/r/FirmamentGame
News and discussion for the Cyan game Firmament
Welcome to a new world...
/r/FirmamentGame
I have a PSVR2 headset that we also recently got to work on my wife's gaming PC, and I was planning to play Firmament next. Then I learned that Cyan is projecting for the PSVR port to be ready sometime in early 2025. Now I'm wondering if the performance might end up being better on Playstation and I should wait? Any thoughts? I'm not a super techie person so I don't know the detailed specs of our PC, but it was rebuilt a couple of years ago and runs most modern AAA games well, if that helps.
The vinyl soundtrack is incomplete and actually leaves four tracks off. Were they too cheap to make a double album? The disc is the red of the swan with the centers being the pod doors for Curievale and Juleston. A second disc could have been the gold of the lights in the swan with the centers being the doors for St. Andrew and the final pod at the end.
I mean it. Are they ashamed? They hardly post about it or talk about it. Primary focus has been on the Myst and Riven re-releases over the last few years, understandably, but it seems like the initial PC release of Firmament came and went with very little fanfare. Plus, there’s been no more PlayStation news (I figure that’s just not happening at this point).
The vibe I’m getting is “Well, that was embarrassing. Let’s move on.” And that is sad because even though I haven’t been able to play the game, I would like to once it’s on a platform I own.
Am I off-base with the vibe? If my company put out their first new game since 2016, I’d be promoting the heck out of it all the time in addition to my re-releases. Maybe there are some behind-the-scene problems?
I was enjoying the game for a bit, then I started encountering some bugs here and there ("save" option grayed out, conveyance pod options getting stuck) that I have been able to work around with some patience.
My main question is this, and could you please just answer yes or no to avoid spoilers please? >!After realizing the St. Andrews omnisphere let me travel to more than 2 locations, I decided to check out the Curievale omnisphere. It appears that the track continues past the reservoir, but the I only have the option to select "ice" to go back to the bluff. Is this how it should be, at first at least?!<
!I reached the Juleston arch first and the guide (forget what she's called) provides some dialogue. Afterward I reached the St. Andrews arch but there was no dialogue.!<Is this right?
Well this one has got to be a bug, but I'm just venting and also want to know if there are any workarounds. >!I haven't solved this puzzle yet, but in Curievale I keep sending down ice cubes and they keep disappearing, I think whenever I reload a game, but I think sometimes it's just when I leave and come back. I got 3 down at some point and saved my game in direct view of them, but when I reloaded, 2 of them were gone. It's really annoying because of how long it takes to get them down there. !<
I'm enjoying the game otherwise.
I know this isn’t much in the way of news, but it was good to at least hear mention of Firmament ports “almost ready to go out the door” at Cyan in the most recent Mysterium video. I’m guessing they’re adhering to the previously-mentioned fall release timeline for PlayStation 4/5 and PSVR. On the flip side, I wish we had a firm date instead of a broad season…
I still haven’t played the game because I have a PS4 and an outdated PC. I’m just updating for those who had been asking on here previously.
So much about this game I absolutely loved. The world was beautiful (albeit buggy to walk through). I very much enjoyed the experience. That said..
The story: I loved the concept. In fact I think the reveal at the end was a good one. However, the delivery left a lot for want. I wish we'd had more story, more lore, more history as we went through the world. The occasional monologues were simply not enough. When I saw the reveal I was underwhelmed because the reveal itself was great, but the buildup to it was lacking.
The puzzles: Ehh what can I say about the puzzles? Some of the puzzles were truly fun to solve! But others were tedious, and more about spotting the hard-to-see thing at the awkward angle than using intuition and problem-solivng. I think the tedious nature of these puzzles would keep me from wanting to playthrough this game again. Thinking of puzzles like the Heat/Pressure pipes towards the end. That felt like the Myst train maze.
Side note.. the constant buzzing with the speakers saying things like "We understand" got SO annoying, was anyone else annoyed with that??
Anyways, I was a kickstart backer and I am glad to have enjoyed the game, but man this felt like such a missed opportunity. The VNV Nation song is amazing though.
Does anyone know if Cyan plans to do a Quest 3 version of this game. I don’t think the virtual desktop works with Macs and that’s all I have.
I keep bringing a full sulphur cart into the Juleston factory and it isn't unloading. Is this a bug?
I’ve really just started playing so apologies if this is a known issue. I opened the pod at Curievale Bluff but didn’t step all the way in — stopped at the threshold. And then connected and “energized” the pod. The door closed a sort of gate and I could still see into the pod as it started to teleport. And then the screen went black and stayed that way long enough for me to reboot the computer.
Hi, I'm in the middle of playing Firmament and just did the 115 volt puzzle for the first time (I understand it is revisited later but I haven't gotten to that yet). What I want to know is how it's meant to be solved or figured out. Every walkthrough I could find says you have to experiment with the connections and see that each of the colors adds a certain number of volts. The problem is this never happened for me. I spent hours trying every possible combination of circuits I could think of and it only ever said 25 volts, if the two starting points were connected, or "No Circuit" if they weren't. The only connection that was working at all was the green connection between the two starting points. Is that how it was supposed to be? Or was my game broken, or did I miss something else I was supposed to do? I finally just had to arrange the connections as displayed in a possible solution online and it said "No Circuit" every step of the way until the very last step to map out the solution I was using, and it said 115. How is anyone actually supposed to figure that out?
Can't find anything from Cyan since Feb. but hype about the Riven remake.
At this point beginning to strongly consider getting a refund of my pledge. Has anyone else gotten a refund & if so was it hard to do?
I just found a guy’s YouTube video on how to do this because I felt like my understanding of it was that it was not possible to accomplish. His solution confirmed that I was of course wrong but I don’t “get it”.
!Upon returning to the power grid the connections are worth different values. I connected one green to the end pylon and got a read of 35. If the same logic holds as did a few minutes ago, that means all greens are 35. So then I connected a green-blue-blue-green circuit and got 90. 90minus the two greens meant blues were 10 (35x2greens=70=total green contribution , 90-70=20=total blue contribution, 20/2=10). Similarly I figured out reds are worth 25 at this point.!<
!But the end solution was 3 greens and 3 blues which should have been worth 135 not 115!!<
What gives? How does this puzzle make sense?
Does anybody know when the game will release for PS5 and PSVR2?
I'm late coming to the game as they say, having just purchased this 2 days ago; completing it within 12 hours over 2 days. I enjoyed the game overall. I was more annoyed by the uninterruptable dialog of which I just turned the volume for it in Settings to Zero. I read through all of what was available to explain various details, most of which don't leave anything unanswered until the final chapter; which you can review various correspondence explaining your situation, or you can ignore and simply revel in completing the game.
I agree it's a bit of a dissapointment not having more to interact with, explore, and get lost in. Generally Cyan's games are fairly linear. "You can't do this until you do that with the occasional go back and change this to that in order to do this and then back again." Very simple puzzle solving concepts, did not challenge me much. Only two that took me the longest were 1) The Electrical Station and 2) The Acid Vat. Clever enough.
I understand the game was initially being developed strictly for VR but then at some point was repurposed for both VR and PC. I can see why some of the unavailability of 'more to do' is as it is; because it was initially designed for VR.
Would have been great if there were more interactions with various objects, finding color coded keys to unlock doors, extend bridges. Also providing more intuitive control of various machines, like the Spider Crawler on land when you have to go and open the valves to drain the reservoir. Going forward /backward and then having to switch to rotate left right seems like both options could have simply been bound to WASD for PC.
The ending was lame in that, it just took forever, and there was no way to skip the credits. Not a big deal. Just odd. I always want more than whats given with these types of games. Is what it is I guess.
Of all the Cyan games, URU : Complete Chronicles has always been my favorite. I got lost in that world for quite a few months back in 2008/09. It really challenges your thinking and exploration as well as memory skills especially when like me, you don't use any kind of online guides/tutorials.
I think it would be amazing if URU were rewritten with updated code, graphics and elements for todays tech.
Shorah friends! The title. Are they planning on sending out any of the rest of the physical artifacts tier to people that they never managed to fully realize? I’m thinking it was just random, and maybe related to my birthday, but I can always hope we’ll get a physical copy of the game or poster or something. Of course I got my shirt ages ago. Haven’t finished the game yet actually… Well, stay safe out there folks, best of luck, and hope you have a good day!
If anyone has just a hint.. a hint, please?
As far as I can tell, the only thing to interact with here are the two carts which move back and forth and the track switch. Can’t possibly imagine what I’m missing here?
Shortly after release I tried the PC version and my PC just couldn't keep up. No blame to Cyan for this, I just have an older GPU with lower VRAM then their minimum requirements, and this isn't an uncommon experience these days. I figured I'd wait for the PS4/PS5 version to come out, but I keep checking in and they're radio silent. I'm not on the mailing list though, or paying very close attention to all the communication channels.
Has anyone heard any news about the PlayStation (non-VR) version since they announced it would be on PS5? Are they even still working on it?
In both the ... uh, main room area (forget what that place is called) and the end credits, there are hundreds of stars visible (or at least representations of stars), but in each case there is one single green star. Is there a story behind this?
As a Kickstarter backer from years ago, it all feels like a weird fever dream. Every other month I randomly think to myself "Wait, did Firmament happen? Did Cyan release an unfinished tech demo and call it a real game? That did happen, didn't it? I didn't just imagine that?"
And then I come here and see that nobody has posted hardly anything in months and I remember that I wasn't alone in being horribly, horribly disappointed.
It makes me feel like Saavedro from Myst III.
Five years! Five. Long. Years!
What in the world were they doing for five years that resulted in Firmament? Why did they say that they were expanding the scope of the game when clearly they didn't, and in fact scaled it back just based on the concept art and original videos and demos they put out? Why didn't they just leave it as a VR game instead of saying they were expanding it to PC?
Why was there so much NOTHING in this game? No real journals, no interactive objects, hardly anything I'd consider a real puzzle (and not just tedious busy work). No choices. No lore except a massive info dump at the end.
Just scenic vistas and sockets. Sockets for elevators. Sockets for doors. Sockets to plug into other sockets.
THAT'S what they spent 5 years on? Plug-In The Thing: The Game
Obduction was a real game. High replay value. Real world-building. Thought and care and attention.
Firmament...doesn't feel like Cyan. It makes me immensely worried about whatever their plans for the Riven re-make or re-imagining that they're doing.
Am I alone here? Does anyone else ever think of this game, look into this subreddit and shake their head and wonder what in the hall happened?
Edit: Lol, someone downvoted this? Are there Firmament fans that hang out here and watch out for people bad mouthing this game? Speak up and tell my why I'm wrong. I'm genuinely interested to hear your thoughts.
Edit2: Ok, calling it an "unfinished tech demo" is unfair. But it feels barely finished. And the adjunct feels very VR tech demo'y, even if they built a game around it.
I'll put it this way. If Firmament weren't funded with Kickstarter money, and there wasn't a promise of delivery, would Firmament have been released, as it is now, or at all?
I can't imagine. If they ran into the kinds of problems making it that resulted in what we got, one would think They would have just scrapped it and moved on years ago. It just isn't up to Cyan's standards.
This page suggests that it should still be available if you were a $250 backer, but if so I have no idea how to install it? I thought I heard somewhere that you can opt in to "beta" updates to do it, but that doesn't appear to be the case.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Apple just gave Firmament a shoutout in the Oct. 30, 2023 event!
Hey Folks,
I was a super big fan of the Myst series (I also played Obduction and thought it was fine, but the loading times for switching worlds was agonizing at times), so when I heard that Cyan was working on Firmament I immediately backed their Kickstarter project. Ever since the game was released though, I saw so many negative reviews that I'm afraid to play it. In your honest opinion is this a game worth playing?
Also, it feels like each game that Cyan releases is worse than the previous one and their main thing that actually works is when they release a remake of one of their Myst games. Why do you think Cyan has been having so much difficulty releasing a solid game since the Myst series, and is there any hope that they'll make a game with the amazing story telling and puzzle integration that the Myst series had? I've played a fair number of puzzle games, and most don't even rival Myst series (for me personally), so I just find it crazy that Cyan has been missing the mark so much with their recent games.