Myst Review – A Timeless Landmark in Gaming History

Myst Review

Even if you’re too young a gamer to have played the game, chances are you’ve heard the name. If nothing else, the unique alternate spelling of Myst has probably caught your eye. It’s one of those touchstone pop culture names that has transcended the gaming world. Myst was born in the age of point-and-click adventure PC games back in 1993. Developed by Cyan Worlds, Inc, the game achieved huge critical and financial acclaim, selling over six million copies. It also spawned a sequel, Riven.

Now in 2026, Cyan is re-releasing the game on Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5 and PSVR 2. This comes after multiple re-releases on previous console generations and PC. In 2000, they updated the game graphics to include free-roaming, real-time 3D graphics. Most recently, the game was further enhanced to feature VR. The VR feature was available on Quest and Quest 2.

The remarkable thing about Myst is how it transcended the technical limitations of the time and took the player on a magical journey. The trick of tying an interesting narrative to a series of static images allowed players to imagine a world beyond the images on the screen. By today’s standards, clicking on any of the four sides of a static image to navigate through an imaginary world is quite quaint. Before smooth 3D navigation was possible with games like Doom, Myst was the first step towards such a possibility.

Story is the backbone of Myst, and exploration is the narrative thrust that propels it forward. You play Myst as an unnamed person who stumbles across an unusual book with the title of Myst. What makes the book special is it is a portal to an island world. Which is called, you guessed it, Myst. It is here that the full tale unfolds. What you find is a very biblical tale of family and betrayal. The betrayal involves a father, a mother, and their two sons.

Myst – Red Or Blue Pill Er… Book?

When you explore the island, you will find two books: one red and one blue. These books are portals of a different sort, for they are traps. Traps that hold the two sons, Sirrus and Achenar. They once all lived on Myst Island with their parents, Atrus and Catherine. From each of the books, the brothers tell the same story. Their father is dead, and each blames the other.

You don’t know which brother is telling the truth, but as you explore the island, you find out more about Atrus. Atrus can craft books like those holding his sons, as well as yours that link to other worlds. You can access these worlds or Ages from the Myst island by finding books through solving puzzles, and making mechanisms work again.

After a player finds a new book, they can journey to its Age and hunt for red and blue pages. With these new pages, the player learns more from new messages from the brothers. There are four Ages to explore: the Channelwood, the Mechanical, the Stoneship and the Selentic. Including Myst Island, the player has five worlds to explore in total.

Each Age is a different world and presents its own mysteries and puzzles to solve. Channelwood is a world of trees and water that you must learn to navigate. The Mechanical Age features gears and bridges that you must decipher to make them work. The Myst Island Rocketship gives you access to the Selenitic Age. Selenitic is a geological term for a type of gypsum once thought to wax and wane with the moon. Here you will deal with solving a puzzle related to a satellite puzzle and sounds. The Stoneship Age is related to planetarium and has to do with the stars.

Oh – There’s A Green Book Too?

The game features a major choice for the player to make. Once you have collected four pages, the brothers will tell you where to find the fifth page that will free each of them. When you have the fifth page for each book, they will reveal a new, green book. The brothers urge you not to open the green book because it is a trap. So you can help either brother or neither.

Ignoring the brothers and opening the green book will reveal a new path. I won’t spoil the new path(s) for you, but the outcome, for good or ill, is up to you to experience. The storytelling and lack of player death are the defining characteristics of the game. Though perhaps being trapped in an alien world is worse than dying. Take heart though, the game will create an auto-save just before you make a bad choice.

For this version of the game, Cyan has given PS5 players two ways to play the game: flat or in VR. Most will play it in flat, but the real draw is the VR version. For longtime Myst fans, it’s quite a kick to see the island and Ages in real-world scale. You truly experience things in a much more immersive manner. It’s much spookier and unsettling to stand on an empty island with no one for company except the sound of the wind, waves, insects, and birds.

Although Myst upgraded to HD quality in 2020, the lack of HDR mutes the image. The colors lack any pop, which is a shame. The game offers graphical choices between Performance and Normal. Normal mode offers ray tracing and other unspecified graphical touches. Performance offers a better frame. On the PS5 Pro, choosing either setting did not change the locked 60 frames per second performance.

Flat And PSVR 2 Visuals

Great news for those playing flat, but not so much for PSVR 2 players. That’s because a locked 60 FPS means in VR the game also runs at the same frame rate but doubled, or reprojected, to 120 FPS. This leads to a blurry image when you move around and look at objects you are passing. Everyone has a personal level of tolerance to reprojection. Ideally, the game would have run at one of the PSVR 2’s native refresh rates of either 90 or 120 FPS.

One of the more recent options added to the game is to choose to randomize the puzzles so players can’t rely on memory for solutions. In addition, the game offers a bunch of comfort settings for both versions of the game to remove any points of irritation. You can skip animations and transitions and the choice of teleportation versus smooth motion, plus more.

Newcomers to the Myst series should understand that this game comes from another era. There’s no pressure to rush through it; instead, it unfolds at a deliberately relaxed pace that rewards exploration, with outcomes shaped by what you discover along the way. There is also a fair amount of reading, which shouldn’t be skipped, as these sections provide not just backstory but essential clues.

While the pacing may feel slow by modern gaming standards, Myst still succeeds thanks to its captivating narrative, rich sense of mystery, and the satisfaction of discovery. Now enhanced by the option to experience it in VR. If you’re looking for a slower, more thoughtful adventure with intriguing puzzles, Myst remains well worth your time.

***PlayStation 5 key provided by publisher***