Riven (1997)

Myst, Riven, Exile, Revelation and End of Ages are sooooo GOOD! :) So enjoyable, beautiful, wondeful and so very special!

Most of your time will be spent taking in the scenery, animations and soundscapes that still look fantastic today despite the low resolution and color. Each area in the game is connected to the others via some cool vehicle cinematics. A ton of backtracking will likely be required for a first time player, but thankfully these cinematics can be instantly skipped with a press of a button. Between that and the zip mode option, getting around is super fast. Maybe it was a good time in 1997, but in 2024 the game is even more playable thanks to the removal of disc swapping and non-existent load times. The puzzle solutions are very clever as well. The puzzle difficulty forces the player to make careful observations of the world to understand what they are trying to do and how to do it, and the time it takes to test your hypotheses isn't too bad thanks to the aforementioned QOL improvements in this release. Don't use a guide, you'll be glad you didn't. Absolutely worth playing in 2024 imo. Also, go play Outer Wilds, The Witness, or the new Riven remake!

The first time I played Riven was way back on the playstation. I still have my playstation disc. However I loved the game but did not care to change disc so offten on the playstation. So When I seen that GOG updated it for Windows vista and xp. Just so you guys know this works great on Windows 7 Professional with no issues. If you love puzzles and some interesting story line. The graphics are even better compared to the way it was on the playstation do to the fact when a video started you could see a outline of the video so this is major improvement. If anyone has the OLD DVD version and having issues with it not running any longer on there computer. Diffently buy this one from here you should have no issues with this version. Thanks for updating for later operating systems.

This game is simply amazing. There is nothing like it (other than myst). It has the best graphics on any video game that I've seen. It simply looks real. If you liked Myst, then you will love this game. It has a very immersive story. The puzzles are challenging. Yes, this is one game that may be at times difficult to play from the beginning to the end, but it is definitly worth it.

I must admit that no one in my family ever beat this without looking at a walkthrough. The joy of exploration is very rarely matched, and this game looks gorgeous, even by today's standards, if only because of the pre-rendering. I wouldn't say that this game holds up by today's standards; traveling is necessarily clunky because you move from set point to set point and you will have to hunt for pixels that your cursor reacts with through the game. It is worth the purchase and worth your time, even if the supposed challenge of the puzzles tends towards futility.