Twenty Questions

[Lmns Crn]

Yeah, it's a great summary. I may go back and pick it up again some day.

[Steerpike]

I found myself keeping a notebook on all the stuff I couldn't quite get to, so I could go back to it later. So if that sounds like your cup of tea, there you have it.

Interesting. It might well be. One of my fondest gaming memories is playing Riven as a kid and keeping a notebook open to map the islands, make notes on machines, and figure out things like how the D'ni numbers worked and what the different cryptic symbols all meant. This was in the age of dial-up internet (for my house anyway) when I pretty much only went online for school, so online help and hints weren't something I thought of (and would have seemed sacreligious anyway).

[Weave]

I found myself keeping a notebook on all the stuff I couldn't quite get to, so I could go back to it later. So if that sounds like your cup of tea, there you have it.

Interesting. It might well be. One of my fondest gaming memories is playing Riven as a kid and keeping a notebook open to map the islands, make notes on machines, and figure out things like how the D'ni numbers worked and what the different cryptic symbols all meant. This was in the age of dial-up internet (for my house anyway) when I pretty much only went online for school, so online help and hints weren't something I thought of (and would have seemed sacreligious anyway).

Oh man. I still have my old Myst journal somewhere I'm pretty sure. I even have one trying to map out the "sound maze" in Selenetic before I realized it was solved by following tones and not some byzantine layout. The sheer jubilance of solving a puzzle and having all that work pay off was just an unrivaled feeling when I was younger.

[Steerpike]

Have you played Syberia, Weave? If you like point & click adventure games and clockpunk puzzles a la Myst it and its sequel are worth playing.

[Polycarp]

Interesting. It might well be. One of my fondest gaming memories is playing Riven as a kid and keeping a notebook open to map the islands, make notes on machines, and figure out things like how the D'ni numbers worked and what the different cryptic symbols all meant. This was in the age of dial-up internet (for my house anyway) when I pretty much only went online for school, so online help and hints weren't something I thought of (and would have seemed sacreligious anyway).

Why weren't you on when we were discussing Riven in chat weeks ago.  We reached the conclusion that Riven is best.

Also, I still totally have my Myst/Riven notebook.  I got some special edition of Myst back in the day and it came with a blank, bound journal that has my notes in it for the whole series.   :detect:

[LD]

Thank you for the explanations, Crayon and Llum.

If you liked exploring all the caverns, and chambers, a very old game you might enjoy is: Moraff's World. I am not entirely sure you can get it. Its graphics are Castle Wolfenstein 1 style. The game, however, was very good for its time with dungeon and overworld exploration and a wide variety of enemies and things to find.

The part I really liked was the idea of a subterranean open world, with a hardscrabble civilization that never sees the light of the sun, founded by exiled criminals and political targets tossed into a pit by a corrupt Empire. I like the idea of running a semi-sandboxy game in a world like that-- players are all exiled for some sort of crime (maybe they're even guilty of it), and might work toward making a safe society underground for their fellow exiles, escaping back to the surface, getting revenge on the Empire that did this to them, all that stuff.

Sounds a little like the Drow mixed with DarkSun.

[Weave]

Have you played Syberia, Weave? If you like point & click adventure games and clockpunk puzzles a la Myst it and its sequel are worth playing.

I haven't played nor heard of Syberia. A lot of the other point & click adventure games I tried around that era fell somewhat short of the Myst series (maybe I was spoiled on them). I'll check out Syberia. Have you tried Crystal Key, Beyond Atlantis, or Schizm? There was another really old one I played about being on this alien desert planet with all these weird structures you could go into, but for the life of me I can't remember what it's called. It used to scare me because you could get locked into one of the buildings if you stayed too long and some freaky blue aliens would look at you from a window. The aforementioned 3 games were, IIRC, considerably harder than Myst/Riven, and I actually never beat either of them, but they were fun, atmospheric little romps.

[Steerpike]

Haven't played any of those. "Harder than Myst/Riven" sounds a bit terrifying.

Syberia (2002) is much more recent than Myst (1993) but it's a bit of a throwback. It owes a lot to the LucasArts adventure games as well - there are NPCs and stuff, not just you and the landscape, although for the most part you're alone, wandering lonely, painterly structures.

[spoiler=Syberia Images]





[/spoiler]

[Llum]

I'm pretty Syberia got a sequel that got pretty good reviews as well. I have not played ether however.

[Steerpike]

Yeah, actually that last image is from Syberia 2. They're both great - well worth playing for puzzle/adventure game fans. You get quite invested in the protagonist, too. The first is more clockwork-oriented (you ride in a giant wind-up train), the second is more "stonepunk," almost.