Riven (Remake) Review - A Classic Puzzle Adventure Game REBORN!? 

NICE

Sorry for your loss but glad you have the memories!

haha yeah wild times!

Thanks for watching!

Lots of memories, appreciate you sharing them!

It certainly has a passionate fanbase!

Always cool to hear from Myst fans they are a super chill group :)

There may be more puzzle elements added here in some spots than in the original - in fact I am sure there are. Cyan has confirmed as much. Seeing new areas in this gameworld seems like it has the potential to be fascinating and it seems any new material does fit aesthetically given the return of the original art director Richard Van Der Wende and the composer (Robyn Miller) apparently adding some new music tracks. Very much looking forward to revisiting all the familiar spaces but also seeing the various unlockable / discoverable spaces where they've been expanded on. Basically it is a remake that is creatively building on the initial design, not recreating it 1:1 as we have already seen in the demo, so any claim as to the puzzles involved based off the original is unlikely to apply accurately to this version.

Such a unique title, certainly a cool thing to be brought up to modern times. Thanks for watching!

Some of the puzzles are pretty dang close to the original for sure, they have done a good job of making the game feel old but new.

Y'know what, you're definitely right. Most of the puzzles here are so well integrated into the world and lore, it's less like they're puzzles and more like they're mechanisms that exist for a reason. Most of it comes down to understanding who Atrus, Catherine and Gehn are, what's their role in all of this, what Riven is and what's happening to it, who the D'ni and the Rivenese are, what the Star Fissure is, all that stuff. Other times, it comes to understanding what the machine in question is, and what the different bits and bobs on it do. What's its power source, what's this valve for, why was it built and why do we want to make it work. Not only that, but good observation skills are a huge factor here. Most of the time, it's not just necessary to have good logical understanding or a comprehensive grasp on the world. Sometimes, you just need to notice that you can remove the hinge of a door.

Awesome history!

You bet!

Thanks for the kind words and we hope you get to play soon!

Thank you! Cheers!

Pretty wild!

Hope you enjoy it!

Thanks for sharing these thoughts, awesome!

Have fun!!

Ha well done! Cookie for you 🍪

@@IDreamofIndie oh my gosh can I have my autograph? 😌

🖋️

So true! You theoretically still could I suppose 😂

How I played all my puzzle games back then, still how I do it these days, even when they have an in-game notebook mechanic.

Appreciate you sharing your memories!

I didn't play that remake but it seems to have a mostly positive reception on Steam!

It's a very good remake, has a lot of good stuff going for it, pretty much the same game as the original but in 3D. The only downsides are the character models (they're not very good), and some of the older and more nostalgic fans of the original game also complained about the lighting of some ages not being faithful (like Myst having a bit more warm colors to it), although I thought many of the other ages actually did have more faithful lighting to them when compared to realMyst: Masterpiece Edition, the remake from 2014. One last thing I do think is pretty lame, this remake doesn't have the bonus age that you can visit in realMyst: Rime. It's not necessary, but it was a really neat place to visit. Probably one of the most beautiful ages, to me at least

Yes it is!

@@IDreamofIndie so hyped! Great review!

👍👍

then you have something to look forward to

It's very pretty!

I am so lost in Obduction. No idea what to do. If I have to look at a guide, it defeats the purpose of the game itself. They made Obduction too hard!

@@marcusarelius Yeh, some of the puzzles are too obtuse and illogical. Apparently firmament is even worse which is why I avoided it.

@@tubularmonkeymaniac Obduction mainly had two really irritating puzzles. Worst one is the gauntlet which takes a literal hour to execute even once you've worked out the solution state, which is really a showcase for the loading transition over and over for no good reason. The other isn't even a puzzle, it just looks like it must be one until you slowly realize it does absolutely nothing. It is that box with the cyrillic, which serves no real purpose, it is just a box of inscrutable lettering and numerous buttons that you would think is important but turns out just to hold some easter egg photos submitted by Kickstarter backers. And Firmament had a buggy as heck launch, and one puzzle legit had broken physics where I got a thing stuck and wedged precisely in a spot between two rock surfaces such that the crane thing was hopelessly stuck and immovable, the puzzle uncompletable without reloading from an earlier save. The story was a problem too as everyone smart enough to make it to the end pretty much anticipated the gist of the ending a mile away. And I was kind of hoping there was some really big unexpected extra, that we didn't see a mile away, or that the obvious twist was a deliberate misdirection to something crazier, but that isn't how it was, it went exactly, more or less, where we all suspected it would. And that was the gripe for me with Firmament - not the puzzles being hard but in the end the story outcome they were heading to being both predictable and broadly flawed in its execution. Obduction and Firmament had amazing visual artistry and sound design, will give Cyan credit for that at least. They looked and sounded beautiful in a ton of spots and they were quite expansive and detail rich game settings to explore. Which is not so bad (given they had, inflation adjusted, production budgets comparable, even slightly smaller, than the cost of making Myst circa '93.) And in both the puzzle design was a mixed bag, some good aspects, some bad. Hard, definitely, and sometimes genuinely frustrating, but not arbitrary at least in the majority of cases. But Riven, man, it seems Cyan knocked this remake out of the park and that is awesome to see them really do a great job making a faithful yet somehow also freely innovative take on a classic, and not have some glaring major design flaw introduced in the process. The reviews showing up are almost all stellar, 88% on Metacritic which is - amazingly - higher than the original Riven's review average in 1997. (83%) In fact that review aggregation, if it holds, makes this Cyan's best reviewed release in the studio's entire history.

You are very welcome!

Fair!

Out today!

@@IDreamofIndie 😮😮!

Bummer!

Riven is using UE5.

Yes. Some of the old puzzles were reworked, actually made easier, for better or worse. And there's some completely new stuff.

I guess it was put in purpose...as a reminder of the roots

@@inspectorbuttons You are right! I was trying to find the exact Windows / MacOS version these cursors come from but it is neither. The icons in the original Riven (and also here) are from HyperCard! The Apple software devkit used to make their first game - The Manhole (1988). Quite the callback...

Thanks for watching!

Sure as hell doesn't play like it tho, when it comes to puzzles or story direction at least! ...thankfully. I mean, I liked the Witness, the puzzles were cool for what they were. Even tho most of them were basically puzzles from some mobile app, they allowed us to explore the island. The environmental puzzles and perspective tricks were a pretty neat thing. But damn, the story they were hiding was a big load of meta fauxlosophical nothing.

Thanks for watching!

i fully agree. My potato computer can't run the graphics in the new version, and I miss the live action footage from the old version