Riven (1997)

For me, Riven was a game changer. It's immense and beautiful world. It's gorgeous soundtrack and it's enticing puzzles became for me the standard for adventure games, and few if any titles have ever matched the feeling I got discovering the world of Riven. Riven, like Myst once again puts you in the role of an unnamed protagonist. This time you're sent by Atrus into the collapsing world of Riven to stop his psychotic father, Gehn and rescue his wife Catherine. Riven drops you right into the action and gives you nothing to go on other than a short journal by Atrus describing his attempts to save the world and his wife. Everything else you learn by exploring the rich world, moving through structures that depict Gehn as a God, villages, palaces and secrets. Despite the lack of hand holding, Riven, like Myst is easy to pick up and play thanks to its simple interface. Like Myst, the world you interact with is largely deserted of people, save for a few cutscenes. So if you need to have heart pounding action in your game, or heavy dialogue, Riven will disappoint you. The thrill of Riven is more subtle. It comes from a feeling of being part explorer, part archeologist picking through the relics of a world beautifully imagined and brought to life.

It's not often you see a sequel which improves on the original in every way, but Cyan really took their time in making Riven. A direct continuation from Myst, the style of gameplay is relatively unchanged; point and click, first-person perspective, flick screen graphics. The flick screen element may not appeal to everyone, but there's a LOT of images in the game, so you get a reasonably good feel of your position in the world (unlike Myst, which had some huge steps which could easily disorient). The puzzles themselves are really what this game is all about, and they are fiendish. This to me is a good thing; I grow increasingly weary with game puzzles which are dumbed down for mass appeal. Although the puzzles are difficult in Riven, they are also logical, so with enough note taking and raw brain-work, you should be able to get through them. However, there is one critical puzzle which relies heavily on sound. On my Win XP x64 system there were some glitches with sound in animations, which meant that the puzzle was impossible to solve without a guide, so be aware of this. The graphics and sounds are superb, as you'd expect. The 16-bit renders are a huge improvement over Myst's 256 colour images and really help bring the world to life. The only area in which Riven does not improve over its predecessor is the plot. That's not to say it's worse - it still just feels inconsequential. Here you are, stuck on Riven. Here you go running round solving puzzles... but at no point do you ever really find out WHY you're doing this. The entire plot can be summed up in one sentence: "The world of Riven is falling apart, you must go there to imprison the evil Gahn, rescue the fair Catherine and hopefully escape back home". And it doesn't really get explained in any more depth than that, even with the REAMS of text in Catherine's and Gehn's diaries. I would have preferred a little more character interaction, but I guess we can't have our cake and eat it. Problems aside though, Riven is a great game which will keep you thinking for days on end, and at just under 4 quid, you can't really go wrong.

several years ago, when i was a little kid, i played this game with my uncle and had a lot of fun. I really enjoyed the beautiful scenery although i couldn't solve any of the puzzles. Now i bought the game on gog and am still amazed from the graphics. The puzzles are hard, but always logical, it just takes time to solve them. This game is a piece of art, you can just go around and look at the beautiful landscape. The installation is very easy, you'll get an installer which does everything for you ;) $6 is a great price for this game. Greetings from Germany and happy gaming

Speaking personally, I found Riven to be far more difficult than Myst. The puzzles seem more esoteric and less intuitive than in Myst (and Myst's puzzles were already esoteric and somewhat counter-intuitive). I didn't find Riven to be as enjoyable as Myst, but if you like a puzzle-based, story-driven game where you need to exercise your imagination to its limits, you'll probably enjoy Riven.

Title says it all! Mac-ify this thang!!