I had to look it up too, but the puzzle solutions are not randomized and consistent over every edition of the game. You solve the imager puzzle below the dock, throw all the switches on the island, set the clock to 2:40, throw the last switch, then go back and un-throw the first switch which gives you the end-game white page (it’s ten feet away at the start of the game!) enter the library and the fireplace, enter the solution, then feed the white page to the top book.
Doing this, of course, requires prior play-knowledge or looking up the solution. Playing the game teaches the player to solve the puzzle to win the game. To lose the game, you need to collect all the blue or red pages from the Ages.
They did add a “randomized solutions” feature in the 2020 release of Myst. But it’s off by default. And that was after, you know, 27 years of not having that option.
Oh, I was making a joke about the specifics of the (presumably ersatz) schrodinger puzzle. I was obsessed with MYST at the time and remember the broad strokes of the quick-run solution quite well.
Design-wise, more of a “we choose to allow the player to solve this puzzle whenever they can, we don’t artificially force them to go though the various steps - but unless they go through the various steps first, they won’t be able to solve it anyway”, than a “we choose to block your progress until we know that we’ve seen all the clues and therefore we know you’re not just guessing.”
I much, much prefer the former approach (as Myst does. And, apparently, Toby’s Nose). Yes, it’s harder to stop the player from guessing. But, a) blocking the player when you think they didn’t get it yet is more likely than not to just hinder things, and b) guessing is what players do when solving puzzles; it’s a good thing to encourage, guessing and experimenting.
The former (Myst) approach is also harder to design. It’s so much easier to just block the player from solving a certain puzzle until a bunch of flags have been triggered. And maybe some players won’t even notice. But some players certainly will, and won’t appreciate being locked out when they already know the answer - and they might not even have previous knowledge, or cheated; they might just really have had a great guess.
In the past couple of months, I’ve seen the latter artificial-lock happen a lot more with indie AGS graphical adventure games than parser interactive fiction, from the titles I’ve played. But that’s just anecdotal.
It’s really annoying when it happens, that much I know.
I mean, this isn’t a difficult design problem. The fix is the same as it’s been since the '90s: you add a trivial physical puzzle to your information puzzle. There’s a key sitting on top of the clue, or a switch hidden under the clue, or something, so the player has to fetch it / flip it / whatever in addition to learning the clue. No guessing of the player’s intent is necessary.
Myst could have done that; they chose not to; fine. It would have worked either way.
Yes, but tracking the player’s knowledge can get more complex. Some games prevent you from entering codes until in your gameplay you’ve triggered viewing all the clues, for example. In a way that Myst doesn’t do. Which is good, I think.
EDIT - And I say it’s harder to design because it’s always easier to stop the player from doing something you don’t want him doing yet with something artificial like that. A physical obstacle is preferable, even. The physical component you exemplify is preferable. Preferable to what? To saying “you can’t know this yet so I won’t let you try.” If you design like Myst you have to consider what happens if the player solves it without triggering all the clues you intended. Which may have contained story elements. That sorta thing.
EDIT - I realise I wasn’t clear in my original post, it wasn’t clear that I was dissing games which block your attempts in the way I clarified now in this post. Assigning a physical obstacle is fine. Not allowing the correct code to work, even if it’s correct, because the player hasn’t seen all the clues… less so… IMHO. Ultimately it’s a design decision.