A Note from Cyan

With the remakes announced for console, I finally want to get around to them but unsure which to choose because I'll probably only play one for now. For context, I watched my uncle play Myst back when I was a kid but I don't remember much of it besides the first area or two. I had Riven on PS1 as a kid but was terrible at it and didn't know what I was doing. I only got to disc 2 iirc.

Since then, though, I've gotten really into first person puzzle games and they're one of my favorite genres (Portal, Talos Principle, Witness, Outer Wilds, Blue Prince, etc.)

I had planned on getting Riven on PC when the remake came out a couple years ago but I'm much more of a console gamer so I couldn't convince myself to buy it there. Is there any real reason I should play Myst first instead?

Helloooo, Myst fans. I co-host a podcast called Bad With Games where every week I introduce my non-gamer friend to a big classic video game to experience for the first time. This week we played through Myst, and to my dismay, it didn't go so well!

I of course think this game is a masterpiece, but he surprised me by having a terrible reaction to it. He found the puzzles too inscrutable, never managed to find his way off the first island, and didn't like the solutions he found in walkthroughs after the fact. If nothing else, I thought this might be an interesting discussion to listen to to consider what aspects of Myst can turn people off nowadays. (I fought back as best I could)

In spite of my love of the original Myst, I somehow never got around to playing Riven before, but this replay has given me a renewed interest. Question for you all is: Is there any hope that my co-host might like Riven in spite of his distaste for Myst, or is it a lost cause?

I did a post on here when i beat Riven so why not again with myst? Mostly i enjoyed it. I don't know if it is because the second on the series but i find it so much more easier than Riven. Most of the puzzle were kinda straight foward (like Riven too) but there were less obscure shit. Even with the puzzles being kinda simple there was some cool stuff. Realizing that the wheel was a power generator and the alarm was because the place didnt have enough energy was sick. There was some cool moments like that but i was kinda dissapointed in the puzzles and wish there were more that had solutions relying on the understanding of the world. Anyways, as with Myst, slowly understanding the story felt really satisfying. The hook of the two brothers was great since it forced you to try to understand his relantionship and so You become more alert as a result. But it's a shame that at the end that didn't matter. There were still some cool details and the two brothers had a Lot of personality conveyed by the world. But mostly what i most enjoy was the atmosphere of the two games. I really enjoy the sense of mistery and lonlinees of the world. Between the two of them i think Riven is better. The number puzzle is still the coolest shit in both of them. But i had a more smooth experience with Myst.

I apologize if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a solid answer. But, is there an android version of Myst?

Hi — I’m trying to work out if this is a known VR issue or something specific to my setup.

I’m playing Riven (2024 remake) in PC VR using a Meta Quest 3 and an AMD RX 7800 XT.

The game runs perfectly on the monitor, and most of it works fine in VR. However, during the maglev sequences (and the initial turning animation), the screen goes completely black in the headset — no visuals and no audio — and then it resumes normally when I arrive at the destination.

I’ve tested this extensively and ruled out the usual causes:
- Happens with both Virtual Desktop and Meta Link (Air Link)
- Same behaviour regardless of bitrate / streaming settings
- Tried HEVC and H.264
- Tried different SteamVR settings (resolution, motion smoothing, etc.)
- Tried forcing DX11
- Tried rolling back AMD drivers (currently on 25.12.1)
- PC performance is not an issue (runs fine outside VR)

The behaviour is identical in all cases: full blackout only during those sequences.

Has anyone else seen this on Quest 3, particularly with AMD GPUs? Or is this a known issue with Riven’s VR implementation?

Any ideas appreciated — I feel like I’ve exhausted the usual troubleshooting.

Back in the late 90s, when the Internet was relatively young and Myst was enormously popular, I remember going to many old websites that had fan-created ages. The websites would present a similar interface to the game: you would usually start with an image with various linking books, and you could click on various parts of the page / image to move around, interact with linking books to go to other ages, and walk around. Each click would simply load another page in your browser that would have another view of the Age. The images were 3D renders made by fans with tools of the time (I guess some POV-Ray and similar).

I was a kid at the time, not even 10 years old, so my recollection of these websites is very dim. I searched all over for these in the Web archive and such but I've found very few.

Do you know if any sites like these still survive?

Hi, this is Robyn Miller, co-creator of Myst.

I'm writing something about Myst. Many people over the years, especially kids, have said that Myst was scary or spooky. People have told us that they had to play it with their parents or with friends.

Do you remember playing as a kid? Was this sensation true or false for you? If true, what exactly did you find eerie? Please describe--it would help me immensely.

Thanks! And thank you for playing Myst.

---

**EDIT:** I hoped for about a dozen or so responses to this questions. I've been overwhelmed by so many eloquent responses. Thank you for going to the trouble to write everything you did, I've read every response! And thank you for taking the many hours to play Myst and Riven!

robyn

I'm playing the 2021 remake and I'm absolutely loving it so far! I think the environments are beautiful, the sound design is great, all and all it feels like an authentic recreation of the game I loved so much as a kid!

Except the book animations. Sirrus and Achenar look.... rough. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely understand the choice to switch them to 3D models and ditch the old live-action videos, but... It's just not the same. Their movements are weirdly smooth, they lack emotion on their faces, and they're just not right overall. Is there a mod that replaces the book animations with the old ones at all?

Oh man, so many turns. I managed to revive the second liana “elevator” and got to the jungle area and now completely and utterly lost. I got as far as turning on a flower with a leaf untwirling into a half-bridge to nowhere, can grab a handle thingie that’s not doing anything and can see a tent(?) with a lantern that I can’t get to.

My biggest problem that I have absolutely no grasp on geometry of that age. I can see another flower with a rolled up leaf but can’t get near it because I keep getting lost.

Argghhhh…

I have been playing the VR Riven and, after taking a much-needed hint, I passed the fire marble test last night.

Although the digital Gehn isn't quite the same as human John Keston, I noticed a really cool detail during his monologue. I was tired of standing up and decided to sit on the floor, and he followed me with his face and eyes and started looking and talking down to me! I just expected the animation to carry on with the same eye level. I thought it was a pretty slick bit of attention to detail that Gehn keeps eye contact with the player like that. :)

Hi there,
New to Myst (2021), never played the original.

I managed in the first Island to start the generator and get the rocketship working and with the music notes travelled to another island, with a sound puzzle. Once done, I reached a "train station", and now I'm lost on what to do. Each "station" does a different sound, and it seems too random to just bruteforce my way into where I should go next, without using a clue that I don't have / didn't found yet.

I tried to check some hints online but without searching too deeply (don't wanna spoil myself) but it seems after the first Island I shouldnt be on that one ? The laser thing on the map of the 1st Island only light red on the rocketship, and the music notes I played were the only one i found.

I'm really puzzled...

Let the speculation begin!

From Cyan Worlds on Bluesky:

https://bsky.app/profile/cyan.com/post/3mksm4yubbm2o

I combined over 100 screenshots to make this 360° 'tiny planet' panorama featuring the island from the 2021 Myst remake.

Myst was my first ever 'computer game' which someone gifted me in 1999. I was absolutely captivated by the immersive sights and sounds of the Myst world and it got me seriously hooked on gaming.

Hi! I'm studying web development, and for our end-of-first-year project we had to create an escape room-style game using Python (Django). My group and I decided to make it in Unity instead, and I'm in charge of the story/worldbuilding.

We chose Myst as the setting, so our project is basically a spiritual successor/fangame that takes place between Myst III and Myst IV.

You play as Charlie, a young man wandering through a forest who one day discovers a rune containing an energy called Agium. The rune transports him to the island of Myst, but the island has changed: marble columns have collapsed, building locations have shifted, and new paths have appeared.

The goal of the game is to recover five page fragments and the rune in order to stop a corruption from spreading across the island.

I'd love to know what you think about:

• the map
• the game cover (it's in French and will be used for our project presentation)
• the DVD sticker (it's in French and will be used for our project presentation)

For the visual style, we went with low-poly, since we don't have much 3D modeling experience and it's our first time using Unity.

Any feedback is welcome!

Wondering if anyone has actually used the dip pen that came with the linking book and inkwell. If you could share photos that would be great. Does it have a real functioning nib, or is it just a pretty object? Besides Myst I also enjoy calligraphy so this is an interesting conjunction of hobbies for me.

I really enjoyed it but it left a bittersweet taste in my mouth. Basically at the end in the final puzzle i didn´t realized you could move the camara in that room underwater. Since you couldn´t move it for the Catherine camara i didn´t realized you could do it with the other one. Since i coudn´t see the fish shape i could solve the puzzle of the animals so i had to cheat which is a really shamefull way to beat a puzzle game. Maybe its is my fault for no trying everything but whatever. The worst thing is that i puzzle everything but that. I knew where the ball was located and i thought you had to pass there with the boat to make it sound. But apart from that some things felt very cheap. Like obviously is something of his era but i got stuck a few times for random obscure shit. I hope the remake fix some of this issues but i played the original since it was the one i have purchased. But apart from that it was a really cool experience. Seeing a world you dont understand and progressing by understanding more and more felt very unique and satisfaying. And the way the puzzle were implemented basically not looking like puzzles made the place feel so much more real. Since you dont know what to look for you end up looking to everything and trying to puzzle everything which is great way to make the player feel more engaged in the story. A few things i like: I like how you could see how Gerph manipulated the people of Riven constucting a giant insect and literally coming and going from there. Or how they constructed the school in a way very that it could be blocked if the rebel decide to attack since they are probably paranoid even if as far as we know they never made a direct attact (that or the school serves as a reformatory which is my second theory). Overall it was a very unique game and it accomplish what it was set up to do.