The Greatest Games I’ve Played: #23

Myst

It would be difficult to explain the appeal of Myst to a kid today.  

You stare at an image. You point. You click. The game loads the next image. You’ve taken five steps forward. You look around some more. You point. You click.  And so on.

The Point-and-Click adventure has more or less retired to the great keyboard in the sky, but it left its share of classics: Monkey Island, Sam & Max, and The Dig immediately come to mind (you’ll notice that these are all pre-1995).  But Myst was the king.

What was so great about Myst?  On the surface, there were the jaw-dropping graphics. True, they were merely pre-rendered, low-resolution 3D polygonal scenes that didn’t technically “move”– but they were really pretty.  The team at Cyan worlds were skilled artists, and they were way ahead of the curve– crafting hauntingly beautiful and otherworldly environments, ranging from treetop villages to barren ruins to futuristic mecha-topias.  At the time, it was revolutionary.

But better than that, Myst was an intensely and addictively challenging.  It drops you into a mysterious world and gives you nothing. No clues. No direction. No suggestion as to what to do at all; just the lure of exploration and puzzle-solving.

Myst defeated my young mind with ease.  I made my way into three or four of the “ages” (worlds contained within books scattered across an alternate universe) before ultimately succumbing to the endless onslaught of puzzles and mystery.  I remember being in awe of the father of one of my best friends at the time– he was an accomplished architect, and a genius by most accounts.  Over the course of several months, he made his way through Myst, literally filling entire journals with notes and diagrams of its puzzles (probably the only way to actually beat the game) before finally reaching its end.

Cyan Worlds– now a failing company after unsuccessful attempts to keep the Myst franchise alive– recently released a port of Myst for the iPhone.  I’ve been tempted to go back.  But I’m pretty sure it would own me again.  

Full List of “Greatest Games”