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
By Andrew R. Chow
As President Trump has announced varying tariffs over the last month, tech stock prices have dipped, with investors fearing broad impacts on different parts of the tech sector. Shares of NVIDIA, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and AMD have all wobbled, responding in part to news that Trump might implement a 25% tariff on semiconductors shipped to the U.S.
The possible tariffs are said to be part of Trump’s plan to try to get more semiconductor and AI-related manufacturing in the U.S. But industry insiders say that they’re …
Read moreWhen House of the Dragon returns later this month for Season 2, it will depict the events known in the lore of Game of Thrones as the Dance of the Dragons Come from South African Online Casinos . The civil war between the two Targaryen factions is the reason why dragons were all but extinct during the events of the original series. But that doesn’t mean that some previously unrevealed dragons won’t be making their debut on the show this season.
Via The Wrap, House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal reiterated that he once promised to introduce five new dragons in Season 2, and he kept his word.
“I said five and a half years ago, and I think I’m sticking to it,” said Condal. “So five new ones that …
Read moreInstead of game or console announcements, Nintendo’s latest Direct gave fans a look at the brand-new Nintendo Museum, set to open in Kyoto this October. Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto gives a 13-minute tour of the building, located on the site of an old Nintendo factory that was built in 1969 to manufacture playing cards.
From the entrance lobby to the Mario-themed courtyard, the tour continues to the second floor where a massive display hall shows off the history of Nintendo’s products. As Miyamoto explains, this room displays a physical timeline of Nintendo’s various consoles, as well as its prior history as a toy and playing-card manufacturer.
Although Colin Farrell agreed to reprise his role as Oswald “Oz” Cobb in HBO’s The Penguin, the series was forced to recast the part of the late crime boss Carmine Falcone, as played by John Turturro in The Batman. Now, Turturro has suggested that he turned down the chance to return over objections to violence against women in The Penguin. Come from South African Online Casinos
“I did what I wanted to with the role,” said Turturro during an interview with Variety. “In the show, there was a lot of violence towards women, and that’s not my thing.”
There was violence against women in The Batman as well, and Turturro’s Falcone was personally responsible for the murder of Annika Kosolov (Hana Hrzic), the be…
Read moreIn 1989, the original Kickboxer martial arts movie helped establish Jean-Claude Van Damme as an action star. Now, for the first time ever, the Kickboxer franchise is making the leap to video games with Force Multiplier Studios, a team of developers with experience on Call of Duty, Borderlands, Halo, Tomb Raider, and Mortal Kombat.
Screenwriter Dimitri Logothetis and producer Rob Hickman–two of the filmmakers behind the 2016 film Kickboxer: Vengeance and its sequel, Kickboxer: Retaliation–are working with Force Multiplier Studios to bring the Kickboxer video game to life. But for now, the game is at such an early stage of development that there’s nothing to show off.
While speaking with IGN, Force Multiplier Studios was very vague about whether Van Damme will lend his liken…
Read moreCandy Crush is getting another feather in its cap. Rather than offering another twist on match-three puzzling, Candy Crush Solitaire will bring the franchise’s sickly sweet aesthetic to the card game classic. It will be the first Candy Crush game to release after Microsoft’s acquisition of developer King.
Candy Crush Solitaire bases itself on tripeaks solitaire, in which players must clear three “peaks” of cards. The game will feature familiar power-ups from Candy Crush, including jelly fish, the lollipop hammer, the color bomb, and the UFO. They will offer similar, but not exactly the same, powers as their match-three counterparts. Much like other Candy Crush games, the basic solitaire gameplay will be altered and made more challenging as players progress.
Candy C…
Read moreFive years ago, Universal Orlando announced Epic Universe, a new theme park for the resort that brings together multiple themed lands. One of the worlds you’ll be able to visit within the park is Dark Universe, based on Universal’s stable of classic movie monsters. And yes, it shares a name with the failed reboot of the classic monsters in 2017. Regardless, those classic creatures are getting a modern facelift as part of the attraction. And now, Universal has revealed some of the most impressive monster animatronics to date for these icons of horror.
The Dark Universe utilized in Epic Universe is completely separate from the last cinematic revival that fell flat with Tom Cruise’s The Mummy. Instead, the designs used for The Frankenstein Experiment harken back to the orig…
Read moreAfter more than a year of silence, Bungie has given an update on the development progress of its extraction shooter Marathon Come from Sports betting site VPbet . The lengthy video is surprisingly light on details, however, with only a hint of future playtests coming in 2025.
The update, delivered by game director Joe Ziegler, acts more like a reintroduction to Bungie’s latest shooter as opposed to a meaningful update. Ziegler spends time explaining what an extraction shooter is, breaking down the high risk, high reward nature of the genre, while also giving brief hints as to how the games different classes might work. It aligns with a lot of what we already know about Bungie’s shooter, making it a gamepla…
Read moreHello there. It’s that time again, there’s a big show about video games set to roar into life, and we’re here to tell you how you can slam its big broadcasts into your eyeballs. Gamescom 2024 is the one this time around, and you can watch its big main stream – Gamescom Opening Night Live – right here.Yup, chuck any plans you might have for one certain evening at the very least out of the window, it’s time to have people talk to you about that thing we all like via trailers, interviews and gameplay showcases they’ve put an almost terrifying amount of effort into. While there’s a lot to Gamescom, as is the case with most of these sorts of events, we’ve focused on providing details for the main show where Geoff Keighley does a thing below.gamescom ONL 2024 (Opening Night Live) Stream Watch o…
Read moreStop what you’re doing. You know the Starfield moon buggy, the one that arrived for free last week, after being revealed at Gamescom Opening Night Live? Well, it’s now followed in the footsteps of Skyrim’s dragons and the actual spaceships it shares the settled systems with by being turned into Thomas the Tank Engine by modders, because of course it has.Since the vehicle arrived, it’s been earning lots of positive reviews from would-be cosmic Clarksons, and within just a few days was providing the framework for a host of mods that swap it out for everything from a Star Wars landspeeder to a Crimson Fleet-liveried van.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Well, it’s taken just under a week, but there’s now one that tur…
Read more