Myst was first released in 1993, and it was a breakout hit. So it's no surprise that it spawned numerous sequeals and remasterings. Let me cut through the noise and confusion for you: the sequels are pretty but don't have the same charm (Myst V was alright). But the original Myst itself? It not only holds up, it still drives all the way home. And thanks to the full first-person 3D recreations, you can now freely roam around the world. If you've never played Myst, or if it's been a while, give it a go, it's worth it.

In Myst, you fall into consiousness on a fantastic island filled with off-kilter relics, some from ages you know, some from not. And scattered around these relics are scraps of paper hinting at the secrets they contain, at the worlds they come from. The visuals are iconic, the soundtrack incredible, and the game a well-respected classic.

It's the 1980s, and you've taken a job in the far rural reaches of Wyoming. You're alone, your only human interaction via walkie talkie, your only tools the hiking gear you've brought with you. Your task? Sit in a tower and watch the forest for signs of fire. If this doesn't sound like the makings for the game of the year, then you've got another think coming. The characters, storytelling, environment, acting, and all the little details are simply superb. This is a groundbreaking game that grabbed hold of the insult "walking simulator" and took ownership of it as a badge of honor.

You are a supernatural detective tasked with solving the eponymous disappearance in this rural American ghost town. Explore the abandoned homes and lives in this desolate community to reconstruct the stories of its former residents. Their fears become your reality as you work to separate the horrors of their imagination from the horrors of their truth. The town is masterfully crafted, and the vistas are beautiful. Be prepared for, as the kids say, the feels.

You are the ghost in the machine of humanity's next great space station, the "Observsation." But, you've suffered a major catastrophe, and now you must work with the crew to restart yourself and regain control of the situation, before the situation takes control over you. This game is so well-built I was blown away, literally shocked with how immersive and gripping an experience it was. It's full of new mechanics and interesting puzzles, and the story builds so well, this game raises the bar for what's possible.

Explore your childhood home, learning about your family through the mementos they've left behind, delving into their stories to see the world through their eyes. I do not have the words to describe how great this game is, how transcendant an experience this is. With the a production quality of a much bigger title and the story of an Oscar-worthy film, this game should top anyone's recommendation list.

How much do our decisions affect our ultimate fate? What regrets do we carry with us all our lives? How much are you prepared for a video game to make you bawl your eyes out like a baby?

You are a young trans man coming home to your small Alaskan town for the first time since your transition. Work your way through reconnecting with your sister and your friends, deal with townspeople unsure how to treat you, and solve the mystery of what exactly it was that happened that one night with your mother. The best part about this game is how subtle it is. It has you learning trans issues and facets of Native American culture without you even realizing it's happening. Who knew a video game could handle these tricky topics better than any book or movie?

You don't move through the world so much as the world spins around you. You are a child, after all. And you and your childhood best friend struggle through this truly unique set of puzzles – using time as your key to unlocking your way through this fantastic universe – all while learning that as a child, you ultimately are not in control over your own life.

You stumble your way through a series of intricate puzzle-boxes, looking for hints hidden in their design, secreted into their filigree. This is a series of four games, each of growing complexity, each of growing payoff. They are beautiful, each of them, and we can only hope for more in the future.

You are dropped into Scotland's Outer Hebrides, cold, overcast, with emotive music playing, and left to explore. You come across abandoned structures and items, fragments of a traumatic story filtering in like echoes of a memory. You progress, and things are the same, but different? How can nothingness become so... so urgent? It's building towards something, towards someplace. But what is it? Why is it here, amongst the desolation? What does it all mean?

Leap face-first into the cyberpunk metaverse of the 90s, visiting retrowave shopping malls, secret disco-castles, underwater techno-cults, and descend into the glitched out underbelly of internet hell. Broken Reality is the game that dares to deliver on the promise of early-web pop culture, paying homage to the memes of yesteryear in this masterful tribute to the early days of the information superhighway.

Earth's environment is failing, the space program has stalled, humanity is dying. You are the last hope, getting to the Moon the only way you can – harnessing the abandoned technology of a previous generation. You jump in the driver seat of this action-adventure story, scrambling to make it through the airlock before the doors shut, to make it to the escape pod before the ship explodes. Is this action "Myst-like"? Well, no. But between the fast-paced bits, it hits all the right notes as you pry open the mysteries of the story and piece together the events that led to the catastrophe.

Rural Oregon, 1995. You come home, but the house of your childhood is deserted. Where is everyone? What do these newspaper clippings and discarded letters mean? How do they all tie together? What happened here? This is an intensely personal story, emotionally punching above it's weight. The visuals aren't as spectacular as in some other titles, but the details in the house mix with the cassette tapes of riot grrrl punk rock to deliver the immersion necessary for this story to really click.

Like many stories, the narrator narrates the events of the plot. But who is this elusive 'narrator' and what is their motivation? This game does not answer these questions. But it is filled with humor and cleverness, deconstructing video games as a media down to their bare elements in a way that'll leave your head spinning and re-evaluating everything you think you know about video gaming.

A spiritual sequel to The Stanley Parable, this game deconstructs the personalities behind designing and developing video games. Why do they put walls where they do? Why are puzzles solved the way they are? A linear story, the gameplay stems from the hugely imaginative environments and deeply unsettling imagery. The voice acting is superb, the coup de grace that releases the full emotional weight of the story itself.

A side-scroller in design but Myst-like in all other ways, this game is beautifully macabre and fantastically horrifying. It is up to you to fix the broke world, a world filled with the detritus of a failed and wasteful civilization. Can you perservere?

Eastshade throws you right into a world of high fantasy, complete with anthropomorphised animal races, quests to complete, and magic potions to imbibe. You explore the island of Eastshade at your own pace – this has the basic structure of a roll-playing-game, but none of the violence or deep strategy. Your character doesn't wield a sword, but instead an easel, and you go around painting the landscape. The quests offer mild challenges, usually the difficulty is just finding the item or person in question. All of it serves to have you wander the island. And the island is absolutely magnificently beautiful. Everything about this game is bright and cheerful, sometimes saccharine, but you're never in a desperate struggle to survive. The one weakness of the game is that there's not a strong overarching story – there's myriad small dramas you take part in, but the main driving point of visiting Eastshade ends up being just one more quest to complete. Nonetheless, the game is worth exploring: the island is engrossing and well built, and the universe is complete and feels lived-in. Hopefully there's a sequel, and we get to see more of Eastshade.

The Solar System is yours to explore, and each planet is unique and filled with fantastic wonders and mysteries of all kinds. The only question is, what does it all mean? And what happens if you injure yourself out there? The cosmos is, after all, a place as dangerous as it is beautiful. Not all the games on this list are strictly "Myst-like", and this one pushes further away than most, but with its rewarding exploration and dedication to its storytelling, Outer Wilds earns its home on this list.

The makers of Myst have created a spiritual successor in Obduction, taking the same concepts as their title from twenty-three years previous and pivoting the concept away from fantasy and towards alien obductions. The game has a very powerful start, but sadly the late-game feels unfinished. Don't let that stop you, the first half of the game is strong enough to make up for a weak conclusion.

This trio of free, short walking simulators has you meander through poetry brought to life. Bask in stories from India as you literally walk around metaphors and symbolism. As surreally beautiful as it is charming, these games feel very homemade. But that's part of the appeal.

Art – as in, painting, drawing, putting ink to canvas – comes to life in this game where you work your way through your childhood creations realized as 3D environments. The end even features a bit of voice acting by the master of dark children's fantasy, Terry Gilliam himself.

On your computer screen, the third dimension is just an illusion, a trick of perspective and lighting. What if the puzzles to solve a game involved breaking that illusion, distorting the virtual reality by fuzzing its borders? This game is the answer to that question.

A 'maquette' is a scaled-down model of a real structure. If you make a change to the model, does that change reflect in reality? Can you create a maquette of something abstract, like a relationship?

The apocalypse has come and gone, and yet here you remain, in a sick and twisted version of your home. What happened? What went wrong? Why are you left behind?

You are sent to investigate an abandoned space station, to discover its secrets. What took place here? What did they find? This game suffers from neither having the most original concept nor the most biting story, but it's built well-enough to earn a 'pass.'

This micro-game sees you discovering secrets in your deceased Grandfather's attic to find out who he really was. The developers promise to one day expand this into a full game, and when they do I'll be the first in line to play it.

This is a short, free slip into a normal afternoon in your living room. What? You don't believe that everything's normal? Why not? Are you feeling a little off? That's nonsense. Things are exactly what they seem.

A fantasy story in a very pretty but ruined world, with a story told cleverly through hieroglyphics. The only real fault of the game is one obnoxious mechanic that discourages exploration of some places. But I persevered and recommend you do so as well.

You are Leonardo Da Vinci's assistant, tasked with helping him solve some 'minor puzzle boxes' while he focuses on his true work. Can you discover the true nature of the puzzles before you? This is a trio of games, each progressively more ambitious in scope, each progressively more confusing in plot. But it works, and they're fun to play.

Almost a comic book brought to life with very little gameplay to it, but the world is so beautifully horrible and the story compellingly told (even if not wholly original) that I have to recommend this.

A short, neat game that is puzzle-focused but with enough story and charm that I put it on this list. You play as a spectral detective or something in an old Route 66 roadside stop.

I'm suspicious this game started as a joke, but it's well rendered and well acted and short and free.

This is, by far, the most beautiful and emotional platformer ever made. Phenomenal.

Unique and beautiful and the Steam review ranking of "Overwhelmingly Positive" undersells it.

The RPG to end all RPGs. You are a drunk drug-addicted corrupt cop. What you do next is up to you.

You are the AI built into the environmental suit of a xenobiologist. If that's not enough to appeal to you, you're dead to me.

Hike around this fantastic isometric island as an anthromorphic bird and meet the other animals doing the same. A game so charming you just want to squeeze it.

In this sidescrolling platformer, just when you think things have gotten dark, they get darker. And then they get... well, you'll just have to see for yourself.

What if an 80s children's video game was... haunted?

Who ever new that opening up moving boxes was so compelling? Bonus: Isometric pixel art!

Sail a train across the wasteland of a civilization that burned itself out. They made a sequel in 2022 that follows closely on the original's heels.

So ludicrous, so whimsical, so horrifically cynical. You... how to describe this? You are a stick figure. In a world made from stick figures. You just have to see the rest for youself.

This sidescroller starts in hell, and things go downhill from there. A story about depression; prepare for events to get dark.

A lot of these games take place on creepy islands. This sidescroller involves creepy islands but adds teenage drama and radios and uncanny alien entities.

A unique take on puzzles, a ham-fisted story. Enjoyable nonetheless.