Thap!
Starlight flips a switch.
Nothing happens.
She squints into bright sunlight. Her ears echo with the cackling of seagulls. Her nose tickles with the pungent smell of salt water.
She looks to her right.
Atop a round outcropping of water along the edge of a grand ocean, there is a pair of enormous blue cogwheels locked into one another. These are surrounded by brass railing, belying some sort of arbitrary purpose.
Wind billows past Starlight's shuddering figure. The persistent lapping of water forms a soft, vaguely creepy ambiance all around.
Starlight looks ahead of her.
A miniature platform looms. A single switch rests at the very top.
She flips it again.
Thap!
Nothing happens.
Starlight looks to her left.
Down past a partially winding set of steps, there is a wooden dock. Another switch platform rests there, and beside it is a sailing ship... a partially sunken sailing ship, submerged in the shallow waters of grand ocean that surrounds the island.
All is still. All is calm. Just Starlight Glimmer alone, surrounded by cryptic randomosity.
She tongues the inside of her muzzle.
She looks straight ahead.
She reaches up and flips the switch yet again.
Thap!
Nothing happens.
“... … ...what the buck.”
Fallen into a book of Myst, seems like
Yeah, this is pretty much every Myst player ever, right before they look up the online walk-through.
10502674
Guilty.
10502674
I was a veteran of infocom text adventures. I grabbed my trusty pad of graph paper and started drawing maps and clues and pushed buttons until something gave way.
It was two hours *later* that I started searching the game packaging for the little booklet with the invisible ink hints in it