Myst and Riven developer Cyan Worlds surprised fans of its three-decades-old-and-counting game franchise this week by dropping an entire new world you can explore for free into its most recent remaster of 1993’s Myst. The setting, Rime, is new to Myst (2020), though not to the franchise as a whole — it was originally designed 25 years ago, for Cyan’s first attempt at building a 3D version of the classic 2D puzzle game.
Cyan teased the addition Friday on X, with a cryptic post comprised of code and an imitation broken .jpg image. But no alternate-reality game mechanic is safe from Cyan’s puzzle-hounding fanbase, and several clues corresponding to Rime’s 2000 gameplay were quickly uncovered. The developer confirmed those suspicions on Tuesday.
Rime was not included in the original development of Myst in the 1990s, but was added as an extra explorable world with the release of RealMyst: Interactive 3D Edition in 2000. The snowy setting expanded on the broader plot of the later Myst franchise, building more of a narrative bridge to Riven than its creators had been capable of when Myst was the beginning and end of the story. RealMyst was ported into Unity in 2014, with Rime intact, but when Cyan set about remastering Myst for the high resolution and VR displays of the 2020s, the extra world fell by the wayside for the game’s Unreal Engine/VR compatible remaster in 2020.
The Rime update for Myst (2020) is now available to anyone who owns the game on PC, Mac, or Meta Quest, with updates for Xbox One and Xbox Series X coming soon, according to Cyan’s news release. The update is free on all platforms. And while Rime is a remastered throwback, Cyan also promises that the update includes “all-new narrative beats, lore and visuals.”
“A NEW AGE (with new surprises)!” said Cyan’s X post confirming Rime’s return. And it should take about… five minutes for the Myst fandom to sleuth out all those surprises, if we had to estimate.
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