[Update]: Firmament has now arrived, and while the puzzles are fun, the plethora of bugs is sadly not.

It took quite a few years for us to get here given that the original Kickstarter campaign was concluded all the way back in 2019, but Myst studio's newest steampunk flavored puzzle-adventure Firmament is now nearly upon us! And when I say nearly, I'm really not joking as Firmament will be launching in a mere few days, on May 18th.

As you would expect given the studio and its pedigree, Firmament is going to be all about exploring a large and detailed world, messing around with a variety of strange devices without having the faintest clue about what they actually do, and naturally, trying to unravel ancient secrets in between all of that puzzlin' around. It's pretty much the same formula as Cyan's previous games, so with a bit of luck Firmament should be a nice bit of fun as well.

But enough of my babbling! Allow me to share with you the launch trailer as that should give you a pretty good impression of just what exactly Firmament is trying to do and what sort of atmosphere it's going for. Have a peek:

Unlike its predecessor Obduction that had VR support added through an update, Firmament has been designed from the very start with both standard displays and VR in mind. Speaking of which, the VR version will bring with it Free Roam and Teleport as the two mobility options, a variety of accessibility settings to help make the experience smoother, along with support for Valve Index, HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Rift S, and Quest 2 via Oculus Link.

While I have no doubt that Firmament is going to be enjoyable, I do have one concern about the 'regular' version - the walking speed. Things slowed down to a crawl towards the end of Obduction as you frequently had to crawl walk between distant puzzle locations, and that was a game designed with standard controls in mind. With Firmament VR has been the focus from the very start, and that usually means slower and more deliberate movement, so even if the distances are shortened there is still a chance the movement ends up feeling far too slow.

Whether that's actually going to be the case or if I'm just worrying about nothing, I suppose we'll find out soon enough. Either way, I'll make sure to let you know once Firmament finally arrives.

Until then, you can read a few more tidbits about it, as well as keep track of any updates, over at Steam. Enjoy!