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Cyan Worlds Shelves Project Anglerfish: Twenty Years Without New Myst Inches Toward Permanent
Cyan Worlds revealed this week that its prototype Project Anglerfish will not move forward, with the news shared in a video on July 26. The decision completes a grim milestone for one of gaming's most storied IP: Anglerfish would have been the first new entry in the series since 2005's Myst V, marking a gap approaching two decades.
The studio didn't sugarcoat it. The prototype was purpose-built for publisher-eyes only, meaning Cyan spent real development time building something it could only pitch, not sell. The team built a prototype for a new game in the Myst universe using Unreal Engine. By Cyan's own account, the project couldn't move forward "for a variety of reasons", but the studio released the teaser anyway as a public thank-you to the team that made it.
That restraint—showing the work rather than burying it—deserves credit. The trailer is genuinely unsettling: a first-person descent into a horror-tinged Age, character animation that looks expensive and deliberate, production values that suggest someone at Cyan still believes in this world. The problem is clear: the recent Riven remake was a clever reimagining, but its sales did not stymie rounds of layoffs at Cyan Worlds.
The Broader Pattern
Anglerfish's cancellation isn't isolated. Cyan Worlds announced significant layoffs in early 2025, citing industry conditions. Additional staffing cuts followed in the months after. The studio's stated goal: to secure financing for the next project, and to "restabilize the studio".
None of this is surprising in 2026. Indie and mid-tier studios are hemorrhaging staff and shelving projects. But Myst is not a mid-tier property—it was, for years, the definitive showcase for what digital storytelling could do. In 1993, Cyan Worlds' Myst changed PC gaming forever and was among the best-selling computer games of its era. A franchise with that DNA deserves better than two remakes and a pitch reel.
The stated reason—"for a variety of reasons"—rings hollow. The timeline is grim: a studio running on fumes, a prototype that didn't land with publishers, and the gap between two new Myst entries stretching past what any franchise can reasonably survive without narrative momentum.
What Remains
Cyan isn't closing. The studio is clear that a new Myst game is currently in very early development stages, though no details exist. The team at Cyan is still working on new games and experiences set inside the Myst universe. But there's a meaningful difference between a studio working on something and a studio shipping it, especially when layoffs keep arriving.
The Myst books are getting reprints. The universe lives in remakes and the devotion of a community that shows up at fan conventions every year. But a franchise is also about momentum, about new stories, about the signal that someone still believes in it enough to fund it. Anglerfish's cancellation—and the public way Cyan chose to announce it—reads as both respectful of the work and honest about its failure to find a path forward.
That's the real story: not that one prototype died, but that the flagship franchise of an indie legend still has no clear runway to life.
Our take. Cyan's decision to publicly share Anglerfish rather than bury it shows a studio with taste and integrity, but also one that's run out of options—when you release a canceled prototype as a consolation prize, you've admitted the well is dry.
What to watch. That unnamed Myst project "in very early development" will be the true test. If it ships in the near term with publishing support, Cyan may have found a lifeline. If it stalls or gets pitched to publishers without a taker, the franchise enters genuine dormancy.
Bottom line. Myst can survive extended gaps between entries, but not in silence—and Cyan's recent layoffs suggest the silence may extend longer than anyone hoped.