izigame.me

Notes: This review was written before I completed the game. I play on a regular monitor. There are mild spoilers in this review.

Another CyanWorlds game! Can't believe it's been seven years since Obduction was released.
I'm a bit conflicted about this game.
With Firmament, Cyan presents us an absolutely beautifully crafted world with (positively) interesting creative choices unlike anything I've seen before (but simultaneously with very clear influences), incredible environments, lighting and sound. More often than I can count I've just stood there admiring the landscape. And unfortunately, pretty visuals and cool aesthetics are pretty much the best part of what the game has to offer.
In the 'gameplay' aspect, it's a bit lacking, especially if compared to Obduction. I would like to compare this to earlier Cyan games, but that's a completely different development team with an entirely different budget, so that might not be a fair comparison. For one, the puzzles are....different. It's probably the first Cyan game where I've never really felt like picking up a notebook, scribbling down little maps, symbols and drawings of puzzles.
As for puzzles: Firmament gives you a handheld tool (the Adjunct) to manipulate so-called 'sockets' within range. The Adjunct lets you enable/disable machines, open/close doors, and generally serves as the single method of interaction. Sockets are sometimes blocked by movable objects, out of range, or require upgrades to the Adjunct to activate. In the former cases, the puzzles essentially revolve around getting these sockets in an accessible position so you can manipulate whatever is attached to them. In the latter case, the puzzles cannot be completed without the upgrades, so you first should go elsewhere to get these upgrades. Where this elsewhere is isn't mentioned, though.
The manner in which these puzzles are used are fairly varying, but they all share one common factor: They're tedious.
In fact, they're more tedious than difficult, and sometimes hard to envision as there's no good way to see the whole puzzle at once. It's a little like a jigsaw puzzle where you only can see two pieces at once.
There's also a fair deal of backtracking involved during these puzzles, though at the end you can usually open a path straight to the start and activate a teleporter destination so it's easy to move around the world.
The environments the puzzles are in are very well-crafted and look amazing, but the puzzles themselves could use a little more variation. It's usually either "move objects to uncover a socket" or "move machines to get to new location".
I wish the Adjunct/Sockets mechanic was just one of a few different mechanics instead of the single way you interact with the world.
It feels much more like a Portal-style game than the point and click puzzler games they've made previously. This isn't bad, and I do think it's a good thing to explore other avenues, but the end result doesn't work well for the entire duration of a game.
The overall realm 'completion' mechanics are also a bit too straightforward; in every realm it's the same general idea: restore power/resources to the area in one way or another, go to Big Building, get an Adjunct upgrade and activate a tower. In terms of sockets, it's basically "activate socket, get cool visual'' over and over again.
Besides that, the world feels a little empty. There are puzzles, but the density of puzzles is much lower than ie. Obduction, and the amount of lore notes to read is shockingly low. So far I've found about ten at most, of which half aren't even lore related but mostly relevant to the puzzle near which they're located. To make up for this, a large part of the game is narrated by a "ghost" that pops up at certain locations.
I have to admit that when I first played the game, there was a bug where the narrator showed up exactly once and then never again, so until that was patched I just didn't get any more info on the story of the game. I can't say too much about this narrator due to this, but this should now be patched.
From the bits of lore I did get from the narrator, lore notes and game world, I can say the story definitely is original and interesting, but I'm missing a lot of context.
I should mention that despite missing most of the lore I can complete the puzzles just fine, so if you're not interested in reading lots you can still play Firmament without issue. Without lore context it might feel a little weird though: why am I doing all these puzzles?
Due to the semi-linear playstyle of the game, the narrator often makes vague comments related to the location you're in and drip feeds you lore, instead of telling a linear story.
A downside of a narrator mechanic like this is that you can't really go back to re-read a note to look for clues or more information on the story. The audio played, and it won't repeat.
Having the ability to either recall audio or to read a transcript somewhere in a travel log would have been great.
It's noticeable that QA focused on playing the game through the intended paths as much as possible and didn't really have time for making sure any unintended interactions were covered up. It signals "rushed", as it's likely meant sure as many players as possible can make it through the game without many issues.
This is especially noticeable in one of the puzzles where you pilot a gigantic walking vehicle; the colliders cover the intended paths well, but walk into a cliffside just outside those paths and you'll find yourself clip through with no effort.
There are also paths that visually signal "don't take this path, it's blocked", but if you actually try to walk over it, you can do so just fine. (I have sent a bug report, so chances are that this will be patched out soon, though!)
In other puzzles involving vehicles (of which there are a few) it's currently quite easy to get them stuck, or to get around puzzles in unintended ways. This is also likely to get patched soon.
One feature of the game that I do really appreciate is the "teleport to a safe spot" function; in case you get stuck due to bugs, this button teleports you back to a safe spot, and resets vehicles you were piloting as well in case they break or get stuck. It's a very helpful feature in a game that currently needs a little more patching.
All things considered, I think Firmament IS worth its while if you can look past its flaws. It isn't perfect and currently has quite a few softlocks and bugs, so I hope those get patched soon.
I would suggest waiting for a while until it's a couple patches further down the road.
It is definitely a beautiful "walking simulator"-style game that might even be interesting for people who've liked Portal's puzzle style (minus the portal gun, of course).
However, it's definitely not one of Cyan's most expansive games and definitely feels very short. Though if you're not an experienced puzzler this game might take you much more than 15 hours to complete.
I'm wondering to which target audience Cyan is catering with this game, as it really seems to be a much "easier" game intended to be suitable for larger audiences, but which seems skip over their audience they have already established with their previous titles.
I wish I could like this game more, but it's just not what I'd hoped it would be. I did enjoy playing it, but I think the visual quality far outweighs the quality of gameplay.
With its current bugs fixed it still won't be a perfect game, but at least it'll be a lot less frustrating to play.

Edit: very vague ending spoilers below.
I don't know what to say about the ending. The premise and plot twist are cool, but afterwards I just....don't really care about it. It's just going far too fast, and the actual ending is way too sudden.
(I would like to write more but I've hit the character limit apparently, sorry!
Continuing in the comments.)