I think anyone who read my review of the remake of Riven last year will know, I am a staunch defender of the Myst franchise. While my personal favourite in the series remains Myst III: Exile (which wasn’t made by Cyan but instead by the now long defunct Presto Studios), all of the games in the core series are still excellent in their own unique way (with the possible exception of Myst V: End of Ages, which was a fully 3D polygonal game and so has aged worse than the others). It’s a relatively antiquated style of gameplay by current standards but still, it has a special kind of charm which can’t really be replicated. Even the modern, beautiful Unreal Engine remakes of Myst and Riven from recent years can’t really recapture the charm of navigating pre-rendered, static environments from locked camera perspectives (Google Streeview-esque freelook would only arrive in Myst III).
Neyyah (which is pronounced similarly to near, rather than nay-yar and I kept thinking) is predominantly a solo effort by British-Australian developer Aaron Gwynaire, under his studio Defy Reality Entertainment, published by the recently reformed MicroProse. It has been a labour of love for seven years of development, and is the first game from the studio. Indeed, Gwynaire has recorded many videos chronicling the development on his YouTube channel, including everything from asset creation to sound design. The results certainly speak for themselves, in the best way possible.
Neyyah is a traditional Myst-style point-and-click puzzle and adventure game, set in a similarly fantastical world. Here, portals interlink different worlds together, which are formed of small collections of islands populated by a vast array of fantastical plants and creatures. The story is delivered just like Myst via in-game cutscenes delivered by FMV actors, digitally composited into the scene. At the beginning you may feel a bit lost as you’re overloaded with various bits of in-world jargon, but the story gradually reveals itself through more character interactions as well as reading various diaries, notes and journals left around by the local residents. The performances in the cutscenes feel nicely theatrical, mimicking those from the 1990s when often the developers themselves played characters (indeed, developer Aaron Gwynaire also plays a character).
Neyyah isn’t simply like Myst. Neyyah IS Myst. It’s like playing an unpublished Myst game which fell through a portal from an alternative universe around 1997, simply set in a slightly different world. Everything is exactly like playing a game from that era, with the sole exception of being able to run in widescreen without any issues (not many people had widescreen monitors in the 1990s). The visuals, the menus, the navigation, the sounds, the music, it is all absolutely immaculate. What I was particularly impressed with was the attention to detail on some of the relatively minor things; the UI on the in-game menus and journals uses the same style of font (similar to Papyrus) to the original games on the assorted maps and notes and all feel appropriately authentic.
Like Myst, the main focus here is puzzles. There are several different gameplay assist styles to choose from and you can swap between them at your leisure. “Master of Your Own Adventure” is classic Myst; no handholding whatsoever, no hints, no saved instructions. This is a mode where you should absolutely have a pen and paper handy in order to make copious notes, as you’ll need to be regularly referring to them. “Whispers in the Wind” will keep your map updated with new locations, while the Traveller’s Guide, which functions as a notebook and memory aid, will be silently updated and can be consulted. Finally “Guided by the Ancients” will prompt you every time new information appears within the Traveller’s Guide, as well as providing text hints every so often suggesting what you might need to do next.
I started off with using the Whispers mode before switching to Guided every so often when I hit a brick wall, as part of the challenge has always been identifying not only the solution to a particular puzzle, but also discerning exactly where a puzzle is in the first place. Broadly speaking the puzzles are fairly tough but not insurmountable and I always felt like I had a vague idea of what I should be doing, even if I didn’t know all the steps for how to accomplish it. The hints never outright tell you exactly what to do, so you do need to be paying attention and actually reading the diaries and notes you pick up, as without them you will miss crucial information. Some modern players may find this rather slow-going, but the gentle pacing allows you to fully soak in the game’s wonderful atmosphere.
It cannot be overstated but this game is simply gorgeous to behold; although the environments are predominantly static and from locked positions, various animations and techniques are used to breathe life into every scene, including a variety of oversized wild animals who pop-up now and then. There is an amazing sense of atmosphere from the sound design too, the creaking of the metal walkways as you traverse them, the echoing interiors of an abandoned mine, the clanking of various bits of ancient machinery. Zaedyn Turner and Aaron Gwynaire’s soundtrack to the game is similarly atmospheric, reminiscent of the ethereal ambient folk music which was one of the hallmarks of the Myst series.
While there have been a variety of spiritual successors to Myst and Riven in the decades since their release, most have tried to modernize and update their gameplay in various ways to account for more modern player tastes and expectations. Cyan Inc. themselves have done so several times, with both Obduction and Firmament. Neyyah is unabashed in its core objective of presenting an experience which hews as closely as possible to those iconic 1990s titles, so much so that it could almost be viewed as the third game in an unofficial trilogy (I’m imagining box art proudly announcing Neyyah: The Sequel to Riven). In this goal, it is an unequivocal success. I hope modern audiences will have the patience and determination to fully explore Neyyah and see all it has to offer.
How much?