I played the original Myst when it came out and recently returned to it 20 years later. Fond memories, so I moved on to Myst II Riven and then Myst III Exile, both of which I'd never played before and on balance really enjoyed them. Now hooked and with a better laptop I chose Quern as my next challenge based solely on the reviews for the game posted here. Quern just sucks you in slowly and for me it is absolutely brilliant. Define 'brilliant'... Well, the atmosphere, the imagination, the scenery, the gameplay from a practical sense, the genius of the ideas, the puzzles and challenges. The story that underpins the game is as good as it needs to be and holds it together well. I thought it was genuinely enthralling and at times just couldn't break away from it. The challenges are well thought about and imaginative and the puzzles are a mix of levels. Some obvious and logical and some obtuse and confusing but hey, that's the magic. I played it with my partner who had NEVER played anything like this in her life and she absolutely loved it in a way she could not have imagined. Playing it together we had a great mix of strengths and weaknesses and it brought us together to complete the game in a way nothing had done so before. That's a subtle but important point and we reflected on the experience. We took a few weeks to finish the game as it's absolutely vast and just seems to go on forever so the value for money aspect is utterly off the scale. Personally, if you have had experience of Myst and enjoy this genre of game then you will not be disappointed. You DO need a very good spec machine to run it on and if that's not the case I can imagine it would be very frustrating and irritating to play. In summary, I can't imagine anything to be better than this but we'll see!
