Firmament is a video game from Cyan Worlds, Inc. It is a Spiritual Successor to Cyan's previous games Myst, Riven and Obduction. First announced in March 2018, it was funded via a successful Kickstarter campaign in April 2019. It is Cyan's first game to be designed specifically for the VR format (although PC, Mac and PS4 versions are available as well).
You Wake Up in a Room. A ghostly Mentor appears to you, tells you she is dead, and says you are now a "Keeper". She also provides you with an Adjunct, a tool which can remotely operate machinery. You set out to explore and find yourself in one of four worlds: Curievale, Saint Andrew, Juleston, and The Swan, all with clear signs of previous habitation, but seemingly long-abandoned. Hidden somewhere in these realms lies the secret of The Firmament, a truth long hidden away...
The game was released on May 18, 2023.
The demo contains examples of:
- Cyber Cyclops: The Adjunct drone shown in the demo has a single eye that emits blue light.
- Human Popsicle: The demo begins with the protagonist encased in ice before being released by machinery.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: The demo opens with a frozen corpse sitting at a table. The corpse belongs to a mysterious woman who speaks to you from beyond the grave. She says she could have mentored you but cannot now that she is dead. In her hands she holds the Adjunct, which responds to you as soon as you touch it.
- Mythology Gag: The demo ends in a room with a ceiling that looks identical to the one in the Myst Library.
This game contains examples of:
- Alternate History: The game is set in an alternate timeline where spacefaring technology existed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
- Ambiguous Ending: The Mentor fades away, hoping that the knowledge you gained in the three realms will serve you well in your new home but the game ends before you reach your destination.
- Blank Slate: The Keepers undergo a Deep Sleep process that repairs their bodies, but gradually erases their memories, so that they wake up as effectively new people who develop their own personalities and identities.
- Bookends: The game begins and ends with the Mentor appearing to you as an apparition.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Interestingly, a full-body example. The Mentor knew that only a member of the Crew could authorize the Atelis' final upgrade, so she forced Turner into Deep Sleep until most of his memories were gone, so that he would complete the Atelis' mission instead of continuing his own hubristic abuse of authority.
- Brain Uploading: Somehow, the Mentor jury-rigged the Atelis' computers to preserve her memories onto the ship itself, giving her the ability to live on as a holographic ghost. She can't see exactly what you're doing, but can tell when you're making progress.
- The Ending Changes Everything: The ending reveals that the three realms are actually part of a starship called the Atelis that was built so that many generations of humans could travel the stars in search of a habitable planet.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: This appears to be the case throughout the three realms since the only person you encounter is the Mentor who is also dead and appears in the form of some kind of holographic ghost or spirit. However, there is enough evidence through the game that the surviving keepers are simply in cryogenic stasis.
- Featureless Protagonist: Played with. The player character is never shown except for their hands, but the ending reveals that they are male at least.
- Foreshadowing:
- The names of the three realms (Curievale, Juleston, St. Andrew) hint at who created them. They were created by Andrew Carnegie, Marie Curie and Jules Verne (along with Karl Marx, Nikola Tesla and Konstantin Tsiolkovsky) as part of a giant spaceship meant to carry future generations of humans to a new world.
- When the Mentor talks about meeting Turner for the first time, she says, "I wish you could remember and yet I am glad you do not." This hints at the fact that she is not just talking to you but about you.
- Hub Level: The Swan, which connects to each of the three Realms individually and is also where the Keepers spent their free time.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: One of the first things the Mentor tells you is that she's dead.
- Mythology Gag: A refrigerator contains bottles of Moula Cola, which doubles as a reference to both Obduction and Uru.
- No Name Given: The Mentor never tells you her name.
- Schizo Tech: It's subtle, because the different layers of technology are well integrated and built in the same architectural style, but the Realms contain technology of very different levels of advancement, with such things as an archaic coal power plant, an intricate walking mech, and a series of teleportation pods all functioning together with common purpose. The final segment of the game is more obvious: as you progress through the Crew section of the Atelis, you find first computers reminiscent of the real-world 1960s, then a futuristic ship's bridge that wouldn't look out of place in Star Trek: The Original Series.
- Shout-Out: A slight one to Myst. In the Saint Andrew realm, a diagram bears a note written in Atrus' handwriting.
- Sigil Spam: The Firmament logo is seen in numerous places, though its meaning is obscured until the ending.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Throughout the game, the Mentor refers to a man named Turner whom she says brought chaos into the Keepers' realms and attempted to rule over them like a God. At the very end of the game, it is revealed that you are Turner and the Mentor overpowered you and erased your memory so you could understand what it is like to be a Keeper.
- Trickster Mentor: Right at the start, the Mentor flat-out tells you that she will lie to you. She tells you this is Rule Two, when in fact she has already lied about Rule One.
- Warp Whistle: The conveyance pods teleport the user between previously discovered locations.
