Myst Review

Myst was the game that justified the CD-ROM drive, a cultural event that sat atop PC sales charts for years and convinced the mainstream that games could be contemplative, adult, and beautiful. The Miller brothers built its island and linking-book ages as thousands of pre-rendered 3D stills, assembled in HyperCard, and in 1993 those vistas, the sunken gears, the rocket ship, the library of burned books, felt like postcards from somewhere real.

Its confidence in silence was radical: no inventory, no death, no hand-holding, just machines to understand and a fraternal mystery told through hidden journal pages. Judged as a system, though, it is a slideshow of locked doors; navigation is click-by-click and disorienting, and several puzzles hinge on note-taking obscurity or, notoriously, a maze navigated by sound. The B overall reflects both truths: a landmark of atmosphere and ambition whose actual play was already stiff when it was new.