Myst

Myst, the game that ended the adventure game genre... or so they say. We got it back in the early 90's, then I wasn't able to finish it until I was in high-school and that was without going through a walkthrough. One of my prouder gaming moment I must say. So what is this game? Really just a puzzle game. One day you stumble through a book that you read about an island. At the end is an picture that start moving and when you touch it you enter the island. That's the set up and you have to discover what happened and get yourselves out of there. What makes this game rather memorable is the ambiance and feeling of loneliness. Sometimes even of horror. And in some locations I can't stop thinking of the Scarecrow from Batman the Animated Series. Mostly due to the first episode he appears in (update: well, more correctly the first episode I saw with him) have a location in a stable with wooden planks all over, the same as many tunnels in the main island. This made it more scarier than the game actually was.

And they say cartoons are for kids

Another reason why it took some time would be the lack of my english vocabulary, which is rather important for this game, since all answers to the puzzles lies in a bookshelf. The last problem is that it can be rather tricky reading the text at places. Really, just use pen and paper, spend one or two hours at the bookshelf by writing down codes, schematics and hints and of you go.

Now onto the spoiler area, what happened is that you took a D'ni book by mistake. The D'ni seems to be either some demigod race or technical wizards that can create worlds by writing so called linking books that can teleport you to their location. The island Myst was created by Atrus who has imprisoned his two sons who basically are psychopaths that destroys everything he builds. The story follows you trying to release one or both by finding their color-coded book pages scattered across several ages (worlds that is) to set them free from their prison books. Releasing them gives you a game over so at the same time you need to gather clues to find Atrus. And I solved all the puzzles, I amazes myself some time.

Even Atrus have a hard time believing I could do it.