Myst is an interesting cultural object that might be a little odd to visit for the first time today. My experience with it was quite positive given the intervening time, despite occasional frustrations.

I think the most striking thing about Myst today is the effectiveness of its pacing and world design. While the actual acting performances are over-the-top, the mechanism of gating the worlds behind journals and puzzles develops an excellent sense of mystery and curiosity.

Reading the journals for the various ages to which you can travel instills a sense of familiarity and anticipation to actually traveling to them. Arriving at an age was exciting, because it meant seeing something in person that you'd only read about, but also an encouraging sense of understanding as you recognize details based on what you've read.

There are a few occasions where it's near impossible to see a particular detail that you must interact with, or to find a path you can travel down in order to get where you need to go. I definitely encourage players to seek out clues or solutions online if they're stuck (I certainly had to a few times). Besides a few of these (probably unintentional) cheap shots, the widely available Masterpiece edition is very playable and very engaging for a sufficiently patient modern player.

absolutely gorgeous early 3D time capsule with a really interesting world. i like myst for its atmosphere and emptiness, which is something i feel the sequels kinda got wrong. myst appeals to me because it just feels like it's me wandering around this weird ass island alone, trying to solve puzzles. interactions with other characters were very sparse, which really helped to build this atmosphere. the later games in the myst series tried adding more characters to talk to, which kind of broke this atmosphere to me, and i didn't really enjoy them as much. that being said, the original myst is absolutely worth your time

I suspect Myst will go overlooked by the vast majority of modern audiences due to an (arguably) lackluster presentation, yet that may just be the ace up its sleeve. When you compare Myst to any other puzzle game, it's sort of mind-blowing how it has pretty much only individual puzzles per area, barring those having to directly interact with the Age gimmick, and yet there's next-to-zero communicative failure on a sensory side regarding what those puzzles do. Even if you're pixel-hunting to discover the mechanisms you need, or just clicking hopelessly to find another screen you missed somewhere, the actual mechanisms at play are immediately quite clear-cut and intriguing in function. They're industrial, you read the cues of how you'd physically interact with those objects and voila, you've done it. The scope of the areas leaves you still scratching your head about the greater purpose of anything you find in spite of this though, and it's this combination that makes Myst both a solid game for those completely unfamiliar with video games, and those who've spent their life on the medium. Almost every technique here is beginner-friendly, but doesn't push away hardcore players, so much so that the only method of movement is extremely intuitive in a way I think almost anyone could immediately grasp, and is hard to formulate solid complaints against at the same time given Myst's goals. It'll lure in newcomers... but it'll also interest anyone deeply familiar with video games as a whole, with its fascinating setting and worldbuilding that don't fall clearly into any genre of fiction, alongside the creative puzzle concepts, which make the process of "fucking around with (effectively) alien contraptions" all the more alluring. If there's any point to take away from all this: designers of the future, and players, should probably go back to Myst to voice how to clearly communicate unique gameplay ideas without overt text being a driving factor, because it's excellent nonetheless.

to think that i would play a game such as myst when i absolutely despise point and click adventure games because they make me skyrocket my adhd to the stars and yet i managed to finish this one maybe im stronger than i believe

sexy ANerdList recommended this to me as part of this list thanks dude

so long story short I did enjoy the game but I do have some gripes with it that could only be explained by the fact that this game is now almost 30 years old and just thinking about the state of videogames during that time is making me go insane honestly that being said its absolutely unbelievable how this haven't become lost media because I swear getting a “rom” (???) idk whats the name of the format of the game files but ok whatever that one

mind you myst is really weird I read something around this site and there was a lot of good opinions so I HAD to try it out just for emotional value do I think this game is a masterpiece ??? hard to say definitely not for me but I do believe it had some resonance in the entire gaming industry and for that I have to F pay respect BUT its also to be said that its not as enjoyable an experience nowadays as it wouldve probably been during its releasing time its like how I have a lot of respect for the beatles but I would rather shoot myself in the migraines than listen to one of their albums

I have to come clean here i didn't really understand most of the storybeats in here so there's this guy who found a book and got sucked and licked and and slurped into the world of myst that I'm pretty sure of now from that point ONWARDS my understanding of everything in the game starts to crumble they begin to push in front of me lots of books and infodumps that I for the life of me did NOTSSSS read what the actual FUCK this is definitely not an ADHD friendly game ong all the ADHDies in the room please be advised and also the “do shit and wait for animation” was a red flag and also the talking books brothers that have the tendency of saying 10 lines of dialogue in 5 minutes its such a fucking bore WOW really detrimental to the pacing ngl

so there's these two brothers who are played by real life people and I didnt want to be that close to their face but ok go on let them cook so they hate each other and are not willing to have some truce for some reason so youre inbetween two brothers trying to get out of their book prisons and to do that you have to get some more pages in different ages of myst that you can access by other books

this game has a heavy focus on books and lord knows I don't like books so yeah the story isnt really that interesting TO ME but it sure can get its point across and has a really good way of setting the general vibe and atmosphere for the game

and then this is the gameplay loop find a “portal” get in the page aka another age of myst find either a blue page or a red page or both or anything and go back put the blue/red page back into the brothers books and listen them talk and talk and talk and talk wow they never FUCKING shut up and most of the time they don't even say anything interesting just “lemme out / fuck my brother / look at my nostril” rinse and repeat the end

so yeah even the ending no spoiler leaves a lot to be desired its like ok cool you did all the puzzles and shit and now you can have a conclusion to the story ……. this is the conclusion bye and then youre literally left with nothing umh ok I guess I'll get the next part of the story in the following game(s) even though I'll probably only stop at riven I'm not sure I can take 5 more games of this kind in the series that being said I liked the story for what it is but it's definitely not the winning point of this experience it has a lot of different worldbuilding elements that I did enjoy but most of the shit here is left unexplained like why are these people trapped in books and why are you also trapped in a book now whatever

so let's talk meat of the game now because theres a LOT

now at first I gotta say I was not impressed with the graphics mind you this is a pre rendered screens kind of game which means they're gonna have hi res pics formatted into a 10 byte disk and they're gonna get all grimy and grainy and shit usual final fantasy 7 through 9 psx era kind of art direction . now at first I was not impressed I did not think the island of myst was really that gorgeous it has some pretty landscape some great monuments a nice detailed library and cool effects but there's that the trees were fucking cones the buildings all looked plasticky and the entire island just felt kind of low budget (it was probably a high effort during that time and definitely blew some people's minds im not that stupid) so this was my first impression but as soon as I got to the different eras of myst i swear theres some of the most beautifully rendered screens and effects I've ever seen to this day now im not really a huge point and click fan so I don't know the graphical advancements of stuff in this genre but wow some of the places in here were fucking beautiful literally could not believe they could get something this high detailed and gorgeous and I still have no idea how in the hell they managed to do that I have to watch a documentary of some kind because that had to take an INCREDIBLE amount of effort even for today's standard some of the graphical effects and sceneries are still jawdropping im betting

so that to say that they really did a good job in the art department and its probably way this game was so well received in the previous millennium the vibes are UNMATCHED all the different ages of myst are characterised by a very specific sound design that makes them really intriguing and about the sound design umhhhhhh I'm pretty conflicted because theres some of the most forward thinking tunes I could think of and also some of the most ear piercing sounds made from the humankind . most of the sounds dabble into the ethereal / mysterious domain theres not really music to talk about but some of these “songs” really heighten different moments in the playthrough and every time you find something they usually put this really spooky tune thats SO GOOD like not good as in “I would listen to it” good but as in “sets the tone beautifully” good

myst really plays into the spooky territory mainly because youre gonna find some really fucking scary places and then they're gonna be like “ok now solve a three X inequality problem” girlie that shits the scariest thing I've ever seen in my entire life purr

that to say myst knows what's up with setting an atmosphere every single age is characterised by some surface level degree of wonder and them the deeper you dig the scarier are the secrets that are gonna unfold now this game is not inherently “scary” horror games don't have any effect on me but it's nice to see that they actually manage to convey the feeling of “being lost in an unknown environment” kind of vibe

so uhhhhhh I guess I'll need to talk about the THING…

this game is a puzzl- shoots himself in the head no jk but everyone knows I fucking hate puzzle games and I swear yall I TRIED to play this game walthrough free but the most I managed to do was “walk” around the island of myst trying to get a clue of what to do next for like a hour so since I fucking HATE not knowing what do to in a game I decided it was time to boot up a walkthrough from like 2001 literally something ancient the page was using some god forgotten coding language literally transported back to early 2000s (do you ever think about the fact that stuff you read online could be written from people who are now dead ? I always think about this its really going to deteriorate my dissociation with myself and reality) and I could manage to complete the puzzles with this walkthrough MOST OF THE TIMES

now after finishing the game I can confidently say that without a guide I wouldve NEVER been able to finish this game these puzzles are so fucking hideous sometimes I would just solve them and be like how the FUCK was I supposed to know I was gonna translate piano keys to frequencies or like or like the voltage combination and don't get me fucking started on that SHIT FUCKING MAZEEEEEEE GRRRRRRRRR OH MY GOD

every time I was under the spell that this game came out yesterday the gameplay made me come back to reality literally could not believe this gameplay could be real in 1997 WITHOUT walkthroughs I wouldve never played games anymore in the entirety of my life

I have no idea how a person should solve this shit without any sort of guidance but I digress I know the anniversary edition has hints of some kind that could help you but I decided stupidly that the original lost media one was the greatest choice

also that maze fucking suck the developers were under some LSD type of alterate state of consciousness because theres no way in hell somebody could enjoy THAT

so umhhhhhh I wasn't the target of this game i hate puzzle games and i hate point and click games but I found some stuff that I liked and some stuff that I hated and thats what love is all about maybe I will check out either the remakes and PROBABLY I'm gonna play riven because I want to know how they'll continue to implement real life videos into a videogame with the fucking cameras and computers of 1997

why can father myst git it