Quern - Undying Thoughts released on PC way back in 2016. A decade later it has made its way to the Nintendo Switch. While the port itself leaves a bit to be desired, the underlying experience is a great Myst-like adventure. When I say Myst-like, I mean it. The influence of Cyan’s iconic Myst franchise is hard not to see throughout Quern’s world. From atmospheric and lonely game design, to a few more overt tips of the hat, Quern loves Myst. And that’s fine, because so do I.

But that doesn’t mean that Quern is completely by the red or blue book. It takes place entirely on one interconnected map. There is only one moment very late in the game where it ever loads into a new environment. Rather the entire game takes place in a densely packed world that slowly opens up as you unravel its many puzzles. The puzzles themselves are generally good, though Quern does rely a bit more on bespoke puzzles in a box than I would like. A little too often a puzzle will amount to a single screen of manipulating a device, rather than your understanding of how different elements of the world work with each other. That doesn’t mean Quern doesn’t also have those larger scale puzzles (and they’re mostly excellent) but it feels a bit more padded than it needs to. There were a few with some slightly awkward interactions with levers and toggles that needed to be dragged, but didn’t always quite click into place.

The story is predominantly told through letters left for you by someone who had inhabited this world before you. They’re all fully voiced, which is good because the lowering of texture resolution makes them hard to read. The story never quite hits the highs of its inspirations, but it is compelling. The world that Quern presents is genuinely mysterious and fun to uncover.

The Switch presents a perfectly playable though severely downgraded version of Quern compared to the PC original. The draw distance is comically short, textures are often very low resolution, shadows are blocky, pop-in is constant and distracting, and resolution is low with absolutely no treatment for smoothness. Even given the constraints of the system it is surprising just how rough this looks. It's completely playable and (at least on Switch 2) it ran perfectly, it just looks very bad. Which is a shame, because the underlying art presented on PC is very good.

If you are a fan of the Myst series or perhaps were more recently introduced to the genre by titles like Blue Prince or Outer Wilds, Quern is an easy recommendation. The Switch version is generally functional if a bit ugly. Some interactions can be a bit finicky but at worst this generally just slows you down. But beneath that Quern remains a highly enjoyable if slightly bloated adventure game.