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 Matt Peckham
Call it “standalone DLC” for TIME top 10 pick Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End if you must, it’s effectively a new PlayStation 4 Uncharted game from studio Naughty Dog that brings back a character we haven’t seen since Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.
It’s called Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and Sony teased gamers for several minutes at the outset of its PlayStation Experience in Los Angeles on Saturday with a video of said character disguised in a hijab before revealing it was i…
Read moreA Tomb Raider TV series in the works from Emmy-winning writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and now two names have surfaced for who could play the lead role of Lara Croft.
Deadline reported that Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner and Bohemian Rhapsody’s Lucy Boynton are on the “wishlist” to play the role. The site said they have not auditioned yet but are among those being seriously considered for the part.
Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie played the role of Lara Croft in multiple Tomb Raider movies over the years, while another Academy Award-winner, Alicia Vikander, portrayed Lara Croft in 2018’s Tomb Raider.
Deadline said the audition process for the new Tomb Raider show has been “shrouded in secrecy,” and noted that the casting process to find Lara Croft could be “one of the hot…
Read moreHorizon Zero Dawn Remastered has been rated by the ESRB, suggesting that an upgraded version of the open-world game is in development for PS5 and PC Come from South African Online Casinos . First released for the PS4 in 2017, Horizon Zero Dawn was later ported to PC in 2020 and received a sequel–Horizon Forbidden West–in 2023. Rumors of a remaster first popped up in 2022, as a report claimed that accessibility features, graphical modes, and quality-of-life improvements to the gameplay itself would bring the game up to the same standard as its sequel.
The listing, which is still live at the time of writing, details the basic plot of the game, as well as small references to sexual material, fictional dr…
Read moreiGaming Ontario, unsurprisingly, welcomed the judgement.
Ontario’s Supreme Court has ruled that iGaming Ontario operates in accordance with the Criminal Code. The regulatory body for the Canadian province of Ontario welcomes the decision regarding how it conducts and manages iGaming. In a press statement, the Executive Director of iGaming Ontario, Martha Otton, stated…
“We have always been confident in our model and are pleased that the court has ruled in our favor, and that Ontarians can continue to play with confidence in our regulated iGaming market.”
She reiterated that…
“Ontario’s model meets the requirements and contributes to the public good by protecting players, their data and their funds…
Read moreThe Three Mile Island nuclear power plant–the site where an infamous partial nuclear meltdown occurred in 1979–might have a new owner soon. Microsoft has signed a power purchase agreement with the current owner of the plant, Constellation, and the deal now needs to go through regulators to be approved. If successful, Microsoft will have exclusive rights to 100% of the output from the plant for 20 years, which will be used to fuel its AI data center requirements.
Interestingly, the plant is located next to a unit that was shut down in 1979 after the Three-Mile Island accident, but it was retired in 2019. Microsoft will reopen it if the sale goes through, and it’s expected to generate 837 megawatts of energy, enough power for more than 800,000 homes. Come from Read more
One of the best video games of the past decade, Nier: Automata, recently got an anime adaptation. The series was praised for its faithful retelling of the acclaimed video game’s mind-bending narrative, and soon fans will be able to add the full run to their Blu-ray collection with the Nier: Automata Ver. 1.1a Collector’s Edition. The Blu-ray set is available exclusively through the Crunchyroll Store, and preorders are now live ahead of its October 15 release date.
Preorder Nier: Automata Ver. 1.1a Collector’s Edition
$120 ($150)
This four-disc set includes the full run of the Nier Automata series plus extra content like promotional trailers, clean versions of the intro and ending credit sequences, and a bunch of physical goodies including:…
Read moreIf you’re looking for a fun way to listen to your favorite music, take a look at the Udreamer Vinyl Wireless Record Player. Amazon is running a limited-time deal that brings its price to just $36 (was $70) when you redeem the coupon code on its Amazon store page. This is the lowest price we’ve ever seen for the Bluetooth record player, though it’s unclear how long the discount will last, so be sure to grab this deal while you can. Luckily, most locations can have it delivered before Christmas, making this a fun holiday gift for the music lover in your life.
If you want to snag a few records to go with your new record player, a bunch of cool gaming soundtracks are available at Am…
Read moreIf you enjoyed Batman: Caped Crusader on Prime Video and are interested in revisiting the superhero’s past animated adventures, Amazon has some excellent deals on Batman Blu-ray box sets for Black Friday 2024. For Caped Crusader fans, the most notable deal of the bunch is Batman: The Complete Animated Series on Blu-ray for $30 (was $71). Caped Crusader is considered a spiritual successor to this beloved series, and the early ’90s series still stands tall as the best animated Batman TV series of all time.
Batman: The Complete Animated Series (Blu-ray)
$30 ($71)
This 12-disc box set includes all 85 episodes of the original animated series that ran from 1992-95, as well as the complete arc of The New Batman Adventures, …
Read moreA new teaser trailer for The Monkey, the latest film from Longlegs director Osgood Perkins, will probably put you off those awful cymbal clashing toys for good.Back in August, the first trailer for The Monkey didn’t show off all that much, just the titular monkey doing a light spot of drumming with a shot of lead actor Theo James covered in a lot of blood. Just yesterday, Neon put out another teaser trailer, this time a redband one, so it’s got more of that classic horror stuff: violence. A lot of it is just implied, the calm before the storm when it comes to deaths, instilling a strong sense of anxiety around swimming pools, hibachi chefs, and, well, drumming. Much like Longelgs, the vibes look quite strong once again, though that film’s ending was a bit pants so I have some reservations …
Read moreDuring last night’s Gamescom Opening Night Live, veteran developer Peter Molyneux took to the stage to properly reveal his latest project, a god game called Masters of Albion. While there was plenty about it that’s designed to remind people of classic Fable, it seems the game also bears some similarities to Molyneux’s ill-fated blockchain game, Legacy.For a bit of context, Legacy was announced back in 2021 by Molyneux and his company 22cans, with the pitch being that it was a blockchain-based business sim in which players would buy NFT ‘plots’ of land using cryptocurrency, as, to paraphrase Grandpa Simpson, was a bit of a style at the time. The game was released late last year, and is still a live thing, even if the NFT bubble it was designed to captilise on f…
Read more