A remake of Myst
Myst: Masterpiece Edition is as close to the 1993 experience of playing Myst as you can get. You will be able to interact with objects via click-and-drag, and move through the world via point-and-click navigation. This edition features improvements over the original 1993 release such as re-rendered imagery in 24-bit color, a remastered score, and enhanced sound effects. In the game, players travel via a special book to the island of Myst. There, players solve puzzles, and by doing so, travel to four other worlds, known as Ages, which reveal the backstory of the game's characters.
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This review contains spoilers
I finally played Myst. The more I think about it, this was a pretty glaring omission in terms of important games I haven't played. As a huge fan of The Witness, I really should have played this sooner. This is obviously a very similarly structured game.
First of all, the "vibes". They're immaculate. Something about playing 90s and early 00s games like this just lights up a serotonin receptor in my brain. Myst is so charming in that aspect. The sound design and rendered graphics feel carefully crafted to create this world that I was quickly absorbed in.
I like how non-hand hold-y the game is. From the very beggining the game gives you a piece of paper with your first directive and from there, you have to figure out the rest. Some of this involves reading some (pretty interesting) lore books to find puzzle solutions. Some other puzzles rely on listening to audio cues or paying attention to specific details in the environment. Overall, when this works, Myst feels amazing. Experiencing an "A-HA!" moment in Myst genuinely made me feel like a genius and that's part of what makes the design so good.
The design, however, isn't perfect. One of the visual aspects that felt a bit uneven in Myst is how it's hard to tell when a screen you're on is meant to be for a puzzle or purely for decoration. This causes some busy environments to feel a bit overwhelming. Not because a puzzle is complicated but because from a mechanics POV, it isn't clear what's worth clicking on. For me, this caused a lot of overthinking, especially in the Mechanical Age. Likewise, while most of the puzzles are genuinely great, some are just lame. Dropping down the tree elevator for example, just feels bad to figure out and worse to perform.
I also think that I appreciated how many physical notes I needed to take to get through the game. It enhanced the experience and really had me thoroughly engaged to the point I played this game for 10 hours in a single day and stayed up till 2AM to finish it. Something I rarely do.
Really though, the bad moments in Myst are VERY MUCH worth bearing to experience this singular game. I can't imagine how revelatory this game was in the 90s. It's still great today, if you go in with an open mind and willingness to engage the game on it's terms, not your own.
First of all, the "vibes". They're immaculate. Something about playing 90s and early 00s games like this just lights up a serotonin receptor in my brain. Myst is so charming in that aspect. The sound design and rendered graphics feel carefully crafted to create this world that I was quickly absorbed in.
I like how non-hand hold-y the game is. From the very beggining the game gives you a piece of paper with your first directive and from there, you have to figure out the rest. Some of this involves reading some (pretty interesting) lore books to find puzzle solutions. Some other puzzles rely on listening to audio cues or paying attention to specific details in the environment. Overall, when this works, Myst feels amazing. Experiencing an "A-HA!" moment in Myst genuinely made me feel like a genius and that's part of what makes the design so good.
The design, however, isn't perfect. One of the visual aspects that felt a bit uneven in Myst is how it's hard to tell when a screen you're on is meant to be for a puzzle or purely for decoration. This causes some busy environments to feel a bit overwhelming. Not because a puzzle is complicated but because from a mechanics POV, it isn't clear what's worth clicking on. For me, this caused a lot of overthinking, especially in the Mechanical Age. Likewise, while most of the puzzles are genuinely great, some are just lame. Dropping down the tree elevator for example, just feels bad to figure out and worse to perform.
I also think that I appreciated how many physical notes I needed to take to get through the game. It enhanced the experience and really had me thoroughly engaged to the point I played this game for 10 hours in a single day and stayed up till 2AM to finish it. Something I rarely do.
Really though, the bad moments in Myst are VERY MUCH worth bearing to experience this singular game. I can't imagine how revelatory this game was in the 90s. It's still great today, if you go in with an open mind and willingness to engage the game on it's terms, not your own.
It's nice when something this old holds up to the hype. It is, quite simply, a masterclass in puzzle game design.
Myst is a game where you just start and have a whole island to explore. There are locales and objects of intrigue spread around waiting to be discovered and tinkered with. Near where you start is a single piece of paper with instructions on how to start but after that it just has you go off. The more you delve into things are examine the details, the more things become clear and thus the more you get out of it.
The puzzles are almost all linked to the environments. Something in an area will link to something else and you have to work out how in order to solve their challenge. It can be kinda tricky because you have to note how things change and that can sometimes come in the form of sounds too. It's been a long time since I played a game where sound was an integral part of the gameplay and its utilized excellently here.
The core of the plot is that there are two men stuck inside of books and you need to find pages of their books in other worlds and bring them back to free them. It's simple enough at first but as you play you learn more about them and their relation to each other as well as world building around them. It all plays out decently well. Definitely more to it than I thought but not like a super robust or deep story. It does end pretty intensely though for what it is and I enjoyed it.
Core gameplay is basically examining the base island you start on, finding out how to go to another world, and then finding your way back to the main island while gathering a page for one of the men. Each world is itself the puzzle and they all have unique themes that play into what you do to solve them. It's all very well put together.
Myst is a fantastic environmental puzzle game with some old school jank like point and click to move around and hilarious tiny FMV scenes but those things give it its charm. I also had an old time-y game thing where I lost all my progress because I forgot to manual save during the part that I've found out is infamously annoying to most but even I didn't find it to be that bad. Ultimately it's a strong puzzle game and probably one of my favorites ever. Recommended to anyone who enjoys solving puzzles.
Myst is a game where you just start and have a whole island to explore. There are locales and objects of intrigue spread around waiting to be discovered and tinkered with. Near where you start is a single piece of paper with instructions on how to start but after that it just has you go off. The more you delve into things are examine the details, the more things become clear and thus the more you get out of it.
The puzzles are almost all linked to the environments. Something in an area will link to something else and you have to work out how in order to solve their challenge. It can be kinda tricky because you have to note how things change and that can sometimes come in the form of sounds too. It's been a long time since I played a game where sound was an integral part of the gameplay and its utilized excellently here.
The core of the plot is that there are two men stuck inside of books and you need to find pages of their books in other worlds and bring them back to free them. It's simple enough at first but as you play you learn more about them and their relation to each other as well as world building around them. It all plays out decently well. Definitely more to it than I thought but not like a super robust or deep story. It does end pretty intensely though for what it is and I enjoyed it.
Core gameplay is basically examining the base island you start on, finding out how to go to another world, and then finding your way back to the main island while gathering a page for one of the men. Each world is itself the puzzle and they all have unique themes that play into what you do to solve them. It's all very well put together.
Myst is a fantastic environmental puzzle game with some old school jank like point and click to move around and hilarious tiny FMV scenes but those things give it its charm. I also had an old time-y game thing where I lost all my progress because I forgot to manual save during the part that I've found out is infamously annoying to most but even I didn't find it to be that bad. Ultimately it's a strong puzzle game and probably one of my favorites ever. Recommended to anyone who enjoys solving puzzles.
Walking around in an amiga demo or one of those bizarre bowling animations, like a ghost in the machine. Surreal, isolating, and so ethereal. The bulk of what I love about this game lies in its limitations: the grain on the screen as quicktime desperately tries to load another MOV file; the distortion at the tail of every sound file on the one lone audio channel; the excessive fogging in the pre-rendered scenes which no doubt made the developers macintosh computers explode: no other game really feels like this.
Played this when it came out and was blown away. Still enjoyed this replay 30?? years later
It’s so strange to find a game that’s thirty years old so engaging. Although several of my favorite games of all time are heavily influenced by Myst (Outer Wilds, Inscryption, The Witness), so I guess it’s no surprise that I had a fantastic time with this classic. There were a few moments where the game showed its age -an obtuse puzzle here, a bit of confusing navigation there- but all in all, Myst is brilliantly composed, and it's no wonder you can still see its ghost in games made a quarter century later. It was refreshing to be forced to break out a pen and paper from time to time, I haven’t experienced that since The Witness. I’m not really sure why someone would want to play an updated version of this game, the 90s graphics and FMV are so charming, and these mechanics would feel somewhat dated in a 3d Unity remake. Between the grotesquely clean graphics and the lack of puzzle context thanks to the free camera, every bit of gameplay I saw from the 2021 release just made me happy that I chose to play the original edition instead. A real treat for knowledge-based game fans, do yourself a favor and spend 5 hours experiencing a piece of influential gaming history!
Grade: A
Grade: A
this game is awesome but the puzzles are sometimes really obtuse like the maze one where you have to draw an actual map to solve it/ do a weird audio test was way too much effort for me