I could drink the atmosphere straight from a big gulp cup, but the puzzles and worlds aren't quite to the same level as other entries in the genre, or in the same series. This game was a real trailblazer though, so it's only natural it was surpassed by its descendants.
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.
Played this when it came out and was blown away. Still enjoyed this replay 30?? years later
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
Ehh... It seems nice, but honestly the price of admission is fine for me. Controls feel too stale.
Ein wahrlich genreprägendes Spiel, das sogar ein paar Elemente aus dem Full-Motion-Video-Bereich (FMV) verwendet. So gibt es beispielsweise zusätzlich zur wunderschön vorgerenderten Grafik an bestimmten Stellen im Spiel Aufnahmen von echten Personen, die in die Szene integriert werden.
Einzig die unglaublich grottige deutsche Synchronisation der zwei Brüder, bei der die Lippenbewegungen auch noch mehrere Sekunden verzögert sind, mindert die Bewertung meinerseits leider.
Einzig die unglaublich grottige deutsche Synchronisation der zwei Brüder, bei der die Lippenbewegungen auch noch mehrere Sekunden verzögert sind, mindert die Bewertung meinerseits leider.
"I hope you're into books!"
This is an interesting 3D-quest. The puzzles are made of a complex system of mechanisms, so they are straightforward and don't suffer from "moon logic" of some classic 2D point & click quests. Some of the puzzles require pen and paper to write down the hints and some of them rely on audio for solution. The puzzles never feel tedious till the end of the game.
The story... is optional really. There is no explanation of who you are or how did you get here. There is a wall of text with a little bit of lore near the beginning, a few characters to listen to and bits of narrative level design here and there on the next islands. That's it. You get only bits and pieces of what happened to the previous residents of the island to get a simple picture of the events. Not really engaging. I hope the story will be more relevant in the sequels.
The rehashed graphics are fine. The aesthetic is decent. Unfortunately there is nothing eye-catching on the islands. They are mostly rocks with occasional buildings, plants and machinery to serve as decorations for the puzzles. The aforementioned narrative design bits look interesting as they tell more about the characters.
Sound is there to provide ambiance and serve as part of some puzzles. Music is mostly absent, but when it plays it feels "low" and kinda "lonely". I guess it suits the lonely player on the deserted islands.
Overall it is a nice puzzle-game. Although short, it took me only one evening to complete, but it never felt boring or tedious. I am definitely going to play the sequels.
This is an interesting 3D-quest. The puzzles are made of a complex system of mechanisms, so they are straightforward and don't suffer from "moon logic" of some classic 2D point & click quests. Some of the puzzles require pen and paper to write down the hints and some of them rely on audio for solution. The puzzles never feel tedious till the end of the game.
The story... is optional really. There is no explanation of who you are or how did you get here. There is a wall of text with a little bit of lore near the beginning, a few characters to listen to and bits of narrative level design here and there on the next islands. That's it. You get only bits and pieces of what happened to the previous residents of the island to get a simple picture of the events. Not really engaging. I hope the story will be more relevant in the sequels.
The rehashed graphics are fine. The aesthetic is decent. Unfortunately there is nothing eye-catching on the islands. They are mostly rocks with occasional buildings, plants and machinery to serve as decorations for the puzzles. The aforementioned narrative design bits look interesting as they tell more about the characters.
Sound is there to provide ambiance and serve as part of some puzzles. Music is mostly absent, but when it plays it feels "low" and kinda "lonely". I guess it suits the lonely player on the deserted islands.
Overall it is a nice puzzle-game. Although short, it took me only one evening to complete, but it never felt boring or tedious. I am definitely going to play the sequels.
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.
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.
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
Hey guys, it's me, Myst, I just wanted to tell y'all that this game is one of my personal faves. Playing it with friends while physically writing down notes and solving puzzles as a group is an unmatched feeling. I'm still physically trapped in the sound maze so if anyone wants to let me out by banging spoons at the exit, I'd really appreciate that :)
great atmosphere with puzzles of varying obtuseness, some great, some annoying "see if you can spot the clickable object" moments, some scraping out my insides with metal objects of varying size, sharpness and rustiness (i cannot play the piano please stop beating me)
Myst (Masterpiece Edition) review: The first time I came across this game was on GOG when they were having a sale on some of the old games, including the Myst series. I was curious about what it was about but never gotten interested in the series until I watch a video from Adumplaze and wanted to play it myself. This is a game that requires a LOT of patience. The puzzles are certainly not easy to figure out, but once you’re able to solve it and get the hang of it, it is extremely rewarding. There were a few times where I got stuck in two of the worlds (or Ages as they’re called) and had to resort to looking up what to do from a walkthrough. It’s not the best game ever, especially given its budget compared to the sequels. Even the story and characters are pretty self-contained and small. However, there’s no doubt that a lot of passion when into not only the environments for Age and each puzzle, but also the world of Myst and its characters. I would recommend playing this game as your first entry to the series, although I think any of the later tiles in the series, like Riven or Myst 3, would be a better starting point than the first game since they improve on a lot of things over Myst 1. Also, if you were to play Myst 1, I would probably recommend the realMyst version over the original Myst, although I haven’t played that version yet to compare the two versions of Myst 1. Anyway, realMyst replaces the slideshow screenshots from the original version with a 3D world to explore, and might be a better experience for you despite the recent Masterpiece edition of realMyst that changed the original graphics with more “modern” and “realistic” graphics for the 3D world. I haven’t played the sequels yet, but I definitely look forward to trying them out when I get the chance.