Myst, The Game


Myst comes with almost no instruction. You begin the experience with a brief cinematic introduction, which attempts to explain why you are placed on the island of Myst. From there, the rest is essentially up to you.

The interface is very intuitive, and very simple. The player (the reader) navigates him/herself across and around the island by clicking in the direction s/he would like to move. That is, to move forward, you click on the top of the screen. This simple interface could be likened to the effortlessness of ludic reading: the process by which one explores becomes secondary to the exploration itself. In this way, the effortless absorption inherent to pleasure reading is mimicked in hypermedia.

Exploration is integral to Myst, as it is in the most successful multimedia hypertexts (Freak Show is another example). Perhaps Rand and Robin Miller put it best in A Message From Cyan.




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