Firmament

by Aethyna May 26, 2023 | 1 Votes | 24 Played | 0 Reviews

8 rate

Genres:

Adventure , Puzzle

Graphics:

Labels:

Adventure , Storytelling , Exploration , Mystery

Platforms:

Publishers:

Cyan Worlds Inc Developed by none other than the team behind the renowned Myst series, Firmament is their latest title that puts you into the shoes of a Keeper – the only Keeper - of the Realm. Follow the instructions of your virtual mentor and help her raise the spires in the three unique locations of the Realm in hopes of fixing what needs to be fixed. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Developed by none other than the team behind the renowned Myst series, Firmament is their latest title that puts you into the shoes of a Keeper – the only Keeper - of the Realm. Thankfully, you’ve got a mentor to help guide you along the way. Follow the instructions of your virtual mentor, traverse the three unique biomes of the Realm to release the spires, and in time, you’ll be able to crack the mystery behind the Firmament and what had happened to the other Keepers.

Plotline

You awoke in an unfamiliar chamber with no memory of who you are or where. A virtual holographic figure materialized in front of you, telling you that she’s your mentor and that she will guide you so you can assume your role as a Keeper of the Realm and help “Keep” the Realm as it is.

She also pointedly told you that she will lie to you, simply because telling the truth isn’t always the best thing to do. However, as you’ll soon realize, she doesn’t really lie to you as much as intentionally omit information, only to reveal them after you’ve done what she wanted you to do.

In the very same chamber lies your Keeper’s tool – the Adjunct. This is what you’ll need to navigate the Realm, operating anything from cranes to bridges, to even doors... sometimes from a distance.

As you progress, you’ll gradually learn more about your morose mentor, the Firmament itself, as well as what had happened to all the other Keepers who are supposed to be Keeping the Realm together with you. There are also books that you can read, though there are quite limited – despite having a chockful of information, I’ve only found two unique ones.

Gameplay

If you’re familiar with Myst or any of Cyan’s games, you should feel right at home in Firmament. The gameplay here is fairly similar in essence to their other titles, featuring picturesque locations, up to three unique ones, for you to explore as well as a host of puzzles to solve that sometimes don’t feel like puzzles until you’re right in the thick of solving them.

As a Keeper of the Realm, you’ll be able to interact with the world using only your trusty Adjunct – a device that’s affixed to your arm upon pickup. With it, you will be able to interface with various Sockets around the realm, allowing you to control the Sockets’ respective equipment or machinery, like moving a crane or operating an Omniwheel (a device that allows travel between points of interest within a location), or even to simply open a door, to solve a variety of puzzles.

The puzzles in this game come in a nice variety but some of them seem to share a common point – solving them can be incredibly tedious not because the puzzles are hard but because you’re expected to run to and fro between Sockets trying different possible solutions as you would in a typical puzzle-solving process.

Some puzzles can also be trickier than others to solve, but thankfully, the game does try to help as much as it can, provided that you’re inquisitive and observant enough. You see, you can often find critical clues that can really cut short the puzzle-solving process, giving you some insight into how you could arrive at the final solution. The catch here is that you’ll really need to explore the place where the puzzle is located in.

In Firmament, you can upgrade your Adjunct to, for instance, increase its range, via the Arch as well. Each location in the game has one that you can use to your advantage. These are not possible to miss and are integral to the game’s progression.

Besides the three locations, each with a unique biome, that you’ll get to visit, there’s also a central hub called The Swan where all the Keepers, if they are still there, will interact, rest, and relax. There are strategically placed Conveyance Pods that function much like an Omniwheel, except that these Pods can only transport the player from a location to the hub and vice versa. It’s the only way you can use to travel to another location.

Unfortunately, the loading time a.k.a. the travel time can be a bit longer than usual, but on the other hand, the travel time does feel kind of realistic since the distance between each location in the Realm would likely be quite huge.

Firmament has a pretty solid gameplay had it not been marred by bugs. Many players, and not just me, have encountered numerous bugs that range from cranes getting stuck to falling off the edge into nothingness, to even graphical ones such as locations not loading properly, that is until the pause menu was brought up and exited out of. That being said, the game does have an Unstuck button that you can use (check under Settings), not only to get yourself unstuck, but also to (hopefully) unstuck anything else that may have been stuck.

Graphics/ Sound

As with any puzzle adventure game from Cyan, Firmament hits the nail on the head with its picturesque sceneries and impressive visuals. Coupled with the ambiance, soundtrack, and atmosphere, the graphics here can easily immerse you into the game world, even to the point where you forget that the real world exists, especially if you play the game in VR, I reckon.

There’s a bit of a downside here though. Aside from the graphical glitches mentioned before, Firmament also seemed to have reused (copied and pasted) a lot of the same assets throughout the game. This is fairly disappointing, especially considering that the studio had raised almost a whopping 1.5 million for this project and that there is definitely a whole lot more variety of assets that they could have used from the Unity store, even if they didn’t want to produce any from scratch.

In terms of sound, although Firmament features a selection of relaxing soundtrack, the game doesn’t have the music constantly playing in the background. Instead, the music in the game is only used when needed, either to evoke awe at certain thresholds or to simply fill in the silence, as is the case in the deserted hub.

Your mentor in Firmament is also fully voiced by what sounded like a French lady. Despite the accent, the enunciation is great, making it easy to catch what she was saying even as a non-native English speaker. However, for those who need a little bit more help following the dialogues… well, monologues, the game helpfully provides subtitles by default. You can easily change the language of the subtitles if you want as well.

Conclusion

Featuring full VR support and three different biomes to explore, Firmament is a breathtaking and atmospheric puzzle adventure that is, unfortunately, marred by the occasional bugs and doesn’t seem to be as fleshed out as most players have expected. Besides some of the unnecessarily tedious puzzles and a storyline that only gets really interesting near the end of the game, the team that made this game truly seemed to have lost its soul – the very same “soul” that had made the Myst series such a great success.

So, even if you're a diehard fan of Cyan and their games, you might still want to wait a bit before getting this one. Give the team some time to patch up some of the issues in the game and lower your expectations a little before diving in. The game may not blow you away completely (maybe besides the visuals) but it is definitely worth a play.

New Game Added: Firmament

by Aethyna May 26, 2023

Developed by none other than the team behind the renowned Myst series, Firmament is their latest title that puts you into the shoes of a Keeper – the only Keeper - of the Realm. Follow the instructions of your virtual mentor and help her raise the spires in the three unique locations of the Realm in hopes of fixing what needs to be fixed.