Riven (1997)

This is one of my favorites of all time. This games takes every thing that was awesome about Myst and improves on it. The graphics are beautiful, the music is enthralling, the puzzles are fun, and the story keeps you intrigued. The best puzzle adventure game of all time.

I first got Riven over a decade ago when it was first released. I was very, very young back then and couldn't figure anything out, so I used a walkthrough. I remember loving the scenery and atmosphere but finding the puzzles too hard. Ten years later I'd forgotten all the solutions to the puzzles and tried it again without a walkthrough. This time, over the course of a week, complete with fairly detailed note-taking, I managed to figure out the whole game on my own, and I can't even describe the feeling of euphoria that overtook me when I realized how all the pieces of the game fit together. I've played a lot of puzzle games in my life--both computer games and board games and in general puzzle games of all types. And Riven is the best. I really believe Riven is in a way the very pinnacle of puzzles of all types. The reason is that Riven is so rooted in human nature. The puzzles in Riven aren't arbitrary. If they involve machinery, that machinery was clearly placed by humans and used by humans. But a lot of them don't involve machinery. This is the novel feature that I've never seen any other puzzle successfully replicate: the puzzles in Riven require you to learn about the culture of a population of humans native to the islands you are on. Interaction with actual humans is very rare, but when it happens it packs a punch. But even without any humans on-screen you know you are in a world *built* by humans--there are countless traces of their culture all *over* the place, and none of it's arbitrary. I won't spoil anything, but there are in a sense only two puzzles in this game, and solving these puzzles involves gradually piecing together the culture of the native people over the course of the game. To solve both puzzles means to have deciphered a significant portion of the culture. When you do this successfully, this is when that moment of euphoria will hit you--I bet you've never experienced this feeling from another video game. The story is not very complex but it's very effective. Story-wise, the game provides you with small bits of information at a consistent and satisfying rate, often in the form of journals or letters. The story is very hands-off until the end, when you get the "pay-off"--a long and very compelling monologue by one of the game's characters, who will have been up to that point an utter mystery. To finally see his true personality is jolting. The graphics are still gorgeous even so many years later. It might take a few minutes to get used to the point-and-click interface, but after just a bit you won't really even notice. It makes some of our new technology seem a bit silly. And the music... oh, the music is very ambient for most of the game, but every once in a while, when you are in the presence of one of the game's major puzzles, it kicks in a little--still subtle, but just enough to give me shivers. Riven is hands-down the best game of the Myst series. The designers haven't come close to replicating its charms in any of their subsequent offerings. I don't know if Riven was a stroke of genius or an incredible stroke of luck, but it doesn't really matter--at least it got made one way or the other!

What a joy playing Riven again. So long ago that all notes and puzzle solutions have been made litter years back. Had to start nearly on scratch. But since I remembered what to do, and how to do it, I only had to go around once or twice to turn the game on and collect all the answers. Finished it in two small evenings. If you want to play Riven; prepare yourself for a long walk and a lot of wondering. Both to look at the beautiful scenery of the game, and to learn what you have to do. The second part can be so demanding that you end up "playing" the game by a walkthrough. There are three main puzzles in Riven (and some small ones). You have to recover a book that you loose in the beginning of the game (though no falt of yours), and you have to capture the villain (and free the damsel in distress). Lastly you have to learn the peculiar number system they use in Riven. And that takes some studying. The puzzles are hard. But the game will unlock its secrets if you are patient and ask yourself the right questions. There are a lot of hints around. And even a whole island that will teach you a lot of useful things about what to do and how to do it. There are also a lot of things around that you can look at, and sometimes do things with. Some of those things will give you central hints to solve the puzzles. Riven is not a game for the impatient. You will spend a lot of time trying to figure out how the game designers thought. There will be long hours with seemingly no progress at all. But when you finally have preced the answers together, it all goes pretty rapid. Riven also has a high play again value. Three of the central solutions changes from game to game, so you have to perform nearly the same tasks as the first time you solved the puzzles. Even if you know how to beat Riven it will take you nearly one and a half hour to finish the necessary tasks. So if you are patient, and content to spend some time understanding what is demanded of you, Riven is a game for you. You can do things at your own speed. You don't die in Riven (unless you choose one of the bad endings). You don't have to be quick with your mouse. You only have to be patient and open minded.

and it was great! The updated version really made it exciting to play again and this time i finished it! I have been a MYST enthusiast for decades! If you like puzzle games i believe you'll like this one and the rest in the series!

Myst is one of those games from the fringe of my memory, elegant and mysterious. Nothing could touch the overall experience of playing it for the first time way back when. I hesitated to play Riven at first for fear of disturbing a perfect memory of an old game by experiencing something similar, now from an adult perspective. I was glad to find that my fears were misplaced. Riven holds its own! It was a surprisingly enjoyable experience that didn't require nostalgia goggles to be fun. It's full of puzzles of varying difficulty, including some very tricky ones that you shouldn't feel bad about looking up the solution for. It somehow managed to gracefully tread the line between showing the player more of the world while still maintaining the sense of grand mystery that gave Myst its strength in the first place. As the game tells you, they put a lot of work into the sound of the game. Having played it with headphones and without, I *highly* recommend the headphones route, and if you can, turn off the lights / pull the curtains / otherwise isolate yourself. They've made a truly immersive experience that I recommend you get lost in. This game is art, and it is timeless.