Games worth discovering

I can’t stop laughing at this stupid Myst FPS

14K View2023-03-15

The fall of 1993 was, in retrospect, an absurdly important period for games. September saw the release of Cyan’s adventure game Myst, which not only opened the door to a new era in adventure gaming, it also kick-started the broad adoption of the CD-ROM in home PCs. Then, less than three months later, id Software released Doom.

It’s perhaps in recognition of this momentous era that two New York-based spoof artists have created Myst FPS, a browser-based send-up of both Myst and Doom that had me in pieces as soon as I launched it.

The action is simple: Dropping into the static screens of the original point-and-click version of Myst, I navigated around familiar landmarks like the rocket ship, the gears, and docks, shooting approaching demons with a crosshair. What really sells the joke, though, is the soundtrack: it’s just the music from Doom E1M1, “At Doom’s Gate,” with someone repeating the word “Myst” over and over. It’s hilarious.

The goal is to kill 100 demons, and when I did, the screen faded to black before displaying a screen that called me a ‘savant’ and suggested joining Mensa (there’s even a web address for the high-IQ society’s sign-up page). The screen I got when I failed was even funnier, but I’ll leave that for you to discover on your own.

The developers responsible for this bite-sized gag are Peter Hennigsen and Steven Nass, two New York-based copywriters who spend their free time collaborating on spoof games built with the understanding that brevity is the soul of wit. There’s Sim NIMBY, a remake of the original SimCity that doesn’t allow you to build anything for increasingly absurd reasons, and You Have Not Died of Dysentery, a version of Oregon Trail in which the infection doesn’t kill the travelers, but it does make the trip extremely time-consuming.

“We got into coding during the pandemic and parodying retro games serves a dual purpose of poking fun at memorable games while also being easier to code than, say, Elden Ring,” the devs tell me in an email.

As silly as the games first appear, they manage to hit a delicate sweet spot: they’re ideas that actually work as games, but aren’t complicated enough to overstay their welcome. I asked how they know when it’s time to actually turn a funny idea into a game.

“The parodies that rise to the top for us are the ones that have a stupid (sometimes really stupid) premise but don’t feel entirely one note,” they said. In the case of their Oregon Trail parody, the joke was having to stop the wagon every few minutes to go to the bathroom—making the trip take forever.

“But from there we had fun adding onto that,” they explained. “Like okay, I guess that means you need to stock up on a toilet paper item. Or, what would you be reading while relieving yourself? Which led us on a Project Gutenberg deep-dive of actual articles from 1800s newspapers and magazines, etc. Once you have a ridiculous idea, take it as seriously as possible (or as seriously as your limited coding skills will allow).”

The appeal of making Myst FPS was in goofing on such a cerebral and serene experience and turning it into something completely different.

“There seemed to be something really fun about taking such a sophisticated game and making it as meathead as possible,” they said. “Which is what led to the deep voice calling out stuff like ‘Sadistic Sundial’ every ten kills.”

You can play Myst FPS right in your desktop web browser.

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