Mysty-eyed point-and-clicker Neyyah brings back the glory of pre-rendered backdrops in August

rockpapershotgun.com:

If you miss Myst, but feel only vertigo and disgust for its recent 3D reinventions, you might find yourself salivating over first-person point-and-clicker Neyyah - a Mystalike or more precisely, Rivenalike from Defy Reality Entertainment and MicroProse, which has just been dated for early access release on 27th August. Real-time movement and exploration? Rotatable polygons? Pfff. These are firmly pre-rendered worlds, just like Grandpappy Atrus used to bake.

Indeed, Neyyah is comparable enough to Cyan's 90s pixel-hunters that it could almost be a fan remake. It takes place on a chain of weird, "almost abandoned" islands linked by obscure machines - in this case, plasma portals. Your character, Theo, has been sent to Neyyah by a boffin called Vamir, who needs you to help him with some matter of cosmic urgency, but only shares a dribble of information with you initially.

Look forward to: puzzles involving rusty levers, and many traces of ancient civilisations. "Neyyah reflects similar situations depicted within our own society, such as what is real, what is false, and being able to question your own beliefs," the Steam page hints, a bit hammily. "Through environmental storytelling, the player will enjoy hours of non-linear gameplay, solving puzzles through the use of close observation, visual links, writing down your own notes, using inventory items ... while immersing yourself in a rich story and environment driven game."

Just because it's a game of static landscapes doesn't mean it ain't got graphics settings. You can expect a range of scene transition options, and a couple of storytelling modes. "Journey Mode" gives you FMV sequences for stuff like climbing ladders, while "Faster Travel" mode lets you skip certain scenes because after all, animation is overrated. It's all of a piece with MicroProse's old-is-new ethos. I like to think of their games as a bunch of alternate futures branching off from 1982 (yes, I'm aware that MicroProse today is essentially a