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**I was VERY close to giving this a negative review, and I'm a die-hard Cyan fan. I'm giving Firmament the softest of recommendations because at the end of the day, it was enjoyable, and I fully support Cyan as a developer. Anyone who has played a Cyan game knows that they don't make cash-grabs. They're one of the few fully privately owned game big-name developers out there, still self-publishing, and I have a ton of respect for that. This review is long, because I'm passionate about this game, and Cyan. Bear with me. TLDR review at the end.
Having said that, this is a game you want to love, but in its' current state, it's really tough to do so. First, here's what the game nails:
- The environments are gorgeous, and there's a lot of that inspired Cyan environment/level design in here. The levels feel fresh and make you remember why Myst was such a big deal. They STILL know how to make a world that just sucks you in, and I love that. The art direction is fantastic, and on my PC, I didn't have any framerate issues.
- The sound design is excellent. You'll want to play with headphones.
- I consider myself a longtime Myst/Riven fan, and I actually really liked the puzzles. It's nowhere near as difficult as Myst, Riven , or Obduction, but it was pretty clear from trailers that it wasn't going to be. Many people are disappointed by this and that's fair given Cyan's pedigree, but I actually think this is a nice, new middle ground for Cyan. I wasn't looking for another Myst. We have plenty of those. Firmament is a much more breezy affair - this one will not require detailed notes or giving up and consulting a walkthrough like Cyan's other games, but by no means is it "walking simulator" territory. I really liked using a single tool for solving puzzles. This cleanly removes the frustration of pixel-hunting that can make puzzles go from difficult, to just unfair. There was still plenty of logic required to operate machinery, figure out how to unlock new areas, and string together a few sections to solve a greater puzzle. To some it may feel like"diet" Myst, but I thought not having to backtrack millions of times or miss tiny details made this feel like a modernized adventure game. I never was so frustrated that I wanted to quit, and yet I definitely had to use my brain continually through the game. I can't think of a better balance than that. It all feels just short of some of Cyan's best puzzles... but why? See below.
Unfortunately, this game is marred by some BIG downsides, and I think most should wait to buy for these reasons:
- It's UNBELIEVABLY buggy. For a studio that isn't being bulled by a publisher to release, and who raised almost $1.5 million for this game, this is totally unacceptable. This studio is not known for shipping games in unfinished states, so I really don't understand what happened here. It's not a long game or technically complex game, which makes this even more unacceptable. This is Cyan's second game on the Unreal engine and Obduction was pretty stable on release, so the magnitude and amount of issues is shocking. I'm talking total game-breaking bugs - platforms that get stuck and can't ever be moved again, falling off of edges/railings into nowhere with no way to reset, and the game frequently crashing when loading a level. This is compounded by the fact that you only have 2 manual save slots and a single autosave... why!?? I'm not exaggerating when I say that strategically saving out of fear of another game-breaking bug was more of a challenge than the actual game puzzles. By complete luck I was able to load to prior saves and avoid having to start a new, but I constantly felt I was just one step away from completely breaking the game. Some puzzles are very heavy on free-form moving, and the worst bugs seem centered around these parts. That sucks, because they are otherwise the freshest parts of Firmament's gameplay. it all feels like Cyan is somehow getting the hang of making a game that *isn't* point and click... as if it's still 1998.
- The story gets there eventually, but rather than have the plot spread out across the game to intrigue and entice you, it's hours of nothingness, with everything shoved in your face in the ending act. I really liked the plot and the ending, but in addition to the bugs, this gives a feeling of this game being oddly rushed despite - again - 5 years and $1.5 mil. How did it come to this?? Also there are all of TWO books to read in the game, and even stranger, the same 2 books are scattered multiple times across areas of the game. This doesn't make sense from a gameplay perspective, and it doesn't make sense from a story perspective. Again, this is Cyan - their games are usually packed with lore, and finding the same 2 books over and over feels lazy, and rushed. It's like there was going to be more but they ran out of time and hit copy/paste on every written item. It would have been better to just have no books than the same two ones, constantly reminding you they didn't come up with any other written words for you. Combined with the bugs, it's clear little to no playtesting was accomplished. There is surprisingly not much to motivate a player to solve all these puzzles besides blind faith that Cyan came up with an actual ending. They did, thankfully, but you wouldn't know it from the first 7 hours.
- On that note, recycled assets galore. The environments are great, but they are filled with the same props, over and over. Why? This is the Unreal engine, and it's 2023. It's so easy to add, find, and make assets. The game even has a footnote that mentions some assets were AI generated. Your opinion of AI-generated stuff may vary, but this is insultingly lazy to me. How the heck was this determined an acceptable approach from the studio that pioneered handcrafted virtual worlds? For the 3rd time in this review, I'm hit with the feeling that there was a different game in mind that was scrapped and a replacement rushed in the final months. It all just feels so bare, so lazy, and so incomplete for the budget/legacy of this studio.
- The last big one, and maybe the source of all of the downsides - VR. I totally get why Cyan loves VR. I own a headset, and I absolutely get the allure of VR promising a fully immersive world. But it's clear that the current state of the technology means you either need to make a game designed 100% with only VR in mind (and accept those big limitations to make a splash) or just ditch it and make a good traditional game. I'm personally convinced that this game was going to be a much more involved VR ordeal, and that VR design attempts ate up most of the budget and resources that should have been dedicated to foundational stuff. I think VR should have just been left well enough alone, and I think had the VR ambitions not been there, we would have had a much better game for it. I didn't try this game in VR, and I have no real desire to, given how buggy the flatscreen affair already is.
A very, very TL;DR:
- 9.5/10 for graphics/environment/immersion
- 8.5/10 for puzzles
- 2/10 for stability/performance
- 8/10 story/plot
- Negative 5 bags of popcorn for a story that doesn't start till the last act
- Negative 10 bags of popcorn for AI generated assets and re-use of props/assets
- 3/10 for needless VR
- Winner of the Defunded Libraries of America Award for having only 2 readable books... from a developer whose bestselling game is about books!!!