Games

Criteria for game preference

Criteria for game preference

Any game that does not fulfill these criteria is invalid.

1. Non-infinite

2. Not designed around addiction

3. Good story or no story

1. Non-infinite

This is a non-negotiable criterion. Infinite environments and exponential growth challenge result in black hole games, i.e. they will be an endless time sink.

2. Not designed around addiction

This is perhaps evil incarnate.

3. Good story or no story

A poor storyline is a waste of time. Give me a good story that I can enjoy and learn from, or give me a game that doesn't try to tell a story.

Categories

Categories

• Adventure

• Puzzle

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My favourites

The Myst saga

The original Myst is amazing. It is very dated though. Real Myst was a masterful upgrade, as was Masterpiece Edition; but the latest rebuild of Myst, using a modern game engine, blows all the socks off. Apparently there are some differences, but I played the original version when I was 6 or 7 years old, and the modern version when I was 30, so I have to say I did not notice many changes.

Riven

Riven is the second part in the Myst saga and it has a great storyline. I was never able to play it as a child because it was on 5 CD-ROMs and our family's PC's CD drive did not appreciate being opened, regardless of whether the running application actually requested the next disc or not.

But, like the first instalment of Myst, Riven recently underwent a rebuild in a modern game engine and it is a joy to play now.

Why play the Myst games?

Myst is built around puzzle games, but the puzzles are wrapped in a complicated story and you must solve the puzzles using lateral thinking and by exploring the environment and fiddling with all kinds of objects and devices in the area. Very often, each puzzle is distributed over a large space.