I simply can't recommend at full price. If you're a big fan of Cyan and want to play absolutely everything they publish, buy it on sale. Otherwise, skip it. You're not missing much.

I backed this on kickstarter and finally got around to playing it (when it first launched I couldn't keep it from crashing every 5 minutes so I put it aside for a few years). The game overall is... fine? The puzzles are all very simple, the storytelling is just a single narrator monologuing to you every time you make some slight progress along with a handful of notebooks in game. The vast majority of the story is dumped on you in the last 10 minutes of the game with a pile of notes bigger than you'll find in the rest of the games realms combined and a 5-10 minute monologue from the narrator character. It also feels like when you get to the end that there were supposed to be a ton of story moments earlier in the game that never happened as the dialog acts like you've grown to know and care about characters that have barely been mentioned more than once. I play these types of games for their complex puzzles and slow reveal of a mysterious story... this one had neither really. It's a good foundation for a game but it feels like its missing another year or so of content development.

well if you like the Myst games and enjoy VR this game is fun and little challenging. The only thing I would say they could have done better at, is the graphics. They are exactly the same as the other games LOL. There are some glitches, good thing they have that "teleport to safe spot" option in the settings. (Obduction , their other VR game, is also fun and I recommend that if you haven't played it already)

Fine piece of art developed by Cyan, creators of Myst. Challenging puzzles and with an enticing story. Some path bugs, but they're minor inconveniences

Brilliant game. 100% loving it.