After enjoying my time with walking sims, I tried out Myst this week to experience a combination of walking sim/puzzle game. Myst is definitely not what I expected when I booted up the game. There is no introduction, no explanation of anything, no rundowns. They just toss you on the island with an intentionally confusing cutscene and let you loose on the island. That aspect I didn’t love. But, the puzzles were challenging, rewarding, and kept me playing and engaged. Since the game does just toss you on the island with no background, there’s a ton of mystery surrounding what you’re doing. This is all reinforced by clues (by way of scribbled notes, audio messages, and recorded videos) that make every puzzle you complete more worthwhile, as you find out more about the island and the story behind Myst/the books.
Another mechanic from Myst that I found interesting was the way the puzzles are laid out along the map. Myst does not function as a level-to-level puzzle game. Every time you complete one puzzle, the next one doesn’t just automatically appear. In Myst, each puzzle flows into the next, but Myst requires you to figure out yourself how to put the clues together and get from one objective to the next. And for me, this was challenging at points. I had a hard time getting from puzzle A to B with all the info I had because there are so many distracting features all over the map, including hints and features of future puzzles laid out in the open. I believe the mechanic of leaving pieces to future puzzles exists for two reasons: to clue the player in to what comes later and offer some sort of road map, and to distract the player from their current objective. The latter making the game more difficult. This was my biggest challenge with Myst. I would get so overwhelmed with the amount of freedom I had that it became too much and I couldn’t future out what area of the map to start with. In my opinion, Myst’s “magic circle” could shrink just a little bit and the game would be more accessible to a wider range of audiences with varying experiences with “open-world” puzzle games. Overall though I had never played a game like Myst before, so of course that first play-through will be a little jarring. I enjoyed the deep lore and narrative that I was launched into. The acting was pretty good and supported that as well.
