Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Draco18s]

This game hasn't hit B12 yet, and I figured I'd change that.  Cyan hasn't produced a new title in a long time, apparently they've been pitching this one to a number of publishers and never came to an agreement because they're always thinking of something else than what Cyan wants to do.  Apparently it's going to using Unreal Engine 4.  It already has 11k backers, current pledges sit at $611,641 of $1.1m (55%) and still has 20 days to go.

I like that the pledge level for receiving the box (which is exclusive to the Kickstarter campaign) is significantly lower than some other Kickstarters being only $75 (I had to pay $100+ for some others, IIRC).  A digital copy of the game is only $25, which is about the middle of the pack.

http://kck.st/16d8IRE

Obduction is an all-new, real-time, first-person adventure that harkens back to the spirit of Cyan’s earlier games Myst and Riven. Obduction resurrects that incredible feeling of suddenly finding yourself in the middle of a new world to explore, discover, solve, and become part of.

[lordcooper]

I never actually played any of their previous games.  Do they follow the traditional 'combine the wrench with the salmon to make a chair that can be used to bribe the traffic warden to let you play the piano in the orphanage' adventure game path?

[puke]

No, Myst came up in the era of FMV dramatic puzzle games like The Seventh Guest.  CDROMs were new, so high res graphics and video were novel.

Also, Adventure games were pretty mature but not totally inbred yet, so they hadn't developed the level of absurdity that you describe.

I dont actually remember Myst having any inventory system to speak of, it was all about manipulating your environment (pulling a lever, pushing a button, turning a valve) in the right combination to solve a puzzle and allow you to advance.  Some times you had to pick up clues from the atmospheric sounds in the background, sometimes from text, sometimes purely mechanical / visual.

Myst's puzzles were far more tactile and mechanical in nature than the purely intellectual (language, math, geometry) puzzles of The Seventh Guest.

It was beautiful, evocative, and well thought out.  Wasnt a huge fan of the story, but it was easy to ignore.  I'm not sure I currently have the patience for that sort of game, but if you enjoy artful puzzles then I would bet these guys are worth your time.

[Bouchart]

Myst didn't have any inventory, aside from a couple of pages from two books.

[Mageziya]

Myst eh? Played the third game when I was younger (Exile or something? Or maybe it was Myst 4 that I played. Vague memories of a man, bird trapped inside a plant, key with a blue end, and a giant glass marble on a track thing.). Seems interesting.

[Alkhemia]

The myst series is pretty much my favorite game series of all time I wonder if this new game can live up to the old ones legacy.

[Aoi]

The puzzles of the Myst universe (at least for the first few) were generally mechanical in nature and usually had hints scattered around the world. So, not only did you have to find the hint, but you had to realize what you were looking at, and put everything together. (I have vague memories of one puzzle where there were these orbs with scratches and numbers on them. You had to assemble the conversions then realize that you're doing equations in base-7 or something like that, to solve it.) Some of the earlier ones had levers and buttons that clunked... and nothing. Forcing you to hunt around for exactly what changed when you did that. That got pared down.

The original Myst had effectively had one inventory item-- book pages. They were the final objective of each area, and used to get the hint to open the ending. Latter ones got a feeeew more items, but they're all storyline driven, not puzzle-based.

In terms of an explicit story, there was some, but I'd say it paled in comparison to the worlds. A lot of it came from the atmosphere, looking at what was in each world, and trying to understand what happened from what's left. (Think anthropological.)

I found the later ones to have less obtuse puzzles. They were... a bit more standalone? Instead of hunting around for scribbles on a wall that corresponded to musical notes that you had to map onto a breaker (a bit of a stretch for what you might have actually seen, but not THAT much...), you might end up with something like having to use switches to turn on the correct lights to navigate a tunnel.

(If you're looking for something more in the vein of King's Quest/Monkey Island style adventure games, you might take a look at Daedelic Entertainment's stuff. Love the Edna & Harvey series, though they're a bit rough around the edges. And have some of the most unreliable narrators ever, though that's intentional.)

[Darkmere]

I liked Myst apart from setting it aside for years because I was off by a half-note on the rocketship age unlock (I think that's what it was, at least). Riven was just obtuse and asinine, and I lost patience with it very quickly. Never felt motivated to try any of the others.

[Aoi]

I liked Myst apart from setting it aside for years because I was off by a half-note on the rocketship age unlock (I think that's what it was, at least). Riven was just obtuse and asinine, and I lost patience with it very quickly. Never felt motivated to try any of the others.

Yep, Riven was the most rage inducing by far. Exile did away with the obtuseness and let you actually enjoy the world.

[Sonlirain]

I never actually played any of their previous games.  Do they follow the traditional 'combine the wrench with the salmon to make a chair that can be used to bribe the traffic warden to let you play the piano in the orphanage' adventure game path?

No but someof the puzzles there are downright evil.
The first "Myst" even got itself a parody called "Pyst" showing the island from the first game wrecked by angry players (Pyst get it? Haha!).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyst

[Xinvoker]

Anyone remember a game of this genre with "Atlantis" in its name? You start on a ship, and there's a shiny ball, I never managed to get further than that, and I can't find it on Google.
I remember really liking the atmosphere though.

[Aoi]

Anyone remember a game of this genre with "Atlantis" in its name? You start on a ship, and there's a shiny ball, I never managed to get further than that, and I can't find it on Google.
I remember really liking the atmosphere though.

Atlantis: The Lost Tales (or part of that series)?

Never played them myself, but I remember seeing comparisons between that and Myst.

[Sensei]

Anyone remember a game of this genre with "Atlantis" in its name? You start on a ship, and there's a shiny ball, I never managed to get further than that, and I can't find it on Google.
I remember really liking the atmosphere though.

Hey, I remember that! It was utter shite all around, you didn't miss much. I'm pretty sure it was called Nautilus, or any rate you start off having boarded the Nautilus, which has been long abandoned when you find it. You find a metal ball in a boot, then you have to put the metal ball in a fusebox (type thing) which conducts the broken wires in there (yes, just a bunch of different wires) and allows you to open the door. Then you can start exploring the ship. I played it when it was new, and it inevitably crashed after you wandered around a few rooms. That game was utter shite.

Anyway, I played through all the Myst games except Riven. They all had a few asinine puzzles, but I thought they were great all around. Compared to, say, monkey island and king's quest and the ilk, they pretty much never had puzzles that ended up with you clicking randomly until you realize you can kill the yeti with a pie, or something. As people have said Riven was absurd and there are the some puzzles with dumb solutions (pull the chain twice quickly? FUCK YOU CLOCK TOWER), but on the whole they made sense once you figured them out.

Myst III: Exile was definitely the easiest, it wasn't actually made by Cyan. I didn't like Revelations very much, but I had the unfortunate experience of playing the Xbox port so often times I was actually trying to do the correct thing but the inputs weren't working right- I remember being stuck for hours on a puzzle where I had to open a gate and there was a box with a panel next to it. I eventually turned to the in-game hint system and it told me to do a bunch of stuff after opening the panel. I pretty much pulled my hair out when I realized that despite my failing to open the panel 50 times, it wasn't actually locked, I just had to finagle the controls more.

[Aoi]

Anyone remember a game of this genre with "Atlantis" in its name? You start on a ship, and there's a shiny ball, I never managed to get further than that, and I can't find it on Google.
I remember really liking the atmosphere though.

Hey, I remember that! It was utter shite all around, you didn't miss much. I'm pretty sure it was called Nautilus...

The Mystery of the Nautilus? Never heard of it until now, and judging from the hits I'm getting, neither has the rest of the internet... Here's one of the only informative links I could find on it: http://www.gameboomers.com/reviews/Mm/MysteryNautlisbyRick36.htm

[Xantalos]

Ooh! Watching.