I am stuck at something the manuals call the frog trap. I already found the trails behind the doors, the workshop, the kinetoscope and it's combination lock inside, not that I've seen any hints yet to either as I barely started playing. The guides say that I have to apply power to the frog trap by the steam valve, and that they had to go back to activate it. I got here from a pipe suspended higher than I can jump there seems to be no way to go back, and the frog trap lever makes the same sound open or closed, so I'm sure it's not getting power. I have walked the three paths repeatedly, and there doesn't seem to be any way to climb the wall up to the pipe that leads to the mine cart back to the steam valve, anyway to turn the ramp to a ladder, or any way to get the frog trap to work without power, or any clues as to the combination in the kinetoscope. It seems that I got myself to a position that there is no other option except to restart. Is it possible to get yourself so stuck in this game that it is impossible to continue? Am I missing something, like a way back to the steam valve?

Also I can't really read any of the "hand written" text, and there is a lot of it in the fathers laboratory. I can't even tell what his name is, as the fonts are displaying so bad. Is there somewhere I can see a photo of an item, then the transcribed text in a normal font? The photos, so I don't start reading stuff I haven't found.

I did overlook something. There were two doors in the lab. Now I can play with mountains and hope they do something useful, but over all I am in the same position, unsure how or if I can return to the steam valve or starting point, unless one of these new puzzles on the new island do something as none of the others would on the last island, except give me that symbol, one of many it appears.


Is the frog trap important? Do I have to make it work before I finish the game?

Provided that you are able to lower and raise the frog trap....put one bait pellet in the center of the trap...lower it down....wait paiently and eventually you will hear it close....raise it and you will see a frog that will jump out of the trap and back down into the "abyss". You can do this repeatedly and, No, it isn't required. It is just an interesting aside that, I believe, introduces the source of the poison that is used to dispatch natives such as the one when you first arrived in Riven. Enjoy !!
As for the difficulty reading text in the notes: Try adjusting the SCUMMVM settings for game resolution and graphic bits - i.e. 32 bit instead of 16 bit and a resolution greater than 640 by 480.
Let me know if I can be of any further help.

Scrapack: on the walkway to the lab, there is a switch/lever on the right that stops the fan above the frog trap. When you stop that fan you can climb past it and travel to the lab where you will end up inside the lab. Also, there is a ladder that leads up to the doorway platform outside of the frog trap and power dome area. You have to raise the hatch door (outside of the main door ) in order to access the ladder to climb back down. Of course....none of this will work if you don't have the steam valve in the lake in the correct position.

Thanks. I thought I was being patient. I shall attempt to be more patient. I had seen the switch on the walkway, and it did turn off the fan. I guess that means the valve was in the correct position. I will look for this ladder.

Thanks for the suggestion on the SCUMMVM settings, I'll try that next time I boot up that tower. I still have a few working Win98SE machines laying around so I haven't dealt with this emulator before. I assumed it was more of a series of patches like the code edits used to get Sega's Bug to run on a 64bit OS.

I can't lower the frog trap, and can't find the ladder, the valve must be in the wrong position. Again, I don't see any way back to fix that.

I found the SCUMMVM exe in the riven folder, has no games on the list, and it doesn't see riven.exe with the "add game" dialogue box. There is no 32 or 16 bit as far as I can see, and changing settings while the game is running in a different tab does nothing. Having SCUMMVM open means that GoG won't open Riven if it was closed.

Walk outh the doors that you entered to get to the frog trap walkway. Look to your left and you will see a trap door on the platform floor. Lift that door and you will see the ladder. I believe that once you use that ladder to take you back to the lakeshore....you will be able to find it once again easily and avoid having to use the pipe in the boiler to get back to the top. Message me if you need any further help. Sorry I've been away so long....much happening here on the homefront at this time.
PS: There is a menu system in the SCUMMVM to the right of the screen. You have to have the correct path for this interface to find the files to run the game and also find the savegames. I own ALL the original series and can switch back and forth from GOG to original using the SCUMMVM interface.
Talk to you later.

Thanks, I had found another way off that island, back to the starting island, but when I went back I saw the trap door where you said, and found a ladder to the cart so there are at least two ways off that island. I have gone to a few other, maybe all, islands and now think that there isn't a way to get trapped in such a way as to require starting over on any one island from messing up a puzzle.

I got the cd's as well, but thought it might be neat to see how long it took to play. This settings is it the one that has zip mode activated, water effects enabled and transitions? Also what does the Zip mode do, as I didn't notice a difference.

Aside from uniform icons and tracking game time, Is there a benefit to buying the later games on GoG if I already have the CDs? I asked this in another thread, but no one answered, as far as I am aware. Now, with the ability to link games manually, I think I might be able to track play time on my CDs as well, no matching icons though.

It's basically fast travel so you don't have to spend time clicking unnecessarily to get to where you wish to actually go.

It only works with areas you've actually already been to at least once before and it will bypass any interstitial areas leading up to your desired destination. Like the manual mentions, if you use this function early in the game, you can miss events or clues that might happen depending on what you've been able to accomplish in the game so far.

Of course, the latter won't be a big deal if you've played and finished Riven previously, but if it's your first time then I'd definitely recommend using it less to get the full scope of things.

Cool, thanks for the help.