1993 was a transformative year for PC gaming. First came Syndicate, the superb strategy game from Populous creator Bullfrog. There was also a controversial and technically experimental FPS called Doom – launched in the December, it’s hard to name a more influential shooter in the history of gaming. But Myst was something truly different. While mechanically it stood on the shoulders of the point-and-click pioneers built by Sierra, it was driven more by aesthetics, atmosphere, and tone. Even today, 32 years later, you can identify Myst by a single image. It’s been re-launched, remastered, remade, and expanded, but now, thanks to a big new update from developer Cyan, Myst feels like it is finally whole.
We begin with Myst in 1993, the first and foundational version of one of the best PC games ever. Skip ahead seven years, however, and you have Real Myst: Interactive 3D Edition. A complete remake, this allows players to move around the mysterious, puzzle-laden island in real time, rather than the original game where you click through environments that are pre-rendered.
In 2014 comes Real Myst: Masterpiece Edition, which ports Real Myst to the Unity engine and adds further graphical improvements, and then, finally, in 2021, the entire game is rebuilt again from top to bottom, in service to modern screen resolutions. This version is the mononymic Myst that you will now find on Steam – the other, earlier versions all have longer titles.
But despite being the newest, arguably most definitive version of the puzzle game, this latest Myst has been missing something. See, in 1997, Cyan released Riven, a complete sequel to Myst, with much harder riddles. When Real Myst and Real Myst: Masterpiece Edition were launched later, Cyan added an expansion, complete with new environments, puzzles, and lore, called The Age of Rime. It forged a bridge between the events of the first game and Riven. The only problem? While you could play Age of Rime in Real Myst, it had never been updated and re-released for the new, 2021 Myst remake. Until now.
As of today, Friday March 28, the modernized version of Myst is now complete with the Age of Rime expansion. Remastered and re-engineered, with all-new visuals and story beats that were never present in the Real Myst version, this new take on Age of Rime is also completely free. So now we have a total remake of Myst and a total remake of the expansion all in a single package, effectively consolidating three decades of Cyan’s masterwork into one game.
It feels like a homecoming: after all the different versions, editions, and re-launches, everything Myst-related is finally under the same roof. If you want to try Myst and the new-look Age of Rime expansion, just head here.
Otherwise, enjoy some of the other best old games, or maybe the best story games on PC.
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