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Myst is an adventure video game designed by Rand and Robyn Miller. It was developed by Cyan, Inc., published by Broderbund, and first released in 1993 for the Macintosh. In the game, the player travels via a special book to a mysterious island called Myst. The player interacts with objects and traverses the environment by clicking on pre-rendered imagery. Solving puzzles allows the player to travel to other worlds ("Ages"), which reveal the backstory of the game's characters and help the player make the choice of whom to aid.
The Miller brothers had started in game development creating black-and-white, largely plotless works aimed at children. They wanted Myst to be a graphically impressive game with a nonlinear story and mystery elements aimed at adults. The game's design was limited by the small memory footprint of video game consoles and by the slow speed of CD-ROM drives. The game was created on Apple Macintosh computers and ran on the HyperCard software stack, though ports to other platforms subsequently required the creation of a new engine.
Myst was a critical and commercial success. Critics lauded the ability of the game to immerse players in its fictional worlds. It has been called one of the most influential and best video games ever made. Selling more than six million copies, Myst was the best-selling PC game for nearly a decade. The game helped drive adoption of the CD-ROM drive, spawned a multimedia franchise, and inspired clones, parodies, and new video game genres, as well as spin-off novels and other media. The game has been ported to multiple platforms and remade multiple times.
Apart from its predominantly nonverbal storytelling,[4] Myst's gameplay was unusual among adventure games in several ways. The player is provided with very little backstory at the beginning of the game, and no obvious goals or objectives are laid out. There are no obvious enemies, no physical violence, no time limit to complete the game, and no threat of dying at any point.[3] The game unfolds at its own pace and is solved through a combination of patience, observation, and logical thinking.[4]
As the player continues to explore the island, books linking to more Ages are discovered hidden behind complex mechanisms and puzzles. The player must visit each Age, find the red and blue pages hidden there, and return to Myst Island. These pages can then be placed in the corresponding books. As the player adds more pages to these books, the brothers can be seen and heard more clearly. After collecting four pages, the brothers tell the player where the fifth and final missing page for their book is hidden; if the player can complete either book, that brother will be set free. The player is left with a choice to help Sirrus, Achenar, or neither.[6]
Sirrus and Achenar beg the player not to touch the green book located by their final pages, claiming it to be another trap book like their own. In truth, it leads to D'ni, where Atrus is imprisoned. When the book is opened, Atrus asks the player to bring him a final page that is hidden on Myst Island. The game has several endings, depending on the player's actions. Giving either Sirrus or Achenar the final page of their book causes the player to switch places with the son, leaving the player trapped inside the prison book as the son rips the pages out. Linking to D'ni without the page Atrus asks for leaves the player and Atrus trapped on D'ni. Bringing Atrus the page allows him to complete his Myst book and return to the island. Upon his return, Atrus returns to his writing and allows the player to explore Myst and its Ages at their leisure, while also asking them to be on hand to help in the future, as he was contending with a greater foe than his sons (setting the stage for Riven).[6] Upon returning to the library, the player finds the red and blue books gone, and burn marks on the shelves where they used to be.
Development of Myst began in 1991.[5] The game's creative team consisted of brothers Rand and Robyn, with help from sound designer Chris Brandkamp, 3D artist and animator Chuck Carter, Richard Watson, Bonnie McDowall and Ryan Miller, who together made up Cyan, Inc. Myst was the largest and most time-consuming collaboration Cyan had attempted at that point.[12] Cyan took inspiration from games like Zork, Star Wars' mythic universe, portals to other worlds like in C. S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia, and the mysterious islands of old literature like the works of Jules Verne.[8] The game's name, as well as the overall solitary and mysterious atmosphere of the island, was inspired by the book The Mysterious Island by Verne.[3]
Myst was not only the largest project Cyan had attempted, but also took the longest to develop.[12] The brothers spent months designing the look and puzzles of the Ages,[21] which were influenced by earlier whimsical worlds made for children.[22] Much of the early development time was spent devising puzzles and the Ages, and the story was secondary. "We were place designers [...] and the maps kind of fueled the story," Rand said. The plot evolved in tandem with the changing environment, developing new story details with each new building in the world.[5] They realized that the setting would require developing more story and history than the players would actually see.[22] The climactic ending with Atrus was a later development in the game's story, after Cyan realized they wanted to create a more complicated ending. In retrospect, Robyn felt that Myst did not quite provoke the emotional reaction and ethical quandary they set out to create.[23]
The game was created on Macintosh computers, principally the Macintosh Quadra 700, using the HyperCard software.[21] Cyan discovered using 3D rendering software was faster than the hand-drawn figures that they had used on their previous titles, and allowed the addition of color. The terrain for the Ages were created starting with grayscale heightmaps that were extruded to create changes in elevation. From this basic terrain, textures were painted onto a colormap that was wrapped around the landscapes. Objects such as trees were added to complete the design.[21] Rand noted that attention to detail allowed Myst to deal with the limitations of CD-ROM drives and graphics, stating: "A lot can be done with texture ... Like finding an interesting texture you can map into the tapestry on the wall, spending a little extra time to actually put the bumps on the tapestry, putting screws in things. These are the things you don't necessarily notice, but if they weren't there, would flag to your subconscious that this is fake."[24] The environments were rendered in StrataVision 3D, with some additional modeling in Macromedia MacroModel,[21] while Rand would place those images into HyperCard to link them up and test the puzzle aspects.[11] Overall, Myst contains 2,500 frames, one for each possible area the player can explore.[21] Some frames took hours to render, while others took days. The final images for the game were edited and enhanced using Photoshop 1.0.[21]
When Cyan began development, developing believable characters was a major hurdle. The brothers were limited to one-way communication with the player, and at any point, a player could choose to walk away and "break the spell" of the game. Displaying video in the game was initially infeasible. Designing around the limits, the designers created the trap books, which were location-specific, one-way communication devices. The release of QuickTime halfway through development of the game solved the video issue.[25]
Cyan play-tested the game with two people sitting in front of the game, finding that they would converse with each other and vocalize their likes and dislikes compared to one person silently playing. Rand and Robyn sat behind the testers taking notes, and could make on-the-fly changes and fixes. Cyan wanted the interface of the game to be invisible, and to craft a game that a wide audience would enjoy.[27] Early on they had decided that there would be no inventory, enemies, or ways to die; eventually, they included a save system as a concession to the fact that it would take most players months to complete the game.[5] Among the problems testers discovered with the story was that Myst had no inciting incident. In response, Cyan added a note that clued players in to a chamber that played a message explaining the game's objectives.[28]
Chris Brandkamp served as sound engineer on Myst; he also doubled as Cyan's chief financial officer.[29] Brandkamp produced most of the ambient and incidental sounds in the game. To make sure the sounds fit, Brandkamp had to wait until the game's visuals were placed in context.[21] Sound effects were drawn from unlikely sources; the noise of a fire in a boiler was created by driving slowly over stones in a driveway because recordings of actual fire did not sound like fire burning.[3] The chimes of a large clock tower were simulated using a wrench, then transposed to a lower pitch. Bubbles, which he recalled as "the most hateful sound", was created by blowing bubbles into differently-sized tubes in a toilet.[21]
At first, Myst had no music, because the Millers did not want music to interfere with the gameplay.[21] After a few tests, they realized that the background music did not adversely affect the game, alluding to Super Mario Bros. In fact, "seemed to really help the mood of certain places that you were at in the game."[21] Robyn Miller ended up composing 40 minutes of synthesized music that was used in the game and later published as Myst: The Soundtrack.[21] Mixing and effects were done on an E-mu Proteus MPS synthesizer. The soundtrack was recorded over the course of two weeks' evenings.[30] Initially, Cyan released the soundtrack via a mail-order service, but before the release of Myst's sequel, Riven, Virgin Records acquired the rights to release the soundtrack,[31] and the CD was re-released on April 21, 1998.[32]
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