I have found no hints on the Lightning connecting betweeen the three towers. It seems to be a puzzle but no one else seems to think it is.

I noticed that sometimes the light on the switch is grey where it should be either green or red.

Sometimes the switch is inconsistent about where it goes next.

Has anyone tried to solve this puzzle or am I wasting my time?

While there are puzzles in Rime, the lightning towers are not among them.

The switch has 3 settings: blue, green, and red. Having not been to Rime in a while, I don't remember which position is for which color, but they behave consistently for me, and the towers are simply a device to play with and pass the time.

Thank you for replying.

Just a thought...

I am saddened by this because I have never encountered an event or puzzle like this that did not have meaning or a solution. I have played all Myst games. (I have not won Myst V or Myst Uru)

And all of them, the puzzles and "toys", had meaning and solutions. I feel the Rime age never should have been added for this reason.

Would you agree?

No, I do not agree. I beleive "toys" with no meaning have their places in an adventure game, just as much as a dead end has, inside a maze.

In a maze it would make perfect sense, but I am talking about Myst. I can not name one puzzle or object that you can interact with that didn't have meaning. Especially something with more than one switch slot. I mean this is bigger then the Rose turning into a skull or world globes spinning around.

I'm just disappointed, that's all. I was expecting a new ending with the Rime age or something more exciting.

I recall quite a few things that were not game-pertinent other than being interesting. In the schoolhouse in Riven, for instance, there was the table with cross-sections of plants, and you could "zoom" in to look closely. Also there was the "climbing water" globe in Gehn's lab on Bookbinding Island, the burned book in the furnace, and in the 233rd Age there was the music record/playback device, and Gehn's video of his wife. There were many things to look at, both still and animated. I was misdirected many times in all the games because I thought something had to be a puzzle, but was not, and spent wasted time trying to "solve" it. Uru stands out in particular.

It's more the question of what defines a puzzle.

For example animated and still objects that give hints for puzzles are one side. The actual puzzle itself. Whether it pertains to the story or not. Then, there are those for just beauty and pleasure.

The things you mentioned could be put into one of those categories. Although, I think the Lightning Towers lean very close to actual puzzle by the fact that you have two switches and one switch with changing color indicator. I find it terribly close to a real puzzle even if it has no meaning to the story. What gets me about it, is that nothing differrent happens when you switch from one color to the other.

Perhaps it was unfinished and as Atrus wrote was for power. Well the Island definitely has power so I guess that would mean the Towers had no use. What else could the towers be for?

It does mean something to the story; it's chronicled in one of Atrus' two Rime journals as an experiment that he and his sons constructed to try and attract (or artificially generate) the Northern Lights of the Age.

The color switcher does have an effect; it's subtle, but it does exist. It determines the over-arching color scheme of the aurora that the towers generate: blue, green, or red. The whole thing is a toy; a slightly more involved toy than the stuff in Mechanical Age, for instance, but still a toy nonetheless.