Mysterium 2026: The news from Cyan

Another Mysterium has arrived and then faded silently away. Or, I suppose, faded away with its characteristic reverb-y "vrrrwww-WONK-wonk-wonk" noise.

This year's event was in Portland, Oregon. I did not attend in person; cross-country travel feels like too much of a stretch right now. (And I visited Portland just a couple of years ago for XOXO.) But of course I watched all the streamed talks and presentations. Now I bring you the annual report -- in two parts.

Part 1 is the stuff about Cyan itself and what they're doing. Part 2 will be fan activity and community contributions, including the Myst documentary.

All the videos are currently available on Mysterium's Twitch channel. They will be archived on their Youtube channel pretty soon.

State of Cyan

I'll start with the big finale wrap-up event of the conference. Cyan has posted their own news post. This went up simultaneously with the Mysterium talk. But I have more detail, mwah hah hah.

Hannah Gamiel and Eric A. Anderson, the studio co-heads, attended in person! This may be the first time Cyan head honchos have travelled to a non-Spokane Mysterium.

They apologized for not giving a State-of-Cyan talk last year. Here's the two-year news catch-up:

• Lots of awards for Riven.
• Released the age of Rime in March 2025.
• Two rounds of layoffs. Suck.
• Firmament on PS4/PS5/PSVR2 in July 2025.
• Console ports of Myst and Riven.
• Myst novel trilogy re-released as an ebook.
• Updates for classic titles, plus Steam Deck verification: Myst Masterpiece Edition, Riven (1997), Myst 3. ("We are not officially the people maintaining the source code for Myst 3", but they were able to make the update happen.)
• Obduction updates and ports are sadly roadblocked by being on a very early version of UE4. Updating to a modern engine release will take more work. No announcements there.
• Set up Steam promo bundles with Blue Prince, Outer Wilds, and other cool games.
• Office cleanout drive! There was thirty years of cruft behind some of those…