Obduction, by the people who brought you Myst

midga

Here's a thing by the people responsible for Myst. Kickstarter's over $1.1M funded, 44 hours to go. Reading what they have to say and looking at some of the conceptual stuff, I think it's gonna be a game well worth playing.

Linc

Already funded that bad boy.

Linc

Q: How do you undermine a mechanical engineer's new business plans?
A: "You've seriously never played Myst or Riven? Dude."

BHHammy

The original Myst is a game that hasn't aged gracefully at all, and I'm not talking visuals. The imagination and concept behind it is great, and it was revolutionary for it's time, but the game itself is actually fairly unintuitive. It's -easy- to get stuck in that game, and unless you're incredibly diligent with your note-taking on....pretty much everything, there's a VERY good chance you won't make it through the game entirely. Mind you, I "get" that that's supposed to be kind of the charm, it's just a game that gives you rather minimal feedback, which is important in a game that's based on that sort of overt exploration. You get -just- enough to make it through, and that's about it. Not saying that at the time they could've done much better (the game was still large in scope for the time)- just saying it hasn't aged well. Hindsight's 20-20.

My dad actually had the original boxed copy of this game when it first came out. Most original boxed copies of the game actually gave you a grey blank journal simply titled "The Journal of Myst" on the front. It was a game that expected you to write down notes on -everything-, and I remember that my dad filled that damn thing up. The unruined books in the library (and re-sketching the drawings within on physical paper), everything.

They'd gotten a lot better at working more inuitive design, without holding your hand, into their worlds with Uru: Ages of Myst, which is STILL online and actively maintained for free for anyone to play by the folks that run this very kickstarter. If you're a fan of the series I -HIGHLY- recommend checking it out here!

I'm really glad to see them doing something commercial again- back when I'd picked up Uru again out of curiosity, they'd been teasing about a new project they'd been working on. This one looks really good, and I have all confidence they'd be able to pull it off. Given that it'll be done in Unreal Engine 4, it'll be super-neat to see what these guys' imaginations come up with.

Linc

BHHammy said:

the game itself is actually fairly unintuitive. It's -easy- to get stuck in that game, and unless you're incredibly diligent with your note-taking on....pretty much everything, there's a VERY good chance you won't make it through the game entirely.

Are we talking about Myst or Minecraft?

I puzzled over Myst for weeks and weeks when it first came out. Yesterday I watched Ryan play most of the game in one sitting (it was his first time playing). The few times he got stuck, it looked like a lack of patience, not a lack of intuitiveness in the game design.

MiracleManS

Lincoln said:

Are we talking about Myst or Minecraft?

I puzzled over Myst for weeks and weeks when it first came out. Yesterday I watched Ryan play most of the game in one sitting (it was his first time playing). The few times he got stuck, it looked like a lack of patience, not a lack of intuitiveness in the game design.

My first time through Myst was so frustrating that I've never finished a play through. Maybe I went into it with the wrong mindset, but I can honestly say nothing about it felt natural or intuitive given my other gaming experiences.

RyanFodder

I beat the game in approximately 7 hours. I knew that I needed to write down every scrap of information. When I did get stuck, it was due to not seeing something / not being complete in my exploration.

One thing that I did that was really helpful was to read the books in the library on each of the worlds. The pictures there made sense after I was in the worlds.

(there's a map of channel wood that I didn't see and saw after I got stuck that would have been helpful, for example.)

PirateNinja

Myst was awesome. I absolutely loved that game. I played it as a kid, and I remember very clearly never being able to pass the piano puzzle. I was 10-11? years old, I just didn't have the capacity but it makes for very fun memories. I'm very excited to see this new game in a few years Thanks for donating for those of you that did.