Myst

Myst is a graphic adventure puzzle video game designed and directed by the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller. It was developed by Cyan (now Cyan Worlds) and published by Brøderbund. The Millers began working on Myst in 1991 and released it for the Mac OS computer on September 24, 1993; it was developer Cyan’s largest project to date. Remakes and ports of the game have been released for Sega Saturn, PlayStation, 3DO, Microsoft Windows, Atari Jaguar CD, CD-i, AmigaOS, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS, iOS, and Nintendo 3DS.
Upon release, Myst was a surprise hit, with critics lauding the ability of the game to immerse players in the fictional world. The game was the best-selling PC game until The Sims exceeded its sales in 2002. Myst helped drive adoption of the then-nascent CD-ROM format. Myst’s success spawned four direct video game sequels as well as several spin-off games and novels.

Myst puts the player in the role of the Stranger, who uses a special book to travel to the island of Myst. There, the player uses other special books written by an artisan and explorer named Atrus to travel to several worlds known as “Ages”. Clues found in each of these Ages help to reveal the back-story of the game’s characters. The game has several endings, depending on the course of action the player takes.

In getting ready to do this play through for the review I discovered that Myst Don’t like to run under Windows 7, so I installed Windows XP Professional in Virtual Box and installed and ran the game there. Ran like a dream. I did a quick play of the game to make sure everything was working and decided to try to speed run the game. In Myst, if you know the last 2 puzzles you can finish the game at any point, even the very beginning of the game. Needless to say that after a decade of not playing this game I was surprised when I remembered how to finish the game and beat in it under 5 minutes or so. The following day I went and record the one below. Could have had a bit better time on it, but I am pretty happy with it. May try later on to lower my time more.

Graphics: When it came out, Myst’s graphics were some of the best. Even Now, 23 years later it still looks pretty good. early version of Myst, suck as the original and the Masterpiece edition were presented as a ‘slideshow’ with each ‘step’ made up of prerendered images that were displayed as appropriate. Later versions were more 3d and one could actually walk around in them (like realMyst) For this review I used the Masterpiece edition.
Audio: The audio in Myst was meant to immerse the player in the world, and in a few cases provided important clues for solving puzzles.
Gameplay: The simple point and click gameplay makes learning how to play Myst easy, however the puzzles can be quite challenging. Have a notebook at the ready – you will need it (originally the game was packaged with a Myst themed notebook for player convenience.)

Videos

Speedrun

useful guides and Maps
FAQ / Walkthrough

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