After struggling with this one for ages I finally caved and looked at a walk through it turns out that an event had never triggered that was supposed to.
It seems that you have to play the game in a certain order or it won't let you proceed. It's a bit of a pity because it's put me off as I feel you'd need to play with the walk through on your lap. I hate looking at walk throughs* so I probably won't ever get round to doing this which is a pity because I really did enjoy the humor and the graphical style. I will certainly give the sequel a go though, hopefully they've fixed those issues.
* I managed to beat the entirety of Myst without a peek at one.