The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition

My first reaction booting this up was genuine curiosity: this is where Cyan started, before Myst, before Riven, before any of it. Rand and Robyn Miller built The Manhole in 1988 using HyperCard on a Macintosh, and the Masterpiece Edition that landed on Steam is the 1995 CD-ROM remake, rebuilt with pre-rendered 3D backgrounds, hand-drawn 2D characters, over 30 original music compositions, voiced dialogue, and a new cast of characters added after Myst's success gave Cyan the resources to revisit it. Knowing that history makes the whole experience land differently. As a game, it barely qualifies by traditional standards, and that is entirely the point. There are no puzzles, no objectives, no fail states, and no ending. You click a manhole cover, a beanstalk erupts from the ground, and from there the world opens up completely. You can have tea with Mr. Rabbit, ride an elevator with Mr. Walrus, visit a chess-piece-filled tower by climbing a stone turret, or trigger an ink-spill that transports you somewhere else entirely. Navigation is pure point-and-click: click in a direction to move, click on objects to trigger hidden animations and short character conversations. The whole world is accessible from the start, and the scenes are interconnected in ways that surprise you, with visual cues in one location sometimes warping you somewhere thematically linked rather than geographically adjacent. It is a toy box, not a game, and Cyan's own website describes it exactly that way. What it does exceptionally well, even now, is spatial surprise. The way locations fold into each other has a dream-logic that still feels inventive. You do not learn the map so much as develop a feel for the world, and there is a low-key pleasure in clicking everything just to see what fires. The audio work holds up reasonably well too, with character voices and ambient music giving each area a distinct texture. The honest downside is the one Steam's mixed reception reflects: this is a half-hour experience at most, the visual fidelity is obviously vintage 1995, and anyone expecting even the light puzzle structure of Myst will bounce off immediately. The 2D characters clashing against the 3D pre-rendered backgrounds is a quirk of the production that some find charming and others find jarring. Modern children may be underwhelmed compared to what they are used to, and adult players seeking any loop of progression will find nothing here. It is a historical artifact as much as it is entertainment, and the Steam port does not appear to have received any meaningful modernization beyond basic compatibility. Who is it for, right now? Myst fans wanting to trace Cyan's origins back to the very beginning, or adults who played this as kids and want ten minutes of pure nostalgia. For anyone else, curiosity is satisfied faster than the price needs to justify itself.

Alex · Scout Team

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