Cyan Worlds via PolygonSusana Polo is a senior entertainment writer at Polygon, specializing in pop culture and genre fare, with a primary expertise in comic books. Previously, she founded The Mary Sue.In honor of the 31st anniversary of seminal puzzle adventure game Myst, Cyan Worlds has a new Humble Bundle sale, “Enter the Mysterium.” Through Oct. 2, players can pay $20 and pick up 13 games, which run the gamut from Myst’s earliest 1989 predecessor, to its modern progeny, and every mainline Myst game in the franchise, with part of the proceeds going to Active Minds, a nonprofit dedicated to equipping teens and young adults with the tools to advocate for mental health advocacy and suicide prevention.Enter the Mysterium$20$19290% off$20$20 at HumbleOr, you could pick up any of four smaller, cheaper bundles. But in the opinion of me, Polygon’s foremost Myst-pilled weirdo, here are the titles you should make certain to grab, in order of importance.Myst: Pick your poison! The bundle offers Myst: Masterpiece Edition, which attempts to replicate the experience of playing the original 1993 game; realMyst: Masterpiece Edition, the first attempt to render the game in 3D; and Myst (2021), which supports both 2D, 3D, and VR play.Riven: The Sequel to Myst: This is the intricately cut crown jewel of Cyan’s puzzle games, in its original form. If you get really fed up with it I would also recommend their recent 3D remaster, which improves on perfection (but was released way too recently to be included in a discount bundle just yet).Myst IV: Revelation: Pretty much a direct sequel to Myst. Unequivocally the hardest Myst game, but my personal favorite for its story. It’s got an unskippable Peter Gabriel cutscene. Please, please, please play this game.Myst III: Exile: By no means easy, but still the easiest Myst game. The villain is played by Brad Dourif (The Lord of the Rings) and in one of the “bad endings,” he clubs you to death in first person FMV. If that doesn’t entice you I don’t know what will.Obduction: Not in the Myst setting, but if you play the others first, you’ll be able to call all the plot beats of this one. That said, it’s got a frightfully interesting sphere-based puzzle dynamic, an interesting setup, and gorgeous vistas.Firmament: I haven’t played this one yet. “And you call yourself an expert!” I backed the Kickstarter, OK?! I just haven’t had time! I’ll get to it… sometime after Dragon Age: The Veilguard comes out. I hear it’s worth it, though! And if you’re already picking up the rest, well, why not?But what am I, the Myst-pilled weirdo, going to buy? Well, even though I already own the vast majority of the games in this bundle, there’s still something here for me: Spelunx, Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel, and The Manhole. Two American dollars will net me three of Cyan co-founders Robyn and Rand Miller’s pre-Myst works, dating back to the unfathomable desktop gaming year of 1988, when Cyan released The Manhole on floppy discs available by mail order (the one in this bundle is a 1995 CD-ROM rerelease).Calling these three games “puzzle games” might seem like a stretch compared to Myst and its successors — I’ve poked around the original Manhole on the Internet Archive, and it’s more like an interactive object. But there’s a sense of humor, silliness, and, above all, play in it. Even just after ten minutes in a browser emulation, it was clear to me that I was looking at a couple of game developers fascinated by the potential of the point-and-click mechanic, and playing in that space as expansively and freely as they could. I could already see the lines running from this strange, Alice In Wonderland-themed object, to a couple of adventure games that were going to bust the genre wide open.Head over to the Humble Bundle, and you can make those connections, too.
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By Simmone Shah
To Refik Anadol, data is a creative force.
“For as long as I can remember, I have imagined data as more than just information—I have seen it as a living, breathing material, a pigment with infinite possibilities,” the Turkish-American artist said on Monday during his acceptance speech at the TIME100 AI Impact Awards in Dubai.
Anadol was one of four leaders shaping the future of AI to be recognized at TIME’s fourth-annual Impact Awards ceremony in the city. California Institute of Technology professor Anima Anandkumar, musician Grimes…
Read moreGrand Theft Auto V actor Ned Luke, who played Michael in the incredibly popular game, has spoken out about his thoughts on Grand Theft Auto VI. He said in an interview with Fall Damage (via Dexerto) that he’s confident the game will be “fantastic,” going on to say no one ever knows what to expect from Rockstar Games, and that’s part of the reason why he’s so eager to see what the studio is cooking up.
“You never know what Rockstar is going to do,” he said. “What I tell people is, be patient. It’s going to be worth the wait. From what I’ve seen, it’s going to be amazing. They’re going to blow our [GTA V] numbers away.”
By “numbers,” Luke was referring to the $800 million that GTA V earned in its first 24 hours back in 2013. Luke said he expects GTA VI to make $1.3 billion in …
Read moreWith the launch of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle around the corner, interest in the original film series starring Harrison Ford will probably spike. The first four movies are streaming on Prime Video and Paramount+, and 2023’s Dial of Destiny is on Disney+. If you prefer to own your movies, there’s a four-film collection on Blu-ray and 4K Blu-ray. And the timing of the game’s release is kind of perfect, as Amazon’s Cyber Monday sale includes deals on the collections in both formats. You can even get a 4K collection with a steelbook case for each movie.
Indiana Jones 4-Movie Collection:
- Indiana Jones 4-Movie Collection (4K Blu-ray) — $53 (
$91) - Indiana Jones 4-Movie Collection (Blu-ray) — $32.49 (
$48 Read more
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 will have no DRM whatsoever. Tobias Stolz-Zwilling, the PR boss at developer Warhorse, confirmed this during a recent Twitch stream.
The RPG does not use Denuvo or any form of DRM, the developer said, as reported by IGN. Stolz-Zwilling said Warhose had “some discussions” about utilizing DRM to protect the game from piracy, but it was ultimately decided that “it will not have any DRM system at all.”
Stolz-Zwilling said he hopes this brings closure to the ongoing questions from the community about whether or not Deliverance 2 will have DRM.
“Stop texting under every post we do that Denuvo is in the game, because it’s not. We never announced… we never said it will be there. As I said, a bit of a misunderstanding,” he said. “Let’s bury that th…
Read moreIn retrospect, Deadpool 2 has the perfect setup for a MCU sequel after Ryan Reynolds’ title character “borrowed” a time machine and used it save his beloved Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) from an early grave before righting some other wrongs. But if fans were expecting Wade Wilson to have a happy ending, Deadpool and Wolverine is shooting that notion down a month before the film’s release.
Deadpool and Wolverine is the cover story for the latest issue of Total Film, which features new details about where things stand after Deadpool 2. According to the report, six years have passed since Wade changed history and prevented Vanessa’s murder Come from Sports betting site VPbet . But there have been some unpleasant e…
Read moreSince the beginning of The Boys in 2019, showrunner Eric Kripke has done just about everything to show audiences that Homelander (Antony Starr) is a villain. He may drape himself in the American flag, but Homelander has killed countless people through three seasons and he’s behaved in very un-heroic ways. Regardless, some fans continue to view Homelander as a hero. As The Boys heads into its fourth season, Kripke doesn’t know what he can do or say to change that perception among Homelander’s fans.
While speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, Kripke not only took on Homelander’s defenders, he also addressed fans who have accused the show of going “woke.”
“Anyone who wants to call the show ‘woke’ or whatever, that’s OK. Go watch something else. But I’m certainly not going to pu…
Read moreVinland Saga’s gorgeous new deluxe editions are on sale for their lowest prices yet at Amazon. Volume 1 of the superb historical manga, which released in February, is discounted to only $33. You can pair it with Volume 2, which was published in April, for $43. These hefty hardcover editions of Vinland Saga are 600-700 pages each and carry list prices of $55. The third and fourth volumes release in the coming months, and you can get a 10% discount on your preorder.
Vinland Saga Deluxe Editions
- Vinland Saga: Deluxe Edition 01 — $33 ($
55) - Vinland Saga: Deluxe Edition 02 — $43 ($
55) - Vinland Saga: Deluxe Edition 03 (Releases June 18) — $49 (
$55) - Vinland Saga: Deluxe Edition 04 (Releases September…
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At a glance, you’d be forgiven for thinking that The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom follows firmly in the footsteps of the 2019 remake of Link’s Awakening. Stick Zelda in as a playable character, give her a magic wand, sell an absolute shed-load of copies. Job done.
But having now played an 80-minute section from early in the game, this comparison seems only surface-deep. Although it shares the extremely cute, diorama-esque aesthetic of its top-down predecessor, Echoes captures much more of the systemic and improvisational joys of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom than you might expect.
As I write this, Black Myth: Wukong, the action adventure from China’s Game Science studio, is the most played game on Steam by player count. There are currently 1,400,932 players in-game (with a peak of 1,443,570), surpassing the likes of Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, PUBG and all the usual games that occupy Steam’s top five.Wukong’s launch was already predicted to be strong, with the game being Steam’s number one seller for several weeks, but the concurrent player figures are quite staggering for a single-player, offline game.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings Though the number of concurrent players continues to rise, even as it stands, this makes Black Myth: Wukong Steam’s fourth most popular game in its history, having j…
Read moreWorld of Warcraft: The War Within is officially out today, which means you – yes, you – can boot up the game right now and get an espresso shot of that lovely new-expansion experience. It’s the best time to play an MMO y’know, before everything settles down and you’re stuck running raids on a weekly schedule.The expansion has you and other players venture down into Azeroth’s underbelly looking for loot, Xal’atath, and roughly a billion giant spiders who ironically aren’t too fond of you hanging around. It’s already been playable for those who bought special (and more expensive) version of the expansion, but now the gates have been thrown open for the entire playerbase to hop in.To see this content please enable targeting cookies.Manage cookie settings As for what’s available right now, the…
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