This is what you get when you take all the good bits of your earlier
games and get rid of almost all the not so good bits (did I mention
there was no blue matter??!!), and combine it with the best bits of
another game. And clearly have a passion for all things Myst-y.
If you too like Mystyness, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t play
this.
Of their games that I have played, Simon did ASA and Catyph, and
Denis did RoonSehv, all of which I have reviewed here at GB. None are
perfect, but all are worth playing if you like solitary puzzling, and
you can read the reviews to sort out which might appeal to you.
But do play this.
That is not to diminish the others but as I have already said, all
the best bits end up here. So it is the sum of the experiences to date,
and all the better for it.
You are a cosmonaut, sent to the Moon in response to a distress call
to try and locate a missing member of an earlier expedition. You soon
encounter a black cube, familiar to you if you have played Simon’s
earlier games but which is unnecessary for playing this one. But it’s
a weird cube to say the least. Which is where the planet Myha comes in.
I liked the fact that from the get go there were many places you
could explore. Being contained to a relatively small environment wasn’t
an issue. I also liked that it forsook node to node progression and
adopted the complete free-wheeling, go anywhere, look all around
locomotion that so much better reflects an exploratory nature.
So too that sorting out what to do and where to go first is a
consideration. Yet there is an (almost) obvious staring point, if you
explore a little bit first. So it eases you into what is to come.
Which isn’t easy. No hand holding here. The whys and the wherefores are
as much a part of the puzzling as the puzzles themselves. Get out the
brain and the pencil and the notebook and settle in. Explore thoroughly
and carefully, then do it again. There are numbers and colours, as well
as patterns to be unravelled. A number system to be more precise.
I can’t say I didn’t need help but I didn’t think that the
puzzles were unfair. My resort to a walkthrough at times didn’t
overwhelm the puzzling challenge, and I was well pleased with my own
efforts, and didn’t think less of the game for the need to have a prod
here and there.
If you miss something though there is little to tell you where or
what that was, so backtracking is highly likely. Which isn’t too
onerous. Myha isn’t terribly big, and while there is a lack of
sharpness and a bit of blockiness to some of the environment (even on
the ultra setting), it still looks good. So going back over the island
was never a chore.
The game though was a little directionless at times. I always wonder
whether the failing is mine in such situations, but there were occasions
when I didn’t know what it was I was supposed to do to unlock the way
forward. Did I lack an item, or the brain power to move on, or had I
just missed a hotspot somewhere? That is clearly part of the challenge
in itself – reset the table and try again. But I still thought a
little more “heads up” here and there would have been welcomed.
Fiddling with some stuff can also be a little bit, well, fiddly. But
a little patience for a misstep here and there saw me through those
places.
There is ambient sound as well as a musical score, and rather
interestingly you can choose how often the music kicks in (rare, normal
and frequent). Indeed, the ability to tweak most settings is a big plus,
including having additional cues available for the auditory and colour
puzzles. I would also suggest enlarging the cursor size in the options,
as the default is quite small and faint, making it hard to see at times.
There is not a lot of animation in the settings, but nor is it a
static environment. There is plenty to suggest a living place. You will
find bits and pieces, including audio logs, all part of a broader tale.
Active cursors will indicate something to do. Save at will, map the
keyboard commands to any keys you chose, and settle in for many hours of
first person puzzling enjoyment.
I played on:
OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz
RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB
Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192MB
