Cyan before Myst

In 1987, brothers Rand Miller and Robyn Miller formed Cyan and created The Manhole, the first entertainment product ever on the new medium of CD-ROM. Cosmic Osmo and Spelunx followed. All were non-intimidating, whimsical worlds for children to explore, and they represented an entirely new kind of entertainment. The products were heralded by reviewers and received innumerable awards, including Best New Use of a Computer by the Software Publishers Association.

The Manhole

The Manhole was a computer adventure game intended for children in which the player follows a rabbit down a manhole and may explore the fantastic world beneath. The game, released in 1988, is notable for being the first computer game distributed on CD-ROM. It ran in black-and-white on the Apple Macintosh line of computers. It was created using the HyperCard programming language.

It was re-released in a 1995 Masterpiece Edition and upgraded with voices, color, music, and some new characters.

Playing the game: Steam | GoG | iOS

Cosmic Osmo

Cosmic Osmo is a graphic adventure computer game for the Macintosh computer line. It was published in 1989 and won the 1990 Mac User award. Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel was a sequel released in 1991. Cosimc Osmo was created, and runs, using Hypercard 2.0 with select portions done in Macromedia Director.

The game features 18 tracks of original background music by Robyn Miller, Rand Miller and Shep Lovick. The music was written and sequenced using MIDI on Macintosh computers.

Playing the game: Steam

Spelunx

Spelunx and the Caves of Mr. Seudo is an educational game released for the Apple Macintosh computer. It was created in Hypercard and released in 1991 as a black-and-white game, but in 1993 it was colorized by Josh Staub and rereleased. The name of the game is derived from the word spelunk, which means "to explore a cave". Spelunx was designed by Robyn and Rand Miller. Robyn Miller also hand-drew all of the graphics in the game.

Spelunx has no real story, and is meant as a game to be explored and played with rather than completed. Other than the player, there are two main characters, Professor Spelunx and Mr. Seudo, who are pictured but never actually meet the player.

Playing the game: Steam

Related: "Welcome to Spelunx"