Cyan looks to the future, and its past, with ‘Firmament,’ new puzzle video game releasing Thursday

Cyan Worlds’ latest video game “Firmament” wears its influences on its sleeve in the opening moments.

Ornate pipes and engines squirreling through a subterranean corridor. Books of lore splayed out on tables. A mysterious narrator offering assistance that may or may not be in your best interest.

Keen modern gamers may draw connections to 2007’s “Bioshock,” a roleplaying shooter that played with video game conventions and dropped gamers into a mysterious underwater world. The team at the Mead-based developer that rocketed to success with 1993’s “Myst” has heard those comparisons – and is flattered by them.

But Eric A. Anderson, creative director at Cyan, said the influences are closer to home.

“If anything, this is us harkening back to Cyan’s roots,” Anderson said, before showing off the first couple of hours of gameplay for the game that launches Thursday and is Cyan’s first new intellectual property since 2016’s “Obduction.” “We don’t look at it, really, as we’re trying to be like ‘Bioshock.’ We’re trying to be like Cyan.”

That becomes evident as you, the unnamed player, pick up a tool known as the “adjunct” that fits around your right fist. The mysterious object is used to manipulate certain items in the game world, essential in solving some of the game-maker’s signature, brain-bending puzzles as you unfold the mystery of why you’re awake, who brought you here and what their intentions are for you.

The adjunct mechanic is part of what brings Cyan’s classic puzzle-solving gameplay into the 21st century of gaming, Anderson said. You point and click with a mouse to fire the device into machines scattered throughout the world, that then allow you to manipulate things like gears, bridges and engines to get from one point to another. The game is also available to be played with a virtual reality headset, enabling even more player control of the adjunct device.

“We’re known as the company that has games where your primary interaction with the world is things like buttons and switches and levers, things like that,” Anderson said. “We thought to ourselves, what if instead of filling the world with buttons and levers and switches, what if we let the player be their own button and lever and switch?”

That mechanic matches what will feel comfortable for gamers fond of first-person shooters, where the mouse click equates to the pull of a trigger. But there are no enemies to kill in “Firmament,” and what is a violent action in another game becomes in Cyan’s creation a method of exploring a world.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t dark undertones. Upon arrival in a Pacific Northwest-looking “realm,” one of the game’s vast destinations filled with fiendish puzzles, your nameless, ethereal companion notes that several like you have been “put to sleep” well before their time.

“This hues very much to sort of the Cyan-ethos, it’s family-friendly but you can still tell a dark story without making it (violent),” Anderson said. The game has been rated as appropriate for players 10 and up by the Electronic Software Ratings Board, which cited “violent references” as the reason for its rating.

Like in their previous games, including “Riven,” which is currently receiving the remake treatment from the Cyan team, unlocking bits of the strange story is part of the experience. Complete a puzzle, and find a book or get a message from a narrator that brings you closer to understanding the puzzling world around you.

“The story behind this one is what got us so excited to do this project,” Anderson said. “Firmament” has been more or less in development since “Obduction” shipped seven years ago, and was backed on Kickstarter by more than 18,400 fans who put $1.4 million toward the project.

Both Anderson and Hannah Gamiel, Cyan’s development director, thanked fans for their patience during the COVID-19 pandemic and as Cyan put out other projects, including a virtual reality version of “Myst,” which allowed them to improve on the final product.

“We got to make the ‘Firmament’ we really wanted to make, instead of the compromised version of the game,” Gamiel said.

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In addition to the mystifying backstory and stunning vistas, that means a series of fiendish puzzles that harken back to the early ’90s. In those days, puzzle titles like “Myst” and “The 7th Guest” were big sellers, causing many a gamer to pull out a notebook and pencil to sketch out solutions to environmental quandaries.

That’s still true in “Firmament,” as one early game puzzle that features rotating battery platforms and strange, color-coded pillars demonstrates. The puzzle has confounded playtesters (including one intrepid daily newspaper reporter), but the team is quick to point out the solutions are there to find in the game world.

“Our games are never very easy,” Gamiel said.

That’s what Cyan diehards want, though, Anderson said: a frustrating experience that’s also fair.

“That’s what they’ve come to expect,” he said. “That’s why, when I see a comment on YouTube where it’s like, ‘I can’t wait to throw my controller at the screen,’ that comes from a place of love.”

Anderson, Gamiel and the Cyan team hope that the love of previous locations and puzzles in the company’s history will translate to the new strange worlds of “Firmament.” Still, even with the company’s indie success story pedigree, there’s some nervousness about releasing a new idea, new story and new world to players.

“It was an amazing opportunity to try something new,” Anderson said. “We make weirdo games for players like that. But this gave as an opportunity to take contemporary game mechanics, and game ideas, and put our spin on it, and turn it into a weirdo Cyan game. And I couldn’t be happier with the results.”

Coming Friday, correspondent Riordan Zentler has a full review of “Firmament” for his “Game On” column.