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Home / Reviews / Apps and Games / Android / App of the week: realMyst for Android review

App of the week: realMyst for Android review

A PC adventure classic finally makes its way to Android – but was it worth the wait?

realMyst opens with you discovering a book under a starlit sky, prodding a suspiciously video-like picture on the last page, and being rudely whisked away to a seemingly deserted island world.

Thanks, then, to everyone who said we should “read more”.

You awake on a dock, next to a sunken ship, with absolutely no idea what to do next – and realMyst isn’t helping.

That’s because this is decidedly old-school gaming, a port of a remake of PC adventure Myst, which smashed out people’s brains way back in the mid-1990s. Your only option is to start poking around and see what you discover.

Virtual explorer

Unlike the original Myst, which was effectively a slideshow of pre-rendered scenes, realMyst has a measure of open-world movement. You drag around the screen to look, hold down to move, double-tap-hold to run, and two-finger tap to walk backwards.

When you need to interact with an object, shove your face right next to it and the game usually provides controls, so you can do battle with its puzzles.

And ‘battle’ is the right word. To say realMyst is cryptic is putting it mildly. If you’ve grown lazy on a diet of simplistic mobile games that won’t quit with the hand-holding, realMyst is likely to leave you whimpering. Although you can’t die at any point, you can feel properly stranded when ambling about, none the wiser regarding what to do next.

Give us a clue

Give us a clue

Armed with a serious amount of patience, a keen eye, and a pen and notepad, you should at least be able to make some inroads into realMyst’s strange world.

You’ll pick up on tiny clues (hint: write down everything that contains diagrams, letters and numbers, just in case), discover snatches of plot to do with people trapped in books, and feel like a genius on solving something. Then you’ll prod another ‘linking book’, and abruptly find yourself dumped on another miniature world, with new challenges to deal with.

For the most part, the smart visuals in this remake – while not as dynamic nor as pretty as newer versions on PC – make for a unique, engaging world to explore; but there are structural issues with the game (far too much backtracking) and technical niggles with this particular port.

When exploring, frequent (if very short) loading pauses knock the immersion, and there were autosave issues that nuked progress during testing. For your own sanity, manually bookmark your place frequently.

Mysty eyed

Mysty eyed

Ultimately, though, reviewing any flavour of Myst for Android is a bit like reviewing Pac-Man. The series has so much history and baggage, it’s tough to experience without a certain amount of preconceptions. Certainly, even this more free-form take has a tendency to feel obtuse and clunky compared to more modern fare.

The Room, for example, feels comparatively far more modern, focussed and intense, to the point you might be glued to your device until the conclusion. realMyst just doesn’t have that same pull.

And yet for all this, it does still provide a unique world that transfers well to Android, and offers plenty of value to newcomers looking for a tough puzzle challenge – and old PC gamers wanting to relive an old favourite, dressed in snazzy new clothes.

realMyst is available for Android. The game was previously released for iOS.

Stuff Says…

Score: 4/5

Flawed, slow and stupidly tough, Myst gaming world is nonetheless still worth exploring after all these years.

Good Stuff

Looks and sounds very nice

Plenty of challenge for your money

Touch controls work fairly well

Bad Stuff

Puzzles can be absurdly obtuse

Technical niggles and bugs

Very slow gameplay

Profile image of Craig Grannell Craig Grannell Contributor

About

I’m a regular contributor to Stuff magazine and Stuff.tv, covering apps, games, Apple kit, Android, Lego, retro gaming and other interesting oddities. I also pen opinion pieces when the editor lets me, getting all serious about accessibility and predicting when sentient AI smart cookware will take over the world, in a terrifying mix of Bake Off and Terminator.

Areas of expertise

Mobile apps and games, Macs, iOS and tvOS devices, Android, retro games, crowdfunding, design, how to fight off an enraged smart saucepan with a massive stick.