Cyan Worlds just dropped some news that has the puzzle-adventure crowd buzzing. The studio confirmed a new Myst game is in early development, and they also pulled back the curtain on an abandoned prototype called Project Anglerfish that almost became the franchise's next chapter.

According to GamesIndustry.biz, Cyan shared details about Project Anglerfish, a prototype they had been building that ultimately didn't go forward. The team decided the direction wasn't quite right and chose to start fresh with a different concept that's now in the earliest stages of production. Cyan also shared footage of the abandoned prototype, giving fans a look at what might have been.

If you've been around gaming long enough, you remember what Myst meant. It was the game people bought a CD-ROM drive for. It was the one that made everyone sit in the dark, hunched over a desk, scribbling notes on paper because the puzzles demanded your full attention. My older cousin spent three weeks on one age and refused to let anyone in the house until she solved it. Cyan built this franchise on that kind of dedication.

The fact that Cyan is willing to shelve a prototype and pivot tells you they care about getting it right. A lot of studios would have shipped the first thing that worked and patched later. These are the people who made Riven, which in my book remains one of the most fiendishly clever puzzle games ever designed. They know the difference between something that functions and something that actually captures that specific Myst feeling.

What that feeling is, exactly, is hard to pin down. It's loneliness, but a comfortable kind. You're exploring beautiful, empty spaces with no combat, no timer, no hand-holding. Just you and the environment, trying to understand the logic of a place that wasn't built for you. I played through the Firmament release last year and while it had moments of real beauty, you could feel the team searching for what came next even then.

The new project is reportedly codenamed Mudfish. Beyond that, no specific story details, setting, or release timing have been shared yet. Cyan has kept the specifics close to the chest, which, knowing this community, probably means the speculation has already started in a dozen Discord servers.

The Myst community is one of those quiet, fiercely loyal fanbases that never really went away. They're still creating fan ages for URU. They're still writing walkthroughs for games that came out 30 years ago. They're the kind of players who will spend two hours examining a single mechanism because they know the answer is in there somewhere. For them, a new Myst game isn't just a product announcement. It's an event.

No release window, no platforms announced. Just the knowledge that Cyan is building something new in one of gaming's most beloved worlds. That's enough for now. The Myst fan in me will wait as long as it takes, as long as the final game carries that same quiet magic that made us all fall in love with linking books in the first place.