A Dictionary of the Language of Myst's D'ni

I absolutely love that, after all these years, Myst is still capturing our attention. I am not a huge gamer, but of all the games I have played, Myst still remains my favorite.

I think it's the first game that really transcended what games were at the time. Prior to PCs, games were mostly just hand-eye coordination checks. Myst was the first game I played that really engaged the brain and problem solving.

You never played interactive fiction games prior to Myst? There was plenty of thinking and problem solving in those games. It was certainly a huge graphical leap forward over the previous point-and-click adventure game, but I didn't feel it was particularly a qualitative jump in puzzle content.

I was wondering about the text based games myself while reading GP. Zork was nothing but a puzzle game that definitely did not require hand-eye coordination or any other skill set other than solving puzzles. That's what Myst was as well, only with pretty pictures

> Prior to PCs, games were mostly just hand-eye coordination checks

Not sure what you call a PC, but there are 17 years of problem-solving computer games (text adventures, click-and-point adventures, RPGs, real-time and round-based strategy games,...) before Myst.

We played it together as a family. Good memories.

Sounds related to the Knights that say “ni”

Including from Cyan! But the gps point still stands Myst felt more...alive? than other IF games of the time. The videos, graphics, and atmosphere were top notch of the time, and it drew people in like crazy.

To be fair, they did say "mostly".

I'm getting a 404 from this.

One of the best HyperCard stacks of all time.

I don't think this was ever confirmed, but based on the spelling of the art assets in the original game ("dunny") I always assumed it was a pun on "Done," because the D'ni study chamber is where the last interactions occur.

every year for the past decade and change I've gotten to see Myst and Riven mentioned in Twitter and sometimes here. I really doubt this is coincidence or the law of averages doing its thing. Each instance delivers many awesome nostalgic feels of reading Wired (or was it Mondo 2000?) in the mid-late 90s and thumbing past the fairly large sized ads with the ill fantasy ladscapes which in turn made me think of Bryce 3D ...

ditto

Sure, I played the heck out of games like that on my Commodore 64, but it still doesn't match, for me at least, the depth of the puzzles and problem solving in Myst.

Myst was the top selling game for several years.

There were lots of adventure games on PCs before Myst, where Myst differed was in atmosphere and immersion: it was arguably the first game where you really felt like you were in a different world, as opposed to playing something on your computer. I think that's why it is lodged so deep in collective memory.

I missed this train when I was a kid, but now with myst and riven re-released I played it with my son. We have a journal for each game, that we filled with hints, translations and solutions we found. That was a precious time.

Cyan even made The Manhole prior to Myst. I remember playing that on a Mac SE/30.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manhole

I played through a bit of Riven within the last few years, for the first time since I was a kid.

I don't think I would've gotten anywhere if I hadn't been writing things down on paper. It feels more like cultural anthropology than it does a videogame.