The tried-and-true Myst formula continues to be a popular one for puzzle fans, and next year we'll get another set of interconnected worlds to explore in indie Australian developer Defy Reality Entertainment's upcoming Neyyah. Two years have passed since we last spoke about the game and a lot has evolved since then. It's now been revealed that the Neyyah will be published by the well known MicroProse. As such, we took some time to sit down with solo developer Aaron Gwynaire to get the latest updates.
The inspiration from Myst seems apparent as we mentioned in our previous coverage, can you tell us your thoughts behind creating Neyyah?
Funnily enough, Neyyah was originally going to be an introduction level to a much bigger project. Then, very quickly, it took on a whole life of its own, and I just ran with it ….
The inspirations for Neyyah originate from my fascination with Myst, and most particularly Riven. I used to play these games with my dad and brother back as a kid, and we never finished them, but they evoked curiosity, intrigue, and sometimes fear and mystery – a whole load of emotions. Later on in my teens, I finished them (with a walkthrough) but for me, I was also looking at the games from an artistic lens, as I do with most games I play these days (when I get time to).
When I discovered how these games had been designed, using pre-rendered images and a 2D screen-to-screen interface, I was hooked. Game design was a brand-new outlet to express my creativity, imagination … I'd always loved art – anything from drawing, painting, clay modelling – from a very young age, and I loved storytelling too, having written a 264-page fantasy novel at age 11 (inspired by Raymond E. Feist's work and Lord of the Rings, etc.). Game design combined everything, and my love for creating music came about in my teens as well. While I enjoyed writing songs, performing, recording / producing music and other people's music too, and eventually teaching guitar / singing, I realised that game design was much more fulfilling for me, making use of not only other areas of my brain, but my heart and soul, too. It encompassed all sorts of creativity, and enabled me to push myself further in the areas I was familiar with and learn new ones. I am very engaged when I design anything for Neyyah, especially the worlds. I feel like I'm actually there myself.
Riven particularly is a huge inspiration behind Neyyah. When I started learning Blender just before I started Neyyah, I saw the power of the Cycles rendering engine, and the fidelity, clarity, tone … everything about the rendering reminded me of the realism captured in Riven, a beautiful game that, while being released in 1997, still stands up graphically to this day. What they achieved back then has definitely encouraged and inspired me to pursue a massive project like Neyyah. Even though I'm a solo developer, the overwhelming aspects of taking on such an ambitious project barely ever comes to mind. The love and passion for seeing this world develop comes first, and the small milestones along the way help keep me grounded and sane!
Other inspirations come from the places around me, such as the old Napoleonic structures found at Landguard Fort in Felixstowe, England, close to where I live, and Martello towers dotted around the local English coastline. It feels like I'm actually in Neyyah when exploring these places! And then other games which have shaped Neyyah include Dragon Lore II: The Heart of the Dragon Man (with its beautiful FMV transitions), RHEM, Alida, Dark Fall, Might & Magic, Tomb Raider …. There's a wide range of influences which have helped shape the game in a myriad of different ways.
The endless hours that have gone into constructing Neyyah as a solo developer have created a beautiful timeline too, capturing the events in my own life that transpired during development. So, not only is Neyyah a finished game that people can play, a world that people can explore … it becomes much more than that. It's a time capsule, harbouring my life experiences throughout the years I designed it, from remembering what was happening in my life when I was developing that scene there, or that scene here, etc. A lot of changes have occurred within four years, so where I was at the start of creating Neyyah will be very different at the point of its completion. I think that in itself is very rewarding, and a big part of why I've put so much time and energy into such a massive project, rather than releasing a small game. That in itself is a beautiful thing!
How long has the game been in development and when do you intend to release it?
Neyyah came about in July 2018, while I was living in Western Australia, after having worked in the music industry for most of my twenties, and running a music tuition business alongside my wife at the time (aptly named Defy Reality Music Tuition – Defy Reality has stuck for a long time. I believe I came up with that back in 2011).
I wanted to get back into game design when I felt like I was hitting a wall with my music, and so I returned to my 3D program Anim8or, which I'd used in my teens and was most confident with – although knowing very well I'd have to brush up on it – and an engine called Adventure Maker, which was designed specifically for making Myst-style games. This all started happening around June 2018, and I was pulling ideas from a previous project I'd started but never finished back in 2011 called Portals: Journey to the Lost Pearl Islands. There was a lot of backstory I'd created in this gem, and it had taught me I could actually make a game in the style of Myst. Although I never finished it, I'd made one 'level' which was playable from start to finish. This gave me the confidence to get back into game design. It was refreshing after so long! I had attempted one game called The Shaft in 2014 but it never amounted to a lot, then had another idea around 2017, but this didn't kick off either – music always took charge in my life at that point.
Neyyah changed everything.
I have now been developing the game for nearly four years and haven't looked back since. It's grown stronger and stronger along the way, and the drive, passion and motivation for building this world has never left me, which I feel very lucky and proud about.
Regarding releasing Neyyah to the world: I don't have any set date, but will be looking at 2023. There's still a long journey ahead – environments need designing, engine work implementing, and there's still sound and music production. The music particularly will be a very fun process. I already have some ideas / samples of sounds from a Yamaha keyboard I purchased last year. Even way before this work commences, it was great experimenting late last year with the odd sound here and there, and envisioning Neyyah's world through music. It's going to be one of the last areas of work I do for the game. So, at some point in 2023 Neyyah will be out!
What can you tell us about Neyyah, beyond that it's an island?
Well, Neyyah is not so much one island, but more a collection of islands, linked together via portals. The player uncovers the reasons behind Neyyah's land separation during the game. Although I don't want to say too much about the history of Neyyah right now, I can definitely discuss some of the design choices.
Originally, Neyyah started out on an all-in-one PC running on 8gb RAM, back in Australia (and I have my wife to thank for getting that machine). When I moved to England, I jumped back into development using a PC with 4gb RAM, and I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of work I could achieve in Blender on this machine (big thanks to my parents there)! Then in 2020, I invested in the most powerful machine I've ever had, which is the main computer I still run today: a Ryzen 9 3900x with 64gb RAM. This really raised the bar for Neyyah's visual standards. I was suddenly able to add so much more detail and richness into my scenes, and the game was given a new breath of creative life. This expanded the story, the world building elements, and puzzles too. It was fantastic. However, I didn't have much of a cap on the magic I'd been given as a developer, and so technical issues arose.
For example, one of the islands of Neyyah (Felitsu Island) was going to be this massive island of its own, but it had to be separated into sets due to rendering issues. So Felitsu has now been separated into five portal zones. Strangely, the mistakes I made led to benefits for the game in terms of story, world building, etc. Looking back in hindsight, I could have done things a lot differently, but I've learned so much along the way during Neyyah's development since 2018 that I now have a very fast pipeline in developing sets in Blender, but also engine-related work too.
The key is realising when something is done, letting it go, and moving on to the rest of the mountain of work. While not everything may be perfect, as long as it works together as a whole, I am fine with that.
So, to sum Neyyah up as a place, it's definitely reminiscent of Riven's aesthetic. While keeping things coherent in style and looks, there is a sense of cultural difference within the various landscapes, and this has been fun to swing back and forth between as a designer. There are some other cool surprises which will make Neyyah a very extraordinary place to discover, bringing a unique flavour to the genre, and as a gameplay experience too.
What's the gameplay like? Has it evolved since the 2020 gameplay video you released?
Foremost, Neyyah's gameplay has continued to stick with a point-and-click, screen-to-screen style, using pre-rendered images and animations, just like Riven. However, although back in the early days of Neyyah's builds, I was already rendering animations to show a player traversing up some stairs or down a ladder, this feature is now optional, and is now called Journey Mode. It enables the player to experience more immersion within the otherwise 2D pre-rendered environment, and can also be skipped with a right-click of the mouse. Having this as an option for gameplay will match the specific choices of the individual player.
GAME INFO
Neyyah is an adventure game by Defy Reality Entertainment released in 2025 for PC. It has a Illustrated realism style, presented in Slideshow and is played in a First-Person perspective.
