Obduction is out on Xbox One. If you’ve been looking for a spiritual successor to Myst, then this game is it.
Many years ago, Washington-based developer Cyan Worlds released a very influential game called Myst which came to define the point-and-click adventure genre. It was maddeningly frustrating to some, but to others it was a beautiful journey into the unknown.
Myst certainly was beautiful (for the time), and this helped catapult it to become the best-selling video game of the ‘90s as it was ported from PC to every game console of the era (including the Atari Jaguar CD). The sequel Riven added to Myst’s legacy but didn’t improve on the game’s sales, and since then Cyan has been making various sequels for various publishers with varying success.
And then Obduction came along. Proposed as a non-Myst adventure that still used Myst as inspiration, it placed players in a literally alien environment after being abducted from Earth. A successful Kickstarter in 2013 raised over $1.3 million towards development, and Obduction released on PC and VR in 2016 to rave reviews.
A port to the PS4 in 2017 was less well-received due to poor optimization, but Cyan seems to have learned their lesson for the Xbox One port which just released.
In Obduction, you find yourself in an alien world with strangely familiar human artifacts. Live-action videos of human actors (often in holographic form) guide you through this strange world as you try to find your way home. The controls are standard for a first-person game, with the player being able to pick up and examine objects to look for clues or hidden compartments.
Early reviews for Obduction on Xbox One look fairly promising, according to Metacritic, so it looks like Cyan has managed to fix whatever performance issues were plaguing the PS4 port. You can pick up Obduction for 20% off today only.
Source: Xbox Store