To celebrate the 10 year anniversary since the release of the original adventure game Myst, Cyan Worlds has released the draft to the first chapter of Myst: The Book of Atrus free for everybody to read. The book was written by Rand Miller back in 1994 and is the first of 3 books of Myst, depicting the characters you've got to know in the games.

The free chapter starts like this:

Once again, the creeping silence made its way around the room, hovering above the dust-covered floor. It slid like a dark spirit over the broken tile, searching for any noise that might violate its dominion. Silence had reigned in the room for countless years, defying even the smallest sound to challenge it. And so the silence patrolled the thick darkness, listening.

Gliding above the cold floor, the silence stared deeply into a pair of eyes: eyes which spoke of endless, aching loneliness. The eyes belonged to the ornate mosaic that had, in times long-forgotten, served as revered memorial: a royal ancestor crafted in tile in the floor. But now those eyes were transformed by the cracking of age, the dullness of neglect, and the paralyzing tyranny of the silence.

The fourth installment of the Myst series, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst is nearing completion for PC and will be released later this year. A Macintosh version has still to be confirmed, but since we've got the earlier games in the series, we can only hope that we will get Uru: Ages Beyond Myst for Mac as well.

Ubisoft (add to watch list)

Uru: Ages Beyond Myst

Myst: The Book of Atrus

Search for other Mac games news stories or browse our Mac Games News Archive.