#Middleport rose puzzle how to
#Middleport rose puzzle archive
#Middleport rose puzzle mods
#Middleport rose puzzle series

It’s fine to have such a puzzle in the game, but it shouldn’t be the “tutorial”. I don’t think Tower Rotation is particularly hard to figure out, but it is probably close to being the most difficult puzzle in the game. Lack of progress leads to player abandonment - certainly true in today’s environment, but I believe even true in 1993.

There’s no other puzzle you can go to and noodle around with and actually make progress on. That’s a problem: if players are unable to solve it, they have nothing else to do but wander around and try to guess the codes in various panels.

#Middleport rose puzzle how to

To see what I mean, let’s have a look at a “puzzle map”, showing the dependencies between the puzzles on Myst Island:Īs you can see, Myst Island has approximately twelve puzzles, but aside from the Imager (which is less of a puzzle and more of a hint to guide you towards the Tower Rotation puzzle), you cannot make any progress in this game until you figure out how to turn on marker switches, rotate the tower, open the bookshelf, and read the access keys. Issue 1: It blocks every other puzzle in the game. There are two major issues with this puzzle. The problem with the Tower Rotation puzzle

(The following spoils the whole of Myst Island, and has minor spoilers for the rest of the game.) If not, there’s a description of the puzzle here. I’m going to assume you’re familiar with the game, and in particular, the workings of the Tower Rotation puzzle on the first island. And I think it could have been easily fixed. I now believe that this one puzzle is responsible for Myst’s reputation as a beautiful but incomprehensible puzzle box. And unfortunately, it is the first puzzle in the game, blocking all further progress until it is solved: The Tower Rotation puzzle. The above complaints are absolutely accurate, with respect to exactly one puzzle in the game. And nearly every control you can interact with has a well telegraphed effect on the world: there is almost always a cable or pipe running from each control to the thing it controls, or a scale model of the relevant object demonstrating the effect of the button you just pushed, or some other intuitive way to figure out what each control does without having to search around looking for what changed.įinally, it hit me. The puzzles are generally pretty intuitive and well hinted (I’ve sat with several people and watched them solve the whole game, and they generally don’t have too much trouble once things get going). Whenever you push a button or pull a lever, you have to wander around the whole island to see if it did anything.”Ĭonsidering the game in its entirety, the above statements don’t really match how I think of the game. “The problem with Myst is that there are all these controls that have no obvious effect. “It was nice to walk around Myst, but I couldn’t solve any puzzles. While the new player experience is far from fresh in my mind, I have also spoken to a lot of people in that time who have dabbled in Myst, as well as read a lot of opinions on the Internet, and to be honest, the feedback is pretty consistent. I’ve spent a lot of time - around 25 years - thinking about Myst from a design perspective. The Starry Expanse Project - Rebuilding Riven in beautiful realtime 3DĬyan Games /r/FirmamentGame - Cyan's newest adventure title /r/Obduction - Hunrath welcomes you Other /r/pystposting - Myst memes.

#Middleport rose puzzle archive

Myst Archive - An archive of sites long gone, but not forgotten.Mysterium - annual celebration of all things MYST & D'ni.Guild of Messengers Calendar - Check out what's happening in the community.Myst Online: Uru Live - Free-to-play multiplayer version of URU!.iTunes - Myst and Riven for iOS Devices.Myst on Wikipediaĭigital versions of every Myst game are finally available for purchase! Myst III Exile and Myst IV Revelation were recently made available on GOG and Steam.

#Middleport rose puzzle series

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#Middleport rose puzzle mods

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