Puzzle games can be a love them or hate them genre for most people. But, combine it with some adventure, and you have the formula for almost every popular game out there.
Doing this is VR is often easier said than done and many devs are still trying to figure out how, exactly, to approach puzzle solving and exploration in VR.
That said, VR does have quite a bit of backstock to explore when it comes to puzzles and adventure in video games.
If you’re a child of the 1990s then you probably remember the PC CD classic, Myst.
It’s also probably one of the best examples of this type of game out there.
It was an exploration game at its heart, throwing the player into a fantastical world that was filled with puzzles and some mysterious purpose underpinning it all.
Light on narrative but heavy on puzzle-solving gameplay, Myst was a classic in almost every respect and it really helped put pre-rendered images in games and CD-ROM-based gaming on the map.
Cyan Worlds, the makers behind Myst, are hoping to recreate that same magic again, but this time in VR. For its time, Myst was really next-level stuff. That means that Cyan Worlds is going to attempt to recreate this novel, revolutionary experience…again.
And it was a revolution: Myst showed people how powerful graphics could be and how interactive video games could become. Plus it brought a ton of new people into gaming that was not video gamers nor would ever have considered purchasing a video game before.
That’s why there is so much hope that Cyan Worlds latest project is all it is promised.
Their project, Firmament, was built for virtual reality and was successfully launched via crowdfunding.
Now, Cyan Worlds is turning again towards crowdfunding in order to finish the game.
The goal of the Kickstarter is to raise at least $1.3 million.
Rand Miller, one of the co-founders of Cyan Worlds, “This just feels like it’s one more roll of the dice for us…We at least get another chance to try another title.”
Maintaining the tradition established with previous titles, the team is relatively silent about the specific details of the game other than noting that it is made for VR and should involve things similar to what players encountered in Myst and other titles from the company.
One of the core gameplay concepts in the game will be interacting with a mechanical companion. We can assume this is probably to solve puzzles but also to uncover gameplay narrative.
Miller said, “The most important part that I think is exciting, is this idea of learning to communicate with this companion…You don’t know what it knows and what it doesn’t.”
