The history of Myst is lengthy and storied. The original game arrived in 1993, but, over the years, it’s been remastered, remade, and expanded enough times that it can be tough to keep track of what’s new and what’s old. But one thing has always remained true: all it takes is a single screenshot, and you know you’re looking at Myst. A true PC classic, Cyan Worlds’ point-and-click is still one of the most visually distinctive games of all time. Riven, the sequel, looks just as good – in an era of high-fidelity and photorealism, these games still stand out by the sheer power of their design. And now, they’ve just been updated. The original version of Riven, and the 2000 re-release of Myst, are now officially in 2.0.
Two of the most iconic old games, Myst and Riven both belong to a different era. They’re slow, they’re stoic, and they’re full of mystery, perfectly prepared to leave players to solve everything for themselves, without the leg-ups of tutorials and tooltips. On the contrary, it feels like the classic point-and-click genre, which Myst and Riven both pioneered, is coming back into vogue. If Tempest Rising has revitalized the old-school RTS, and the likes of Ultrakill and Selaco are keeping alive the spirit of the boomer shooter, the recent remaster of Amerzone, the upcoming Syberia remaster, and addition of the Age of Rime expansion to the Myst remake are likely signs that retro adventure games are due a comeback.
And there’s more. Cyan Worlds has just released new, 2.0 updates for both Riven and the semi remastered Myst: Masterpiece Edition. The patches introduce major quality-of-life improvements in the form of improved controller support and a more reliable save system. They move Myst: Masterpiece Edition and Riven to an updated version of the ScummVM engine and allow you to create custom mappings when playing via Steam. All of these changes have also been released for Myst 3: Exile. Most significantly, all three games are now fully Steam Deck verified.
“We’ve been hard at work for the last few months coding, testing, and preparing to ship these changes to you all,” Cyan Worlds says.”Although these changes aren’t necessarily new content updates to the games, Cyan remains committed to continuing to support our legacy games on modern platforms when we’re able to.”
If you’ve never played it before and finally want to sample one of the all-time PC greats, you can get Myst: Masterpiece Edition right here.
Otherwise, you might want to try some of the best puzzle games, or maybe the best story games on PC.
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