Genre: Adventure
Perspective: 1st-person
Gameplay: Puzzle elements
Setting: Fantasy
Published by: Brøderbund Software
Developed by: Cyan
Released: 1993
Access for all worlds in Savegame folder.
Myst - a computer game in the genre of graphic quest by the brothers Robyn Miller, Rand Miller. Brother Miller began work on the game in 1991, and it was released on the Macintosh September 24, 1993. The game has become a model for the creation of adventure games, giving rise subsequently a number of similar projects. In addition, the success of the game has allowed to create a Myst-igroseriala, including four continue. The game's plot was the basis for several works of art.
Advances game
Myst with extensions sold around the world in the amount of about 12 million copies and has long been considered the best selling game. This achievement was subsequently able to beat only one game - The Sims. Ingredients for success Myst series are:
four sequels: Riven, Myst 3: Exile, Myst 4: Revelation and Myst 5: End of Ages;
two remakes: Myst Masterpiece Edition and realMYST;
Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and two add to it, Uru: To D'ni and Uru: The Path of the Shell, board games are hybrids, to collect the best finds of the original Myst series and created on the basis of its game world. Later, a series of Uru was released under the title Myst Uru: Complete Chronicles;
Uru Live - MMORPG-version of Uru. Shortly after the appearance of the internet beta project was shelved, but later resumed under the name Untìl Uru. The final release was called Myst Online: Uru Live, the game appeared February 15, 2007 and became available by subscription in the U.S. and Canada;
three novels written by brothers David Miller with the participation David Wingrove and published by Hyperion Books: Myst: The Book of Atrus, Myst: The Book of Ti'ana and Myst: The Book of D'ni;two comic books, published by Dark Horse Comics with the title The Book of Black Ships and Passages. Later comic book series has been closed because of disagreements with the creators of the game publisher.
Development
Who undertook the creation of the game creative team consisted of four people: it consisted of Brother Miller, artist Chuck Carter and sound engineer Chris Brandkamp. Support provided to developers Japanese company Sunsoft. Team roles are as follows: Robin Miller was designing the island of Myst and the worlds Stoneship and Channelwood, and at this time Chuck Carter created the worlds projects Selenitic, Mechanical Age civilization and the D'ni
The game was created by a series of Macintosh computers manufactured by Apple (they were mostly Macintosh Quadras, but the music was written on the Macintosh SE). Modeling and rendering each scene taking place in the program StrataVision 3D, often additionally used the program Macromedia MacroModel. Editing individual images is done using Photoshop 1.0. One of the employees of ILM, John Knoll (John Knoll), has developed a special plug-in for Photoshop, which allows you to work with the animation of individual images. With this program, non-linear editing Premiere create visual effects.
The original Macintosh to work on a HyperCard (file viewer with hypertext capabilities). Every world created by the developers used this technology for themselves in a unique way. When creating games have been used HyperTalk, QuickTime, Simplex HyperTint, carried out with the video compression codec Cinepak. The images have been uploaded to the game as an 8-bit PICT-resources with a predetermined color palette. As a result, despite the low bit depth color scheme has been set high bar for graphics era of 8-bit games, which now had to be equal to all developers.
On disc includes a "bonus video" developers, which describes the creation of the world Myst.
Plot
There are at least two versions of the presentation of the storyline. The first of these is presented in the form of manuscripts D'ni from the instruction manual for the game, the second player also observed directly in the game, and allows for a certain degree of ambiguity and different interpretations of events. Immediately it should be noted that the events of the game take place in the early 1800s.
Under mysterious circumstances, the protagonist of the game, labeled Stranger, is an unusual book called «Myst». According to the user manual, it reads the book and discovers a detailed description presented in her island. When the hero comes to the last page and put my hand on her mysterious force suddenly moves it to a world of which he had just read. However, the game itself is all a bit different: the hero opens the book and sees that on the first page is a graphical representation of the mysterious island; Wanderer for the image and moves in this world, nothing about it and not knowing.
Located on the island of Myst library, which found two books: the red and blue. These books are traps, prisons, which concluded Sirrus and Achenar. Both are sons of a Atrus. As it turns out, Atrus - is the owner of a mysterious island of Myst, which has an ancient ability to write the book-worlds and make them a reality. This ability is called Art. It Atrus, according to the brothers, locked them in the books, and they beg Wanderer give them freedom. Immediately catches the eye is that the red and blue books skipped a few pages, which is why we are brothers unintelligible sounds and not fully understood. It was missing pages and will seek the Wanderer in this mysterious place.
Explore the island and solving challenging puzzles, Wanderer finds four books portal leading to other worlds. Visiting each of them, the hero finds the red and blue pages, then comes back to the island of Myst. Pages are added to the relevant books, and we are brothers becomes more clear and understandable. After four pages will be returned in one of the books (red or blue), one of the brothers, locked in her report Wanderer that the full release is also required, and the fifth page. What choice do in this situation: the release of one of the brothers or not to release anyone? The more that is found near a third - green - a book in which he concluded Atrus ...
Worlds
Moving between the worlds represented in the game is through books portals, written by Atrus and hidden in remote places. To gain access to one of the books will have to tackle tough, but at the same time interesting puzzles. Each book takes the Wanderer in the world that it describes. The very art of making such books introduced the ancient civilization of D'ni, which, according to legend, lived in the deepest cave on Earth.
The game features the following worlds:
- Myst Island - beginning of the journey and the place from which it move to other worlds.
- The Channelwood Age - small world, which is a flooded area on which tree to tree paved walkways - the local trails. Here, everything is controlled by the water.
- The Stoneship Age - inhospitable island surrounded by reefs, which are constantly storm and the rain. The main attraction of these places - the wrecked ship among the rocks.
- The Selenitic Age - a large island, where you can find several rocky towers, a small forest and a huge dungeon.
- The Mechanical Age - rotating island-fortress, surrounded by three small islands.
- The Rime Age - this world is only available as a special bonus in the end realMYST, as well as in the publications of the original game for the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS. This world is located somewhere in the Arctic, where there is ice and northern lights.
- D'ni - a world in which Atrus is concluded.
Gameplay
The gameplay is a moving player on the interactive world with a first-person. The motion is carried out by means of mouse clicks on the active areas of the screen, resulting in a transfer to other locations. Using the mouse, a player may also interact with some of the surrounding objects (e.g., moving them). Unlike most computer games, it is impossible to die at the hands of enemies or unforced circumstances, the only problem for the player is a challenging puzzle.
To complete the journey the player must visit all the worlds in the game, moving them through books. The player must collect the pages for the two books, but unlike many games of this genre, except pages a player must not collect a lot of obstacles and put them in your inventory. At the end of the adventure character returns to its starting position and, using the obtained information in the course of an adventure, makes his choice.
According to the developers, secluded and mysterious atmosphere of the island of Myst its appearance must first novel "The Mysterious Island" of the French science fiction writer Jules Verne. Some influence on the game's creators had also novel Argentine writer Adolfo Bioy Casares' Invention of Morel".
Re-releases and ports
Myst: Masterpiece Edition - an updated version of the original game, which appeared Sept. 1, 1999. Because of the surviving bugs and partly Acronym soundtrack reissue was made very cool game fans. List of major changes and additions to reprint the following:
8-bit images are replaced with 24-bit (TrueColor);
add additional points of view;
change the sound effects and music;
Added an in-game map and clues.
Myst DVD 10th Anniversary Edition
In this commemorative edition dedicated to the tenth anniversary of the original game have been included bug fixes and restored the original soundtrack. As an added bonus version of Riven and Myst 3: Exile.
realMYST
realMyst: Interactive 3D Edition - Chief remake of the original game, released November 17, 2000.
Main Features:
- the game was made on a fully 3D engine Plasma 1.0, was later used in Uru: Ages Beyond Myst (version 2.0) and Myst 5: End of Ages (version 2.1);
- Control your character through the use of a full-fledged 3D received a new degree of freedom;
- added a new realistic weather effects and the changing of the day;
- minor changes to the main island (for example, added a grave Ti'any (Ti'ana)), is more closely associated with the events of the storyline of novels on the game;
- re retakes all video scenes;
- minor changes in the environment (such as new types of lamps) and a complete replacement textures for more realistic;
- in the plot of the game adds a new world The Rime Age;
- Trailer of the game was so difficult to execute that many took pictures of it for the footage from the film.
- Sales of the game were stopped almost immediately after the release of the first edition, because most computers have demonstrated very poor performance running the game on them.
PSP
In November 2005, the company Midway has announced a remake of the popular game console PlayStation Portable. This re-release was to include bug fixes and the original game, and the alternate world The Rime Age, which fans could watch back in realMYST. June 15, 2006 the game was released in Japan, 21 December 2006 - in Australia, and later in Europe and North America.
Pocket PC
Porting the game to the Pocket PC company engaged Mean Hamster Software.
Nintendo DS
Release of the game on this console in November 2007. The port has received negative feedback from fans and the press - the main criticism came in an uncomfortable realization of control, compressed to fit on the cartridge game graphics and sound, and poor performance of the game. The total score on the version Metacritic - 43/100, made up of 11 neutral and 14 negative reviews.
iPhone and iPod Touch
Release of the game took place on May 3, 2009 and appeared in the App Store at the price of $ 5.99.
Edition for iPad
RealMyst release on the iPad held 14 June 2012 in the App Store at the price of 6.99 dollars.
Parodies of the game
- Pyst - a parody of the game of Parroty Interactive, released on October 10, 1996. The creators of the game - Peter Bergman (Peter Bergman), Phil Proctor (Phil Proctor), David Ossman (David Ossman) and John Goodman (John Goodman) - decided to show the world what should happen with the quiet island of Myst after it visit millions of players tourists. The island is simply presented as a huge pile of debris. The game has become quite popular, and then there was her expanded edition - Pyst: Special Edition. At the same time, there was the announcement of a parody of the second part of the series Myst - Driven: The Sequel to Pyst, - but the company Parroty Interactive soon went bankrupt and ceased all work.
- Missed - text parody game that featured a character named Ascii.
- Mylk - created by Gold Bart (Bart Gold) parody about dairy products and other food products. (Dead link)
- Missed Island - designed in the spirit of Myst card for a computer game Marathon Infinity.
Interesting Facts
- Initially it was thought that the creator of Myst island is Atrus, but later, with the release of the first novel, Myst: The Book of Atrus, it became clear that the world was created by his grandmother, Ti'anoy.
- In Germany, the name of the game was the subject of jokes and ridicule. Although originally the word «myst» comes from the English «mysterious», in Germany it is associated with the word «Mist» («manure", "trash", "nonsense."
- When porting a version of the game for the Macintosh to Windows developers have faced a number of obstacles, resulting in two versions have some differences in technical solutions. For example, the sound effects are more subtle: the player could make a whiff of a weak breeze and the friendly breeze in different parts of the island. In addition, the sound of running machines do not subside when the character left the area with them. Soundtrack was somewhat reduced, but the transitions between tunes became smoother. In a more recent re-release of Myst: Masterpiece Edition, all these features are stored.
- The three-game series - Myst, Riven and Myst 5: End of Ages - are the work of Cyan. Developing two other games - Myst 3: Exile and Myst 4: Revelation - engaged Presto Studios and Ubisoft respectively. Different developers have used different approaches to the style and atmosphere of games. For example, in Myst 4: Revelation book-prison Spire and Haven are presented in the form of full-worlds, but in the first games of the series, these books were considered exclusively as a small space without the ability to move through them.
- The model for the image of the first king of D'ni Rinerefa (Ri'neref), occurring in the mosaic of the game, Chuck Carter served as one of the developers of the original game.
- The planned edition of the game for the Pioneer LaserActive Mega LD-ROM for Sega never saw the light, as well as publication for the Sega Mega-CD.
- On a par with the game The 7th Guest Myst helped popularize the drive CD-ROM.
- In a series of Treehouse of Horror VI of the seventh season of the popular animated television series The Simpsons attentive viewer can see the island of Myst library and hear the music from the game.
- Mini-series based on the television game planned by Mandalay Television Pictures with the participation of Cyan.