Great news for us point and clickers! Great games and looking forward to more in the future.

Haters gonna hate.

Well in an update from March 2rd the Starry Expanse guys said: "2018 is going to be a huge year for us, in more ways than one. We’ve got plenty of surprises in store. Stay tuned!"

Might not be anything related to Cyan's announcement.

I think, if one wants to really stick close to what defines a game remake, then it's accurate (until they potentially reveal what's actually happening beyond W10 compatibility updates). Like yourself though, my initial thoughts were that it seems really unlikely that much change is going to be dropped into the games in terms of assets/etc. (and in the case of the videos, I doubt they could do much to improve the quality anyway).

I'm guessing this passed you by: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-DpB7tXs4g

I thought indie publishers funded/crowdfunded their own games rather than being provided with their budget by a production company?

Didn't Cyan fund their own games then enter into publishing agreements later with the final product?
That was how I read the Windows 10 part too. I've never been able to get Riven to work properly on my laptop so any help in that department will be most wecome! realRiven would be even better of course. :-)

The most exciting thing for me is the fact that the 'End of Ages' may not actually be the end after all!

Glad to see Cyan still creating games in my own "backyard". Great stuff!

Not even the latest version that's using ScummVM?

Indeed, it works beautifully in ScummVM as does Myst III in ResidualVM (it has a widescreen mode too!).

I remember fiddling with ScummVM ages ago but couldn't quite remember what the exact problem was. I fired up the game for a while and was soon reminded with a CTD - here's the error message. :-(

To be fair, it played longer than previously as I got much further than my last attempt.

On the matter of Indie vs whatever, I think it typically has to do with employee amount and corporate philosophy. What used to be called the "garage developer" back in the time of the Microcomputers. For example, the developers of Dizzy would have been termed indie in this day; even though their games were as popular as can be. And Jeff Vogel has been around as long as many big companies that have risen and fallen, but he's still just one guy.

Electronic Arts on the other hand was always a company, even though they started out as a slightly snooty group.

Hm hope so, they really put a lot of work into it so far, would be amazing to see a release one day. Bet it would be a lot more faithful to the original than the new Myst Masterpiece Edition, somehow that always seemed "wrong" to me.

Oh true forgot about the videos, as long as they stay as far away as possible from those creepy things in part V im good tho ;)

Might it be too much for some of the notekeeping to be internalized into some manner of visual hinting?

Hear this out. Let's say I read the book on the Selentic age. IE, that infamous one that requires you to solve a bloody piano key puzzle which is unfair to the tone deaf, hearing impaired, and deaf. But at the end of that book, the Stranger sees the piano notes and internalizes it as a thought. After solving the much more simple puzzle to open the door, the Stranger spots the organ, and upon sounding it, is able to overlay the chart on the organ. From hearing the sequence, the correct positions on the levers would be highlighted, removing any need to just do things all fiddly. This would still reward observational skills, after all.

This of course would be optional, but would help engage some of the players who are otherwise forgetful, or unable to work with them, or those who don't want to deal with some puzzles and just want to look at the pretty pictures.

To a further point, might I inquire as to what felt off about Masterpiece Edition?

I don't remember ever managing to get into Selenitic Age myself - only seeing pictures and descriptions in magazines. Yet I remember getting to Atrus and ending the game (later, when I had access to the web, that is - whatever walkthroughs and puzzle solutions I found still didn't get me into Selenitic though).

Well, that's part of the beauty. You can solve Myst in 5 minutes, but what's the fun in that? I think I got into it in RealMyst using a picture guide, but that doesn't work in RM:MM.

That puzzle was my nemesis, even with the guidebook that had the screenshot of where each lever should be. It took at least an hour to get all the levers in their pixel-perfect positions even once I broke down and consulted the guide. Twenty-five years later, and still any time I see music puzzles mentioned in a game now, I won't buy until I get the music puzzle difficulty explained.