Cyan's 'Obduction' Arrives July 26

Cyan, the development studio behind the classic Myst series has been busy for the past three years with a new title called Obduction. However, the development cycle is nearing its end as the company revealed a trailer showing the release date for its latest project.

For $29.99, you can get your copy of the game when it comes out on July 26. The original release date was set for June, but the developers delayed it by a month. The extra time allowed developers to add some polish to the game, make the game stable with the recent updates to the Unreal Engine 4 and ensure that its release wasn’t buried under other games that would have the spotlight in June, according to Cyan.

It also enabled the studio to use new graphics technologies from Nvidia. HDR — high dynamic range imaging — was added to increase visual range so that you can see more details in shadows and highlights. Cyan is also using Simultaneous Multi-Projection (SMP) technology, which we saw for the first time last month when Nvidia revealed its Pascal GPU microarchitecture along with the GTX 1080 and GTX 1070 GPUs. The feature, which only works on Pascal, allows the GPU to project a scene to multiple displays from different “viewports,” so that the perspective you see on each screen is correct, instead of the usual “warped” image you see from PC gaming setups with multiple displays.

However, the most important reason for the delay was that it allowed the team to improve the game’s VR version, which will be available on the Oculus Rift. The new SMP technology also includes a new shading process called Lens Matched Shading. This works in favor for those playing in VR as it projects up to four viewports per eye and pre-warps the image before you see it. In the past, only a single viewport was used and the image was warped by software. With Lens Matched Shading, the image isn’t compressed, but instead it’s rendered to match the shape of the lens.

The development process started in 2013 (the 20th anniversary of the launch of Myst) when the developers held a Kickstarter campaign. The goal was $1.1 million, but in about a month, fans gave a total of more than $1.3 million to help fund development, which allowed for the stretch goal of Oculus Rift support.

In the meantime, Cyan will be showing more footage from Obduction in the coming weeks, specifically at E3. The game will be a part of the IndieCade booth at the show, where fans can check it out before it arrives at the end of July.

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