Myst

A few of my favourite games ever are Point and Click adventures (Grim Fandango, Sam and Max, Harvester) and yet I have to admit the genre is extremely tedious. I find that most have an Achilles’ Heel that ultimately makes them difficult to recommend and revisit.

Despite Myst’s reputation, I found it to be surprisingly intuitive for a game from 1993. The lack of HUD, inventory, and combat keeps this game timeless, in my opinion. The last act of Harvester comes to mind, where it switches into this side-scrolling action game with atrocious combat. There’s also only one Age in Myst that I think has a “cheap” puzzle solution (the hidden door in the Stoneship Age), which damn. That’s a pretty good ratio for a puzzle game at the time.

I’m torn on how I feel about the way the story is conveyed in the game. Since you can play each Age in any order, most of the story is just available in journals that can be read at your leisure. So, naturally, I read that all immediately and was disappointed to find that very little story would be revealed after completing each Age. It’s unique, though.

Each puzzle (save for the one mentioned above) doesn’t require some random object to be found (a big complaint I have for many puzzle adventures) and instead are a series of pipes, buttons, levers, and pulleys that have to be studied by the player to understand their purpose in this world. In this game, I never felt like something was only in the game as a puzzle made by a game designer, and instead it always (even with that dumb Stoneship secret door!) felt like components of a real, functioning world. I remember reading that the design philosophy for the puzzles was like so: “if your power goes out, you’d go check the breaker” (paraphrasing) and I think that’s executed flawlessly. As cliché as it is, this game really does feel lived in, or I guess it should say it feels like it WAS lived in. It’s the closest I’ve felt to feeling like an archeologist uncovering lost worlds.
Which again, for it’s time… damn.

No combat, no time limit, no health. It’s an adventure game that prioritises exploration above all else, and most importantly, its a world worth exploring. Excited to play Riven and the following games in the series.

I used to lose sleep when I played it. So hard to solve that game.

lo odié, no entendí nada, y no he dejado de jugar a un juego más rápido en mi vida

Big brain