Cyan Worlds via PolygonSusana Polo is a senior entertainment writer at Polygon, specializing in pop culture and genre fare, with a primary expertise in comic books. Previously, she founded The Mary Sue.In honor of the 31st anniversary of seminal puzzle adventure game Myst, Cyan Worlds has a new Humble Bundle sale, “Enter the Mysterium.” Through Oct. 2, players can pay $20 and pick up 13 games, which run the gamut from Myst’s earliest 1989 predecessor, to its modern progeny, and every mainline Myst game in the franchise, with part of the proceeds going to Active Minds, a nonprofit dedicated to equipping teens and young adults with the tools to advocate for mental health advocacy and suicide prevention.Enter the Mysterium$20$19290% off$20$20 at HumbleOr, you could pick up any of four smaller, cheaper bundles. But in the opinion of me, Polygon’s foremost Myst-pilled weirdo, here are the titles you should make certain to grab, in order of importance.Myst: Pick your poison! The bundle offers Myst: Masterpiece Edition, which attempts to replicate the experience of playing the original 1993 game; realMyst: Masterpiece Edition, the first attempt to render the game in 3D; and Myst (2021), which supports both 2D, 3D, and VR play.Riven: The Sequel to Myst: This is the intricately cut crown jewel of Cyan’s puzzle games, in its original form. If you get really fed up with it I would also recommend their recent 3D remaster, which improves on perfection (but was released way too recently to be included in a discount bundle just yet).Myst IV: Revelation: Pretty much a direct sequel to Myst. Unequivocally the hardest Myst game, but my personal favorite for its story. It’s got an unskippable Peter Gabriel cutscene. Please, please, please play this game.Myst III: Exile: By no means easy, but still the easiest Myst game. The villain is played by Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings) and in one of the “bad endings,” he clubs you to death in first person FMV. If that doesn’t entice you I don’t know what will.Obduction: Not in the Myst setting, but if you play the others first, you’ll be able to call all the plot beats of this one. That said, it’s got a frightfully interesting sphere-based puzzle dynamic, an interesting setup, and gorgeous vistas.Firmament: I haven’t played this one yet. “And you call yourself an expert!” I backed the Kickstarter, OK?! I just haven’t had time! I’ll get to it… sometime after Dragon Age: The Veilguard comes out. I hear it’s worth it, though! And if you’re already picking up the rest, well, why not?But what am I, the Myst-pilled weirdo, going to buy? Well, even though I already own the vast majority of the games in this bundle, there’s still something here for me: Spelunx, Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel, and The Manhole. Two American dollars will net me three of Cyan co-founders Robyn and Rand Miller’s pre-Myst works, dating back to the unfathomable desktop gaming year of 1988, when Cyan released The Manhole on floppy discs available by mail order (the one in this bundle is a 1995 CD-ROM rerelease).Calling these three games “puzzle games” might seem like a stretch compared to Myst and its successors — I’ve poked around the original Manhole on the Internet Archive, and it’s more like an interactive object. But there’s a sense of humor, silliness, and, above all, play in it. Even just after ten minutes in a browser emulation, it was clear to me that I was looking at a couple of game developers fascinated by the potential of the point-and-click mechanic, and playing in that space as expansively and freely as they could. I could already see the lines running from this strange, Alice In Wonderland-themed object, to a couple of adventure games that were going to bust the genre wide open.Head over to the Humble Bundle, and you can make those connections, too.
Related Posts
Look, we know, it’s a terrible headline. Anyway, Mafia: The Old Country has just been announced right at the end of Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024, and it’s set to release in 2025.The next game in the Mafia series got a nice teaser trailer, featuring plenty of wine, guns, oil paintings, and chatter about bad things going down if you don’t commit yourself to a family. Yep, those of us who unashamedly love The Godfather so much they write unhinged features about indie games look to be eating good here.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings “Uncover the origins of organized crime with a gritty mob story set in the brutal underworld of 1900s Sicily,” reads the plot summary in an accompanying 2K press release, “Fight to survive in this dangerous and unforgi…
Read moreOh dear, while the Until Dawn remake isn’t due out until October, it appears that there’s already been layoffs at its developer Ballistic Moon.While an official statement is yet to be made by Ballistic Moon, as spotted over on Resetera, and the exact number of layoffs is yet made to be clear, a couple of developers from the studio have shared on their personal LinkedIn accounts that they have been made redundant. ” Like many others in this wonderful but turbulent industry, I am sadly being made redundant from my role,” wrote Cassy Cornish. The other developer, Harry Williams, shared that “after two exciting years working on the wonderful Until Dawn 2024 at Ballistic Moon I am unfortunately being made redundant as a Technical Designer. I’ve loved working with everyone at BM and hope I cross…
Read moreWith thousands of players diving into the Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 beta over the weekend, we’re starting to get a taste of what the next few years of arcadey high-octane action will have in store for us. We’re seeing intense movement, slick killstreaks gallore, but most importantly a hilarious wave of voice-chat clips thanks to the game’s new human shield feature.Almost immediately after the beta went live, short clips of players taking each other hostage and whispering sweet nothings started circulating online. This feature is a natural evolution of the live mic activation following a death in Warzone, but far more personal, difficult to pull off, and comical. Your pay off for grabbing another player is 12 seconds of uninterrupted banter.To see this content please enable targeting cookie…
Read moreBaldur’s Gate 3 Patch 7 finally added in mod support, and safe to say, it’s quickly proven popular amongst players.Modding Baldur’s Gate 3 has been plenty popular so far, but it wasn’t until this week’s most recent patch that introduced mod support where it became a lot more feasible. And less than 24 hours after the patch went live, Larian Studios founder and Baldur’s Gate 3 director Swen Vincke shared that more than a million mods had been installed. Just to be clear, there obviously aren’t that many mods available, it’s just the total count across all players installing mods, but it’s an impressive and honestly slightly frightening figure. You all really were desperate to mod the game, huh?To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Just a few hours after …
Read moreIf you’re expecting The Grand Tour: One for the Road to be a sombre, sedate affair compared to the trio’s previous work, think again: if anything, it proves that advancing age hasn’t blunted their capacity for causing mayhem, or embarrassment to the foreign office.Zimbabwe, the gloriously filmed final location for their beloved format, is a poor country with a great deal of mineral wealth, the movement of which is very strictly controlled. It’s possible to buy large quantities of raw silver in Zimbabwean markets for ridiculously cheap prices, though, which formed the basis for one of the new special’s more ridiculous challenges: casting car bling from it. Hammond and his dinky spoiler. Also, this is a spoiler. | Image credit: Amazon StudiosClarkson fashioned …
Read moreEA CEO Andrew Wilson spoke on-stage at this year’s investment summit, and stated that Generative AI is at the “very core of our business”. This bold stance coincidentally comes nearly three years since he spoke about the importance of NFTs to the future of the video game industry. Truly, a pioneer of brave and exciting technologies.Wilson’s statement on AI has also happened at an interesting time for tech investment, when the development of AI has led to a market boom that spans the video game industry and far beyond. However, EA surely knows that investors are getting impatient waiting for AI-enhanced companies to show a winning hand, especially as AI giants like OpenAI stand to lose around five billion dollars this year according to analysts. That’s why EA and Wilson broke out the cardbo…
Read moreAmazon Games and Maverick Games are working on a AAA racing game, that much we knew already. However, thanks to a fresh job posting for a community manager, we also know that Amazon is seemingly now in the process of prepping to oversee the community it hopes said game will develop. The job posting, listed on Gamesjobs.co, states that Amazon is looking for a person with experience in the field of community management. This means “building, executing and scaling cross-functional programs or marketing campaigns from concept to completion”, managing and measuring marketing performance, and using data to measure metrics. Pretty standard stuff from a start to finish video game community management role.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Hiring for roles l…
Read moreBlizzard reportedly has a new StarCraft shooter in the works, so here's hoping it's third time lucky
Blizzard is reportedly taking another swing at developing a StarCraft shooter, this time with former FarCry producer and director Dan Hay at the helm.This is according to Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier, in an exerpt from his upcoming book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, which was discussed during an appearance on the IGN Unlocked podcast.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings After IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey brought up that passage, and after mentioning the fact that such a thing being in the works would be Blizzard’s third go at making this kind of game, he asked Schreier if it’s a thing we may well actually get to play at some point down the line.”If it’s not canceled,” Schreier replied, “This is Blizzard after all. T…
Read moreThat Fallout TV show was pretty great, ey? In fact, it even landed a hefty number of Emmy nominations before taking home a couple of them. Now, Prime Video and Kilter Films are also celebrating the fact it has crossed the 100 million viewers threshold worldwide after roughly six months on Amazon’s streaming platform.The announcement came via the series’ social media accounts and will surely boost Prime Video, Kilter Films, and Bethesda’s confidence going into season 2, which will be filled to the brim with New Vegas stuff if that season 1 finale was any indication.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Crossing the 100-million mark positions Fallout right behind The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power and… above everything else on the platform, at le…
Read moreAtlus is clearly on to a winner with Metaphor: ReFantazio, as the game is now the developer’s fastest selling game ever.We obviously know Atlus is going to keep milking the Persona series, with new numbered entries, re-releases, and spin-offs, but considering how well the completely new Metaphor: ReFantazio is doing, I imagine we’ll be seeing a lot more of that world too. Atlus shared earlier this week that the game had surpassed a million units sold by the day the game had released – Persona 3 Reload managed to hit the same sales number quite quickly earlier this year, but it took a few days longer to reach it. The news also came with a fresh illustration from character designer Shigenori Soejima too, if you fancy taking a look.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage co…
Read more