[HN Gopher] A Dictionary of the Language of Myst's D'ni
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A Dictionary of the Language of Myst's D'ni
Author : lelandfe
Score : 50 points
Date : 2025-06-22 23:56 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eldalamberon.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eldalamberon.com)
| NoSalt wrote:
| I absolutely love that, after all these years, Myst is still
| capturing our attention. I am not a huge gamer, but of all the
| games I have played, Myst still remains my favorite.
| imzadi wrote:
| I think it's the first game that really transcended what games
| were at the time. Prior to PCs, games were mostly just hand-eye
| coordination checks. Myst was the first game I played that
| really engaged the brain and problem solving.
| mwigdahl wrote:
| You never played interactive fiction games prior to Myst?
| There was plenty of thinking and problem solving in those
| games. It was certainly a huge graphical leap forward over
| the previous point-and-click adventure game, but I didn't
| feel it was particularly a qualitative jump in puzzle
| content.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I was wondering about the text based games myself while
| reading GP. Zork was nothing but a puzzle game that
| definitely did not require hand-eye coordination or any
| other skill set other than solving puzzles. That's what
| Myst was as well, only with pretty pictures
| imzadi wrote:
| Sure, I played the heck out of games like that on my
| Commodore 64, but it still doesn't match, for me at
| least, the depth of the puzzles and problem solving in
| Myst.
| tralarpa wrote:
| > Prior to PCs, games were mostly just hand-eye coordination
| checks
|
| Not sure what you call a PC, but there are 17 years of
| problem-solving computer games (text adventures, click-and-
| point adventures, RPGs, real-time and round-based strategy
| games,...) before Myst.
| atrus wrote:
| Including from Cyan! But the gps point still stands Myst
| felt more...alive? than other IF games of the time. The
| videos, graphics, and atmosphere were top notch of the
| time, and it drew people in like crazy.
| lukas099 wrote:
| To be fair, they did say "mostly".
| bigtex wrote:
| Myst was the top selling game for several years.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| There were lots of adventure games on PCs before Myst, where
| Myst differed was in atmosphere and immersion: it was
| arguably the first game where you really felt like you were
| in a different world, as opposed to playing something on your
| computer. I think that's why it is lodged so deep in
| collective memory.
| p_ing wrote:
| Cyan even made The Manhole prior to Myst. I remember playing
| that on a Mac SE/30.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Manhole
| jonah wrote:
| We played it together as a family. Good memories.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| One of the best HyperCard stacks of all time.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| ditto
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Sounds related to the Knights that say "ni"
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I don't think this was ever confirmed, but based on the
| spelling of the art assets in the original game ("dunny") I
| always assumed it was a pun on "Done," because the D'ni study
| chamber is where the last interactions occur.
| starshadowx2 wrote:
| I'm getting a 404 from this.
| fitsumbelay wrote:
| every year for the past decade and change I've gotten to see Myst
| and Riven mentioned in Twitter and sometimes here. I really doubt
| this is coincidence or the law of averages doing its thing. Each
| instance delivers many awesome nostalgic feels of reading Wired
| (or was it Mondo 2000?) in the mid-late 90s and thumbing past the
| fairly large sized ads with the ill fantasy ladscapes which in
| turn made me think of Bryce 3D ...
| z-10 wrote:
| I missed this train when I was a kid, but now with myst and riven
| re-released I played it with my son. We have a journal for each
| game, that we filled with hints, translations and solutions we
| found. That was a precious time.
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(page generated 2025-06-25 23:01 UTC)