The Myst 25th Anniversary Kickstarter rewards are finally getting sent out! Since I got lucky & somehow managed to be one of the first in the world to gain access to one, I thought I’d post some photos & a bit of a review of them. Particularly since I’m the guy who made the real Myst book, so I’m probably the non-Cyan-employee who has spent the highest number of hours obsessing over what this book is supposed to look like. Fair warning, this post is gonna be a bit long & a bit image-heavy, but that’s probably what you’re looking for anyway!

The Myst Book

It seems to be pretty well made. It’s bigger than mine/Cyan’s book, but I kindof expected that might be required to make the ink well parts fit. To try and compensate for this the covers are thinner than the original, which I think is a fair compromise. I need to point out that the outside cover has been made with a lot more detail than is immediately obvious – this thing’s been constructed in enough layers to impress an ogre. There’s the plain bare cardboard, which is most easily visible through the infamous damage notch on the left. Then there’s the dark brown leather/cloth layer on the left side and on the two corner triangles, which has had both a bit of a shine and a rough surface added to it that roughly matches the shine & feel on the original book. On top of this is the main central texture as a normal paper print, and on top of that are sections that have been raised/embossed, and on top of that are sections that have been gilded. Some of the damage marks on the book aren’t just in the image’s print but are actual cut-out holes where one layer gives way to show a lower layer, which I think is all pretty darned cool. This applies to both the spine and the back of the book too – speaking of, the back of the book is what the back of Cyan’s actual book looks like; for once it isn’t just a mirror of the front texture like it is in all the games!

Speaking of just the front texture, it’s a bit different to what was shown in the Kickstarter. The Kickstarter version was a blend between Cyan’s actual well-worn physical prop book and my own replica, whereas this final version is mostly like Cyan’s one (and for what it’s worth my one was supposed to be my interpretation of what the Myst book might’ve looked like when “brand new”, mostly because luck meant I found a copy of the right book in near-perfect condition, which is why it had no damage). There’s a couple design points similar to mine – for instance the font used for the raising/gilding looks like it’s been modified a little from the original MYST font to straighten the serifs a little, the same as I did, which makes it look better when embossed or raised. The main image is also darker than Cyan’s actual physical book, and has had more damage added to it than Cyan’s book actually has, particularly around the edges. It’s worth mentioning here that back in 1993 Cyan did scan their physical prop book to use as a texture, however back then they modified that image so it had less damage in-game vs what it had in real life. This makes one more version of what this book is supposed to look like, and when you add in how it looked during Myst 5 I think I’ve lost track of how many different versions we’re up to now. 😛

The original 1993 version of the Myst book 3D model as shown in Strata

Because I knew people would ask, I took a few photos comparing the Kickstarter Myst book to my replica Myst book so you can see the size difference. I also took a few photos comparing it to the original book Cyan used as the Riven descriptive book (The 1954 printing of the 1951 edition Webster’s Unified Dictionary & Encyclopedia if you’re curious). Turns out it’s much closer in size to Riven’s descriptive book than Myst’s linking book!

The LCD & Electronics

The book has been enlarged but the linking panel LCD has been kept the same size, so it looks a little smaller than it should be. However it’s sized so that on the lower tier versions the images on the game disc sleeves can be the linking panels themselves, so it’s not like they could’ve made the sleeves much larger. Its colours are bright & vibrant, its got a pretty fantastic viewing angle, and its brightness level has clearly been tuned so it looks “right” for normal indoor brightness levels – as in, it looks close to a window to another world and not a brightly glowing LCD, and it photographs very well. The video plays automatically when you open the book, which is cool, and the battery level indicator displays momentarily in the top right, which is nice I guess but I wish there was some way to turn it off. In case you’re wondering, it’s got a standard 3.7V 800mAh 2.96Wh Lithium battery inside which charges from the included USB cable at 1A. The best way to store this battery long-term is to leave it at around 50% capacity, which isn’t too hard to do given the book has a battery level indicator. Loading alternate videos onto the book seems like it would be easy but I haven’t tried it to see what formats or codecs it can handle. I like the “hidden” button markers that are smudges on the page, they’re sneaky. The speaker in the top right is a bit quiet, a bit tinny and seems to be peaking a lot – I haven’t pulled apart the electronics yet but I think it’s because it’s hidden behind the front paper. There’s only so much you can do when a speaker is obscured like that. I suspect a few holes in the paper would improve the audio quality but pulling that apart is another job.

Size comparison of LCDs between my replica and the Kickstarter version – almost the same size except for the aspect ratio

For what it’s worth, from experience I can say that there aren’t many options for suitable LCDs of around the right size with the right specs for a linking panel. Particularly if you want 15,000 of them, and you’re not willing to spend $80/panel. For reference the LCD for my Myst book cost $140USD, and that’s for just the raw LCD panel itself without any driver board, embedded computer to display content, battery, charging circuit, etc. Cyan only charged an extra $70 for the tier with all the electronics, so to pull that off at scale their choices would’ve been limited and I’m super impressed they managed to do it on such a comparatively tight budget.

Now, the content on the book. First off – the original classic Myst intro has been re-rendered at 30fps at the resolution of the book, so it looks amazing! 😀 The other content on the book is a bit of a mixed bag and honestly feels a little like they got half-way through making videos for it when they hit the deadline and abruptly stopped. There’s no videos from Revelation or End of Ages, and only a single video from Uru. You totally need to check out the Uru video, UruFly.mp4 – I don’t want to say any more, just play that one and enjoy! Cyanlogo.mp4 looks like a re-rendered version of Cyan’s original 1993 logo just for this book – the blurred text at the end is different but the model is the 3d model is the original one, and it’s crisp like it’s been rendered at the right resolution. There’s plenty of classic Myst, realMyst Masterpiece and even re-rendered classic Myst flyby videos, Sirrus/Achenar/Atrus videos, Riven flybys, and even Exile flybys (even if they are weirdly labelled “Energy” “Jnanin” “Life” and “Matter”)… But no Revelation or End of Ages. It’d be cool if Cyan offers a few flybys from the missing games for download in the future, but who knows if that will happen.

The “extra storage” section contains a bunch of high-res images in here which make me completely drool – I don’t know which have been re-rendered and which are from their archives, but a 4000×1000 pixel panorama of Gehn’s Age is beautiful, Gehn’s Stained Glass is something I don’t remember seeing before, and the 3692×3075 Channelwood photos are so clear I wish I could be there in person.

I hope I don’t get in trouble for sharing this, but it’s located in the book’s readme file, you can find it yourself by literally just searching myst.com for “myst” and 10,000 people are about to know this URL when their books arrive sooo I figure it’s gonna be public soon anyway – you can download a copy of all this from https://myst.com/mystbookfiles/. Get on it and enjoy those high-res images & exclusive re-rendered videos!

I don’t know the full capabilities of the video player but as a data point for you, the main video is an mp4 file with the video in H264 AVC encoded at Level 3.1 complexity, 800×480 resolution, 30fps, ~2367kbps, while the audio’s AAC, 44.1KHz, mono, ~125kbps.

The Inkwell & Pen

Oh man. This thing is gorgeous. My expectations have been completely blown away. It’s made of what feels like clear-coated brass, and there’s over a dozen separately-cast parts to this thing that have been assembled together into sub-pieces ready for your final assembly via the included screwdriver & two screws (I had four screws; I guess extra in case you lose some). It feels solid & heavy, it feels well machined, and above all it feels well made. The D’ni writing is cast into the actual mould instead of just engraving it. The legs are held on magnetically (which makes the legs handy to use to simulate closing the book while it’s open – the reed switch is in the middle center right). The top has a small plastic bottle hidden inside it to hold the ink (which you can access & completely remove via a screw on the beetle’s underside). And there’s even little rubber feet on the bottom of it – five of them, in fact – which wasn’t necessary but goes to show that every part of this had thought put into it, not just as a quick throwaway thing.

Assembly is pretty easy – the parts are all keyed so they can only go together one way. There’s only two screws involved, both different sizes, and that’s it. But just in case you can’t work it out there’s some instructions included too (the oil smudge on the front page didn’t come with it, whoops). The whole thing comes in a form-fitting foam box to keep everything in place & protected during shipping.

Speaking of the foam box, I’m pretty sure the inkwell is the reason why the book had to be enlarged. Here’s a side-on view of how some of the inkwell pieces fit inside the box. There’s not much width left over. I’m sure some clever 3-dimensional stacking arrangement would’ve been possible, particularly if you’re re-using some of the empty space from the other box, but that would’ve made it all so much more complex than it already is.

Finally, the dip pen. This looks like a standard pen with a beetle/ink nib marking on the sheath. It’s subtle, but shows that this is a custom part too and not just something they grabbed off the shelf to use unmodified. The included replaceable nib is a #5, because of course it’s that number. If you’re having trouble finding the pen, look below the flap on the bottom edge of the book.

Overall, I gotta say that I’m pretty happy with these rewards. It definitely feels like I got my money’s worth, and the end results are higher quality than anticipated. I’m one satisfied backer!

