Myst and Riven were precious parts of my childhood. More so than any other games, reminiscing on them has the tendency to fill me with emotion and nostalgia. So you can imagine how ecstatic I was this morning to learn that developer/publisher Cyan had launched a Kickstarter program to fund the development of their new game, Obduction.
The Kickstarter is already off to a good start by breaking the $100,000 mark (of their $1.1M goal) within a matter of hours. It’s clear that there is a huge demand for the beautiful and hauntingly mysterious experience that is a trademark of the Myst series.
Powered by Unreal Engine 4, Obduction will not stray from the original gameplay formula of exploring and solving puzzles from a first-person perspective. Indeed, you could easily label this the spiritual successor to Myst. It’s important to point that out because, while development of games in the series after Riven were either partially or fully outsourced to other development teams, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst was made by the core Cyan team and was a big departure, at least mechanically, from the original games.
Obduction promises to tap into Cyan’s ability to craft highly immersive worlds with gorgeous scenery, alien architecture, an evocative musical score, and challenging puzzles. My personal wish is for them to take the same approach with the narrative and make the player feel like the protagonist.
The target release date for Obduction is mid-to-late 2015.
Sean started playing video games in infancy. He was not given a choice as much as a directive from his parents to be the best gamer on Earth. Sean was subjected to 10-12 hours of rigorous daily gaming throughout his youth, mastering the most complex video games and dominating online competitions. Sean's symbiotic relationship with video games led to writing about them for various gaming websites, and he is currently involved in sales strategy and analytics at one of the largest video game publishers in the world. Sean's mission is simple: Turn 100% of the human population into gamers, willingly or otherwise.
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