Myst

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.

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 of all time, until The Sims exceeded its sales in . Myst helped drive adoption of the then-nascent CD-ROM format. Mysts success spawned four direct video game sequels as well as several spin-off games and novels.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Myst consists of a first-person journey through an interactive world. The player moves the character by clicking on locations shown in the main display; the scene then crossfades into another frame, and the player can continue to explore. Players can interact with specific objects on some screens by clicking or dragging them. To assist in rapidly crossing areas already explored, Myst has an optional "Zip" feature. When a lightning bolt cursor appears, players can click and skip several frames to another location. While this provides a rapid method of travel, it can also cause players to miss important items and clues. Some items can be carried by the player and read, including journal pages which provide backstory. Players can only carry a single page at a time, and pages return to their original locations when dropped.

To complete the game, the player must explore the seemingly deserted island of Myst. There the player discovers and follows clues to be transported via "linking books" to several "Ages", each of which is a self-contained mini-world. Each Age—named Selenitic, Stoneship, Mechanical, and Channelwood—requires the user to solve a series of logical, interrelated puzzles to complete its exploration. Objects and information discovered in one Age may be required to solve puzzles in another Age, or to complete the game's primary puzzle on Myst. For example, in order to activate a switch, players must first open a safe and use the matches found within to start a boiler. Myst contains a library where two additional books can be found, colored red and blue. These books are traps which hold Sirrus and Achenar, the sons of Atrus, who lives on Myst island with his wife Catherine. Atrus writes special "linking books" that transport people to the worlds, or "Ages", that the books describe. From the panels of their books, Sirrus and Achenar tell the Stranger that Atrus is dead, each claiming that the other brother murdered him, and plead for the Stranger to help them escape. However, the books are missing several pages, so the sons' messages are at first unclear, and riddled with static.

As the Stranger continues to explore the island, more books linking to more Ages are discovered hidden behind complex mechanisms and puzzles. The Stranger must visit each Age, find the red and blue pages hidden there, and return to Myst Island. These pages can then be placed in the corresponding books. As the Stranger adds more pages to these books, the brothers can speak more and more clearly. Each brother maintains that the other brother cannot be trusted. After collecting four pages, the brothers can talk clearly enough to tell the Stranger where the fifth page is hidden. If the Stranger gives either brother their fifth page, they will be free. The Stranger is left with a choice to help Sirrus, Achenar, or neither.

Both brothers beg the Stranger not to touch the green book that is stored in the same location as their last pages. They claim that it is a book like their own that will trap the Stranger. In truth, it leads to D'ni, where Atrus is imprisoned. When the book is opened, Atrus asks the Stranger to bring him a final page that is hidden on Myst Island; without it, he cannot bring his sons to justice. The game has several endings, depending on the player's actions. Giving either Sirrus or Achenar the final page of their book causes the Stranger to switch places with the son, leaving the player trapped inside the Prison book. Linking to D'ni without the page Atrus asks for leaves the Stranger and Atrus trapped on D'ni. Linking to D'ni with the page allows Atrus to complete his Myst book and return to the island. According to Rand Miller, the brothers spent months solely designing the look and puzzles of the Ages, which were influenced by earlier whimsical "worlds" made for children. According to the creators, the game's name, as well as the overall solitary and mysterious atmosphere of the island, was inspired by the book The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Eventually, they created grayscale heightmaps, extruding them to create changes in elevation. From this basic terrain, textures were painted onto a colormap which was wrapped over the landscapes. Objects such as trees were added to complete the design.

The game was created on Macintosh computers, principally Macintosh Quadras. The graphics were individual shots of fully rendered rooms. Overall, Myst contains 2,500 frames, one for each possible area the player can explore. and the CD was rereleased on April 21, 1998.

Reception

Myst was commercially successful on release. Along with The 7th Guest, it was widely regarded as a killer application that accelerated the sales of CD-ROM drives. The game's success also led to a number of games which sought to copy Mysts success, referred to as "Myst clones". although the subsequent remakes of the game and the console ports have generally received lower average scores. Mysts success baffled some who wondered how a game some saw as "little more than 'an interactive slide show'" turned out to be a hit.

Myst was generally praised by critics. Wired and The New York Times suggested that Myst was evidence that video games could in fact evolve into an art form. Entertainment Weekly reported that some players considered Mysts "virtual morality" a religious experience. Aarhus University professor Søren Pold pointed to Myst as an excellent example of how stories can be told using objects rather than people. Laura Evenson, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle, pointed to adult-oriented games like Myst as evidence the video game industry was emerging from its "adolescent" phase.

GameSpot's Jeff Sengstack wrote that "Myst is an immersive experience that draws you in and won't let you go." Writing about Mysts reception, Greg M. Smith noted that Myst had become a hit and was regarded as incredibly immersive despite most closely resembling "the hoary technology of the slideshow (with accompanying music and effects)". Smith concluded that "Mysts primary brilliance lies in the way it provides narrative justification for the very things that are most annoying" about the technological constraints imposed on the game; The publication went on to declare Myst the best game of 1994, stating that Myst removed the "most annoying parts of adventure games — vocabularies that [you] don't understand, people you can't talk to, wrong moves that get you killed and make you start over. You try to unravel the enigma of the island by exploring the island, but there's no time pressure to distract you, no arbitrary punishments put in your way".

Some aspects of the game still received criticism. Several publications did not agree with the positive reception of the story; Jeremy Parrish of 1UP.com noted that while Mysts lack of interaction and continual plot suited the game, it helped usher in the death of the adventure game genre. Edge stated the main flaw with the game was that the game engine was nowhere near as sophisticated as the graphics. Heidi Fournier of Adventure Gamers noted a few critics complained about the difficulty and lack of context of the puzzles, while others believed these elements added to the gameplay. Similarly, critics were split on whether the lack of a plot the player could actually change was a good or bad element. In a 2000 retrospective review, IGN declared that Myst had not aged well and that playing it "was like watching hit TV shows from the 70s. 'People watched that?,' you wonder in horror." Taking place 10 years after the events of Riven, Exile reveals the reasons for Atrus' sons being imprisoned and the disastrous effects their greed caused. The fourth entry in the series, , was released on September 10, 2004, and was developed and published entirely by Ubisoft. The music was composed by Jack Wall with assistance from Peter Gabriel. The final game in the Myst saga was , developed by Cyan Worlds and released on September 19, 2005.

In addition to the main Myst saga, Cyan developed , which was released on November 14, 2003. Uru allows players to customize their avatars, and renders graphics in real-time. The multiplayer component of Uru was initially cancelled, but GameTap eventually revived it as on February 15, 2007. On February 4, 2008, GameTap Creative Director Ricardo Sanchez announced that the game was cancelled, and that the servers would be shut down 60 days after the announcement. The game has since been brought back up again and is free to play. The Miller brothers collaborated with David Wingrove and wrote several novels based on the Myst universe, which were published by Hyperion. The novels, entitled Myst: The Book of Atrus, Myst: The Book of Ti'ana, and Myst: The Book of D'ni, fill in the games' backstory and were packaged together as The Myst Reader.

By 2003, the Myst franchise had sold over 12 million copies worldwide, with Myst representing more than six million copies in the figure. The game's popularity has led to several mentions in popular culture. References to Myst made appearances in an episode of the The Simpsons ("Treehouse of Horror VI"), and Matt Damon wanted The Bourne Conspiracy video game to be a puzzle game like Myst, refusing to lend his voice talent to the game when it was turned into a shooter instead. Myst has also been used for educational and scientific purposes; Becta recognized a primary school teacher, Tim Rylands, who had made literacy gains using Myst as a teaching tool, and researchers have used the game for studies examining the effect of video games on aggression.

A parody computer game, Pyst, was released in 1996.

From circa 1996 MYLK: "not a parody, but an homage". Created on a MAC and later ported to Windows.

Rereleases and ports

PC remakes

realMyst: Interactive 3D Edition was a remake of Myst released in November 2000 for Windows PCs, and in January 2002 for Mac. Unlike Myst and the Masterpiece Edition, realMyst featured free-roaming, real-time 3D graphics instead of pre-rendered stills. Weather effects like thunderstorms, sunsets, and sunrises were added to the Ages, and minor additions were made to keep the game in sync with the story of the Myst novels and sequels. The game also added a new Age called Rime, which is featured in an extended ending.

Handhelds

A version of Myst for the Nintendo DS was also released in December 2007. The version features re-mastered video and audio, using source code specifically re-written for the Nintendo DS. The remake features Rime as a playable Age, with an all new graphic set. Myst DS was released in North America on May 13, 2008, and later reissued by Storm City Games. The title was heavily panned by the gaming press, with an aggregate score of 43/100 on Metacritic.

In February 2005, Cyan and Mean Hamster Software released Myst for the Microsoft Pocket PC platform; Riven was ported shortly after. In August 2008, Cyan announced that the company was developing a version of Myst for Apple's iOS. Cyan confirmed that the project was near completion in April 2009, submitting the title to Apple on April 22. The game was made available to download from the iTunes App Store on May 2, 2009. The original download size was 727 MB, which was considered very large by iPhone standards.

References

External links

Category:1993 video games Category:3DO games Category:Amiga games Category:Atari Jaguar games Category:Brøderbund games Category:CD-i games Category:First-person adventures Category:IOS games Category:Mac OS games Category:Myst games Category:Nintendo DS games Category:PlayStation games Category:PlayStation Portable games Category:Sega Saturn games Category:Sunsoft games Myst: Masterpiece Edition, realMYST Category:Video games developed in the United States Category:Windows games

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