Can we have a Myst thread? Share some of your favourite memories

>>3498956
Having 3 different copies all screw up at different places.

The lack of clear direction.


My FAVORITE part was the stupid leaky battery

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>be 8
>get this game one day randomly from mom
>hear the intro
>"woah holy crap!"
>spend hours of the day going through the pier and houses
>mfw opening the secret door
>mfw finding out there's another half to the island after exploring everything from the beginning side
>8 o'clock
>"anon its time for bed!"
>dream about being the human leader from the flying inhabits and sailing out the sea with the boat they made me and going on adventures and discovering other species
I haven't felt that immersed in a game in so long. Maybe System Shock 2?

>>3499385
I never played the game, but I remember my sister playing it when I was 8.

For some reason the game scared me.

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I played a good chunk of Myst as a kid, but the monitor I had was dark as hell so I had real trouble in places like Channelwood just making out what I was supposed to be seeing on the ground and pathways. I got off the island and made it into all the ages on my own, but at some point (I think Selenitic) I ended up losing interest and I think got some tips from the hint section of a PC gaming magazine. Never finished it.

Somehow I managed to avoid spoiling ANYTHING about Riven, though, and played it for the first time a couple years ago. Took a shit ton of notes, beat it without hints. One of the absolute best games I've ever played. It's the gold standard for this type of adventure game.

>>3499408
It also scared me a lot. I think I was like 11. Maybe the silence and the solitude.

I wonder how much of the eerieness is from our expectations in games/media like this for jump scares. My wife and I beat it earlier this year. Played blind and had a good time. She spent the first hour expecting a jump scare. Really a great game.

We did RealMyst Masterpiece, which I'd recommend, but with one caveat; you have the option of playing in slideshow-mode like the original or completely free-movement. You gotta play slideshow-style. The game was designed with each view in mind, highlighting what you need to do and focusing your attention. The free-movement is more modern feeling, but loses that. The graphics and weather were mostly nice, but nighttime can get too dark, which sucks. Been meaning to follow it up with Riven.

The Myst soundtrack is still great. I listen to it all the time when I'm playing other adventure or puzzle games that don't have their own music.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZfwwN6ro0A

The Riven soundtrack fits the game perfectly, but is a little too dark for me to casually listen to. Myst has a nice "neutral" quality to its ambiance in most areas.

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I always felt annoyed how this series got used as a punchline for years, because it did so many things incredibly well. The atmosphere in Myst and Riven is unrivaled, and I really enjoy the types of puzzles that exist in Myst games.

Unlike most adventure games of the era, you weren't trying to figure out what inscrutable sequence of actions or combination of items you needed to solve puzzles with. Instead, everything can be logically deduced with observations and experimentation. The really great design work extends to each puzzle feeling like a piece of something that belongs in the age. You get a really great feeling of figuring out how people were supposed to live in these places as you work through the puzzles.

Part of the reason I don't play adventure games now is that they all seem to have stemmed from the Lucasarts and Sierra branches of the genre. I would be thrilled for more Myst type games (and am probably going to purchase Obduction when I get paid this month), but the game seems to be only now getting past its years of stigma and become appreciated.

If anyone can recommend modern games other than Obduction that have really great Myst-like atmosphere and puzzles, I am listening.

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>>3501498
There's a free, fan-made game called RoonSehv that's supposed to be some kind of Myst side story with puzzles. I have it downloaded right now and am going to try it this weekend, avoiding reading too much about it because I don't want to spoil anything.

There was a game in 2006 called Aura: Fate of the Ages. It's 5 bucks on Steam and is supposed to have decent environments and puzzles but goofy characters, plot, and VA. I haven't tried this one either.

There's a very recent one-man project called Haven Moon that looks pretty but is getting middling reviews.

I have played the RHEM games, which are difficult puzzlefests with zero story and pretty much nothing but symbols and mechanisms everywhere for you to autistically take notes about and attempt to untangle. Almost no sense of "people lived here," just puzzles, but good ones.

tl;dr there's nothing as good as Myst but there have been some attempts at copying various aspects

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>>3501498
>this series got used as a punchline
It's not just Myst. Plenty of point-and-clicks have been bashed, and text adventures get it even worse than Myst does. Myst is just a popular example.

The problem is that most people suck pretty bad at analyzing games, and they REALLY suck at analyzing puzzles. Combine that with the understandable frustrating of being utterly stuck on something you can't solve, and people want to lash out and call shit outdated and badly designed and blah blah blah and link to Old Man Murray. Of course bad examples exist, but Myst is not one of them, as you know.

>>3501498
>each puzzle feeling like a piece of something that belongs in the age
I would disagree that Myst 1 was that great about this... Riven was fantastic about this sort of thing, but Myst had its share of silly lock/clue placement. But then there are ages like Channelwood that do a great job of integrating everything believably, and I can't be too hard on Myst because at the time it came out it was still MUCH better than most adventure games at doing this sort of puzzle/world integration (compare to 7th Guest).

>>3498956
is the PSP version good guys?

>>3501931
If you love the nub, maybe. Otherwise it's frustrating. Masterpiece and even RealMasterpiece run on biscuits and are cheap enough.

>>3502216
hmm what a shame
could you elaborate why is frustrating? I imagine it´s the controls, or something like that (never played it)
I wanted to play it lying on the sofa ;_;

>>3503206
I would be surprised if there was no way to run it on a phone or tablet

I tried Myst and just couldn't get into it. I liked the atmosphere but I guess point n click puzzle games just aren't for me.

Is Riven easier or something still worth trying if I didn't like Myst?

How do I into Myst? How's the PS1 port?

Retconning the Ages into places that already existed was a mistake that the series never recovered from.

>no guide
>get to underground train maze
>lose your way and get lost

Oh god, the anxiety

>pen and paper
>map out the train forks and dead ends
>make it through the maze

the feeling of accomplishment was palpable.

>>3503716
No, Riven is way worse, there is much less hand holding and narrative, if that's even possible, because the world is much larger and there's a lot more accessible to you at the start.

>>3503775
uh, either the original PC port, or realMyst: Masterpiece Edition. the 3d myst on pc is really cool, but the puzzle locations and solutions might not be as obvious since they aren't framed by predetermined viewpoints.

if you have an ipad and want to blow some money, I hear the ipad version of realmyst is really good

>>3501498
Legend of Grimrock is kind of like Myst+DnDlite, it's really good and not hard to get into

>>3503802
Appreciate it. Is the PS1 port viable though? Also, I don't have a windows machine. I assume there's a way to run it on OSX though.

Said it before and I'll say it again, I highly recommend realMyst. They did a very good job of recreating the worlds and atmosphere, and being able to actually explore the areas in 3D helps bring them to life. I can't recommend realMyst Masterpiece since it throws the look of the original away for LOLGRAPHIX!

shivers is better

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>>3503826
RealMyst is okay but I think most areas in the game look worse. There are almost no shadows in RealMyst, and it's easier to stick your nose up against the textures in low-res areas. The only real reason I would recommend RealMyst is that some areas like the Channelwood treetrops are unnecessarily disorienting in regular Myst. In real life it's easy to keep your sense of direction in such situations, in slideshow Myst you can easily lose sense of how far you've turned when you click left or right.

I also think original Myst simply had better artistic sensibility and composition. Pic related.

>>3504171
(RealMyst is the one on top, to be clear.)

>>3498956
Used to watch dad play it. Have been using "Myst" as my online nick since then.

>>3501552
>recommendations
Check out ASA: A Space Adventure and Catyph.

>>3503802
RealMyst has a slideshow option.