All those looking for a fresh Myst-like experience should check out Quern: Undying Thoughts.
Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
81–90 of 144 posts
Re: Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's visually apparent in Bowser's Castle when you've made progress vs. being sent back, which is kind of similar to some of the earlier maze fortresses like the first fortress in World 3. There are other levels that have doors or pipes that either do or don't send you somewhere useful. But solving any of these mazes without a strategy guide will probably call for multiple lives because you almost certainly w…
SMB3 offered an easy 100 lives plus continues. The parnent was referring to the original SMB, where you had to play the whole game, try to solve an invisible maze once or twice (unless you got good at the one or two 100 lives spots), and then play the whole game from the beginning (which you might fail at!) to get another chance at exploring the maze. It was a common tactic to make short games feel long.
Oh, I thought we were talking about Bowser's Castle in SMB3 rather than SMB! I've edited my comment above.
Re: Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
#83Myst was so immersive. For me it created a real sense of wonder and exploration. There was something beautiful about being alone in a gorgeous world filled with puzzles that gradually revealed a story.
Also the first Myst tie-in novel is one of the only game tie-in books that I really enjoyed. I was quite young, so I'm not sure how the book holds up, but I remember really enjoying it.
Re: Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, this is where memories of Myst are best left. At the time I loved it, but in the early 90s one was willing to forgive a game a great many short-comings in sympathy to the state of modern games technology. Myst was very much “state of the art of the possible at the time”. I’d argue that much of the appeal of 90s Myst for some was that such a world could be made at all, let alone be a reasonably competent adven…
+1 on The Witness, but there's an entire genre now of walksim games that follow on the pattern of puzzles, story, exploration and non-combat engagement: https://www.slant.co/topics/6377/~walking-simulator-games-on... And really this is just a continuation of the larger "adventure game" genre that Myst itself is a part of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_game
That is a good list, even if some fall more on the “walking simulator” side more so than “puzzle game”.
Games like “What Remains of Edith Finch”, “Firewatch” and “Gone Home” etc I loved, but these aren’t really puzzle games in the way Myst was, although I do see a common thread in the idea of an intricately made world to slowly explore.
Re: Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, this is where memories of Myst are best left. At the time I loved it, but in the early 90s one was willing to forgive a game a great many short-comings in sympathy to the state of modern games technology. Myst was very much “state of the art of the possible at the time”. I’d argue that much of the appeal of 90s Myst for some was that such a world could be made at all, let alone be a reasonably competent adven…
I would check out Quern. Quern is an excellent Myst style game and comes closest to Myst style puzzles. From what I've seen of the "The Witness" is looked to be the same maze puzzle but repeated throughout the game. I loved Johnathan Blow's "Braid" but I passed on the Witness after seeing some gameplay.
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Re: Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
#86I don't know if I was just too young at the time, but I had Myst/Riven as a kid and never even began to understand what the objective was or what I was supposed to do. Aside from a little bit of walking back and forth, I don't think I accomplished a single thing in game. Given the article references 6 and 8 year olds playing, maybe I was just a dumb kid.
This remember me of a game a friend and me buy from a store. I don't remember the name. We try to play it for hours. We die at every step. Only the character was visible. All the rest was pitch black. We die a lot. Eventually, memorizing each die pattern, we found a tiny bit of light on the background. Then, I increase the monitor bright. What idiots!
lol :-)
Re: Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, this is where memories of Myst are best left. At the time I loved it, but in the early 90s one was willing to forgive a game a great many short-comings in sympathy to the state of modern games technology. Myst was very much “state of the art of the possible at the time”. I’d argue that much of the appeal of 90s Myst for some was that such a world could be made at all, let alone be a reasonably competent adven…
I would check out Quern. Quern is an excellent Myst style game and comes closest to Myst style puzzles. From what I've seen of the "The Witness" is looked to be the same maze puzzle but repeated throughout the game. I loved Johnathan Blow's "Braid" but I passed on the Witness after seeing some gameplay.
I rather enjoyed The Talos Principle, and bought The Witness hoping to love it.
I couldn't get into it. When I ran into a memorization "puzzle" I knew it wasn't the game for me :(
Re: Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The music and the sound in Myst and Riven were both outstanding - absolute classics of the genre, and even more amazing given that they were an amateur effort by one of the creators, and not the work of a full-time composer or game sound designer. There was one location in Riven where I spent about fifteen minutes listening to a short-ish music loop over and over and watching a simple atmospheric location animation,…
This really proves in the arts and creative business, it's really an individual's work that connects the souls. You can have a team of thousands of people, but if no one has any vision or creativity then their work can go straight down the toilet.
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Re: Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
#89It's entirely possible that the only reason I'm a programmer today is because of Myst.
For reasons that I either never fully learned or fail to remember, my father received a CD in the mail from Myst's publisher (Broderbund?) containing a demo of the game. Only, someone screwed up, and instead of the CD containing a demo, it actually contained almost the entire game in a just-before-release, playable state (only a single world was unfinished). And all the HyperCard scripting was unlocked and viewable by the player.
Myst was amazing for its era, so of course, wanting to know how such a game was possible, I took full advantage of being able to read all of the HyperTalk code. And I'd be lying if I claimed I didn't use this access to "solve" a few of the more difficult puzzles. The times spent understanding and "hacking" Myst are among my fondest memories.
All of this led to me learning HyperCard and HyperTalk myself, and eventually moving on to CodeWarrior/C, Perl, PHP, Ruby, etc.
So thanks to Robyn and Rand Miller for the awesome memories. It had a huge impact on my life.
Re: Myst at 25: How it changed gaming, created addicts, and made enemies
#90If anybody is still jonesing for that Myst hit, the pointlessly-online version is completely free to play: https://mystonline.com/en/
If they're really jonesing they'd like to know that you have to create an account to download a Windows only installer ;)