I am often dumbfounded at some games that get remastered nowadays. Sometimes it feels like it’s been too soon and that pretty massively effects my enjoyment. Other times the choice of game just has me scratching my head thinking “who wants this?” But some remasters/remakes have me wondering why it took so long for them to finally get around to making it. Riven is one of those games.
Riven is a top to bottom remake of the 1997 classic Riven: The Sequel To Myst. Due to the popularity of the first game in the series, Riven – at one time – was the highest selling PC game of all time. This is the kind of game that deserves to be re-introduced to the world, and it only took 27 years. I played the original game only one time when I was about four or five years old. I didn’t grow up on it like many people have did, but I can absolutely see why people ate it up.
As the original title suggests, Riven is the sequel to the classic puzzle adventure game Myst. This is a game I have literally never, ever touched, but I am extremely aware of its importance and impact in the gaming zeitgeist. Like Myst, Riven is a game that implores you to take your time and gather your thoughts. You might even find yourself literally gathering your thoughts on physical notes like I did. Throughout my playthrough of Riven I wrote an abundance of notes and things I had seen in the environment that I thought might be important later. My scrawlings looked like the ravings of a mad-man and only about a third of what I wrote down was actually useful for making it through the game. I cannot stress how involved the puzzles are.
There are several instances during Riven where you find notebooks and journals that have doodles and chicken-scratch written throughout that look shockingly similar to the nonsense shit I wrote down on my phone. These books are often filled with important information you need to apply to puzzles you’ll find down the line. It’s always important to document what you see. Thankfully, there is a really great screenshot function if you really don’t feel like writing this info down for yourself. You can view the screenshots in an individual menu and really take the time to study and apply whatever you learn from them. I had a pretty solid time getting through most of the game without any outside help, but there were two sections that had me confounded. Thankfully, the game is 27 years old, so there are guides all over the place.
The craziest thing about Riven to me is that it was originally released as a CD-ROM and is now a completely digital experience running beautifully on Unreal Engine 5. I got to play Riven on a Steam Deck and was dumbfounded at how well it managed to run. To be fair, I did have to adjust some graphics options, but once I had the options juuuuust right, the game ran like a dream. I was blown away at just how good Riven looked even with the graphics brought down a bit. Unreal Engine 5 is truly a staggering engine and a technical playground for really talented developers. The original release was essentially just a bunch of still images you had to click through. Now Riven is fully realized and expanded upon. This is a staggering overtaking, as it would be easy to lose the vision and intent behind the original look and feel of the game. It is genuinely insane to me how they managed to nail every single aspect of the look and feel of the original game while making it infinitely more enjoyable to look at and play. I was again dumbfounded when comparing the old walkthroughs to the current game. I often found myself taking a few minutes when I was clueless about my next goal just to stand around and look at the vistas I was surrounded by. The gorgeous crystal-blue sky, towering singular blades of grass shooting out of the ground, disturbingly realistic stones and rocks, gleaming cold metals and rusted burning hot steel. I kept waiting for the Steam Deck to explode due to the graphical output that was being displayed. This is a testament to how talented the whole team over at Cyan Worlds Inc truly is. I cannot imagine how good this game looks on a high-end computer.
Riven‘s playable space is made up of several islands of varying sizes that you need to travel to and connect through a liminal space called the Starry Expanse. This is apparently a new way of travelling the islands and connecting them in the remake. From what I’ve read there were books that you were used to link the islands together in the original. In Riven 2024 we’ve got literal portals to a sequestered section of space that acts as portals to the different important places found on each island. Each time you see a rounded spinning dome, there is a puzzle around it that makes it come to a stop. Once you’ve figured out the solution (usually pretty simple) you can travel to the Starry Expanse and connect that portal to that island’s spinning dome. If you want to get the “good ending” then it’s important to make sure you do this for every portal in the game. They aren’t necessary per se, but they are convenient and make the backtracking in the later parts of the game much less frustrating. These connections are made by linking a rotating mechanism in the centre of the “room.” You have to rotate a sphere ladened with symbols that don’t immediately explain what they mean. Eventually, you realize that each symbol represents an island. You need to take note of each symbol shown so you can figure out which island you’re travelling to, which feels like a puzzle in itself. This area feels like a magical diversion of an already magical experience. The only thing that took away from this part was that loading times entering and leaving the Expanse were a lot longer than expected. Maybe that was just due to the Steam Deck, who knows?
My one issue with Riven is a very personal issue – I haven’t played Myst! The story of Riven is very dense with characters I know nothing about and references to past events I haven’t experienced for myself. The only thing I’m 100% certain of – even after finishing the game – is that I witnessed a murder right at the top of the game, and I was the only one who saw it. I don’t know who died, who killed them, why they killed them, I’m pretty clueless. I read some plot synopses online and tried to digest what I had missed. Thankfully there are some die-hard Myst and Riven fans out there, because I would have never been able to put the plot of this game into words.
Ultimately that didn’t really impact the enjoyability of Riven for me, because I was confused and curious up until the credits rolled. You start the game with only a bag and a book. I figured I’d be collecting items and books left right and centre, but you really only get a couple other books right before the end of the game. Not knowing who I was or where I was actually made the game feel a lot more intriguing to me. The technology present feels so advanced, meanwhile the abandoned village made of huts and the giant swimming dinosaurs feel so archaic. The juxtaposition of high-tech vehicles that travel island-to-island by rails and speed-boosters compared to standard underground mine-carts. I couldn’t tell what time period I was in, let alone what planet I was on. I would argue that maybe this is the optimal way to play this game – as an outsider. Don’t play Myst first, start here.
Back in 1997, adventure games were all about clicking every pixel on the screen to find hidden interactable objects. This isn’t really common in 2024. We’ve come a long way technologically and developers have made huge leaps when it comes to accessibility and ease-of-play. Riven luxuriates in the classic style of point-and-click games. You are encouraged to click on every single thing you can. You’re also encouraged to stop and think, take notes, revisit places you thought you fully explored, and read journals. This is about as faithful of a remake as you can possibly get. If you’re the type of gamer who only enjoys sports games and first-person-shooters, this likely won’t be for you. However, if you’re the type of person who enjoys escape rooms and playing brain-scratching puzzle games like Wordle and Connections, I can see you getting into the mind-boggling riddles and puzzles found in Riven.
I have played so many spectacular games this year, and Riven is as captivating and impeccable as any of them. It really does feel like I was gifted a high-end bottle of wine when I was a baby and only now – as a full fledged adult – get to experience it 27 years later. It was a great when it was bottled, but is now infinitely better and fully realized after nearly three decades in the barrel. Riven is a profound and perplexing experience that left me scratching my head so often. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were scars. If you’ve played the original you’ll still have reasons to come back because there are new solutions to classic puzzles and it actually looks and plays like a video game now, as opposed to a digital comic book.
Riven is endlessly satisfying and I am begging you to spend your money on it.
