Thanks to my brother for the gift; he knows me well. :)

Myst lodged itself into my brain as a kid. And then Riven joined it a few years later. I still look back on it as one of the formative highlights for telling stories and worldbuilding in games, for me. It's what I'd consider Cyan's magnum opus.

Coming back to this, now, a full quarter-century later, and it's delightful. While the game is not precisely as I remember it - many things have certainly been moved around on certain islands - it has captured the majority of the locations, structure, and world of the original, and even tweaks some of its puzzles to expand on the world a bit more. Die-hard fans may not care for these changes, and I wasn't sure what to think of them myself; but they won me over, I think, once I saw that they had kept the best puzzles intact, and had mostly layered the new puzzles over the top, and once or twice reframed the old puzzles to have new implications.

All this to say: Cyan and Starry Expanse have created an experience that feels genuine to the original work, and gave me some new puzzles to chew on, so I wasn't just speedrunning through the game. And for new players, I'm fairly confident they will experience the same world as I did back then, without the hindrances of changing discs (though the occasional crash does still occur; so keep saving periodically!)

A last note: while the screenshot feature is helpful, it does not always capture fine details such as engravings on metal. Use a notebook of some kind where you can, because it will complement your findings well. And there's just something to using notebooks in a puzzle game that scratches an itch, y'know?

And if you enjoy this, give the original a try, too. I think the pixel hunting aspects may be *easier* once you know what to look for, and you'll find some new surprises as you do. It's still a delightful work of craftsmanship to this day, despite its Macromedia jank.

Thanks to my brother for the gift; he knows me well. :) Myst lodged itself into my brain as a kid. And then Riven joined it a few years later. I still look back on it as one of the formative highlights for telling stories and worldbuilding in games, for me. It's what I'd consider Cyan's magnum opus. Coming back to this, now, a full quarter-century later, and it's delightful. While the game is not precisely as I remember it - many things have certainly been moved around on certain islands - it has captured the majority of the locations, structure, and world of the original, and even tweaks some of its puzzles to expand on the world a bit more. Die-hard fans may not care for these changes, and I wasn't sure what to think of them myself; but they won me over, I think, once I saw that they had kept the best puzzles intact, and had mostly layered the new puzzles over the top, and once or twice reframed the old puzzles to have new implications. All this to say: Cyan and Starry Expanse have created an experience that feels genuine to the original work, and gave me some new puzzles to chew on, so I wasn't just speedrunning through the game. And for new players, I'm fairly confident they will experience the same world as I did back then, without the hindrances of changing discs (though the occasional crash does still occur; so keep saving periodically!) A last note: while the screenshot feature is helpful, it does not always capture fine details such as engravings on metal. Use a notebook of some kind where you can, because it will complement your findings well. And there's just something to using notebooks in a puzzle game that scratches an itch, y'know? And if you enjoy this, give the original a try, too. I think the pixel hunting aspects may be *easier* once you know what to look for, and you'll find some new surprises as you do. It's still a delightful work of craftsmanship to this day, despite its Macromedia jank.