Holy ancient news forums, Batman!

Yes, you read correctly. We have new realMYST news! Cyan has just posted a YouTube video on their website announcing the impending availability of realMYST for iOS. The video shows a couple of minutes of Myst being explored on an iPad 2 at Cyan's office. Controls look very straightforward: swipe around the screen to pan the camera, press and hold to walk forward. Controls like the Marker Switches appear to be direct manipulation, requiring you to "grab" them with your finger and move them where you want them.

Visually, the game looks fantastic. A profile was published a short time ago outlining how Cyan was using the Unity engine (the same one being used by The Starry Expanse project to rebuild Riven in realtime) to port realMYST from the old source 3DS MAX data, and the new engine's capabilities are really on display. Lighting is bright and the colors are vibrant. The sky has wonderfully-detailed clouds. The water is crisp and brilliant-blue. The draw distance appears to have been increased substantially, and may even now be enough to allow the whole island to be seen from any vantage point. The pine trees are also no longer 2D cut-outs at seemingly any distance, so they look much more realistic. It's hard to tell due to the short length of the video, but the game may also be sporting realtime soft shadows being cast by the terrain and major landmarks. This really is a killer-looking port, and I hope Cyan considers releasing it on additional platforms in the future.

realMYST for iOS does not currently have a firm release date, just a window of "Spring, 2012". More information will be posted as it becomes available. Stay tuned!