Riven is an HD remake of the original sequel to the 1993 adventure puzzle game, Myst. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Riven Review Overview
What is Riven?
Riven is a captivating point-and-click adventure puzzle game, bringing back the charm of classic 90s titles like Myst and Grim Fandango. This HD remake of the 1997 hit, Riven: Sequel to Myst, introduces a host of new puzzles along with beloved brain teasers from the original. Dive into fully explorable 3D environments that capture the game's iconic surrealist landscapes. With 3D-animated characters, revamped scenery, and remastered audio, you'll experience Riven in a whole new light. Can you find Catherine, or will Riven's challenges prove too tough to crack?
Riven features:
⚫︎ Almost 1:1 recreation of the original game’s landscape in HD
⚫︎ Puzzles, both old and new, spread across various islands
⚫︎ New 3D-animated characters
⚫︎ Free movement through a real-time 3D environment
⚫︎ Surreal landscapes with industrial aesthetics
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Riven's gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 GOG |
 App Store |
 Meta Quest |
| $34.99 | |||
Riven Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 A Remake Done Right Positively Brain-teasing Truly Captivating |
Story is Hard to Follow Not a Puzzle Game in the Traditional Sense |
Riven Overall Score - 88/100
You can't help but feel nostalgic when exploring Riven's surrealist landscapes, even if you’ve never played the original game. It serves as a time capsule of creativity and game design, evoking themes and practices no longer seen in the industry. Above all, it’s a faithful love letter to the games of its era, representing the best of what that slice of gaming history had to offer. Sure, it might be a bit pricey for a nostalgia trip and sometimes hard to follow, but there's a reason why Riven: The Sequel to Myst was such a hit, and this game is poised to capture that magic all over again.
Riven Story - 9/10
Riven’s story is rich, imaginative, and chock-full of twists and turns, although it can be hard to follow at times. That’s to be expected from a high-concept, surrealist story that also happens to be a sequel. Many pieces of the puzzle are already in motion when the player begins, so it’s easy to get lost if you're not careful. Still, it offers quality storytelling and world-building combined with environmental puzzles. What's not to love?
Riven Gameplay - 8/10
Although Riven isn't particularly action-packed and doesn't reach Resident Evil levels of puzzle craft, it's an amazing visual and narrative experience through and through. I feel like a true detective with all the backtracking and note-taking required, and its 12-hour runtime never feels boring despite the generous space between puzzles. Maybe the game could use more dynamic puzzles, but that might just be the modern gamer in me talking.
Riven Visuals - 9/10
Riven’s visuals are every bit as captivating as the original’s, only this time, it has that modern polish to round off its truly surreal environments. It presents a healthy mix of tribal and industrial aesthetics, framed well with the grandiose megalithic structures that evoke the work of Étienne-Louis Boullée. It’s a specific vibe that differentiates it from Myst’s romantic stylings, now made even more captivating by the game’s free movement.
Riven Audio - 10/10
Riven sells its artistry through its visuals but it sells its world and narrative through its audio. The constant din of machinery (or lack thereof) gives a sense of nature and society more than mere words could, and for good reason! Likely because of the game’s surreal nature, music, and sound triumph where words fail, and a world past our full understanding is laid bare. All of that to say that this game’s audio is pretty darn amazing.
Riven Value for Money - 8/10
While Riven is a good game by itself and is worth every penny, some might consider $35 to be a bit too steep a price for a 12-hour nostalgia trip. The puzzles, while great, may not be accessible to the modern audience, which contributes to this hesitation. It’s no major blemish to the game’s value as a product, but it understandably limits its audience somewhat.
Riven Review: A Captivating Game from a Different Time
From the moment I booted this game up, I knew something was different about it. I don’t mean that in a "different story, different mechanics" kind of way because it looks bog-standard from the outside looking in. I likened it to the Talos Principle once or twice, although, at the time, I didn’t know that such a comparison would be... insufficient. A short intro cinematic later and I’m on the titular island of Riven. That was when the realization hit me.
There’s no HUD, health bar, stamina meter, or inventory present. There was no map, no waypoints, no compass, no quest popup on the top left; just a pixelated cursor at the center of the screen and a surreal landscape before me. I felt out of my element—lost, almost—and for a moment, I had no idea how to proceed. But then, my mind drifted to a certain era of gaming history where the absence of such handholds was not only commonplace but necessary for the full enjoyment of the experience. Past the CoD lobbies of the early 2010s and the hidden-object games of the mid-2000s were the puzzle adventure games of the mid-to-late 90s, and it was during this era that real sleuths were threshed from the chaff. This was the era when Riven and its predecessor Myst thrived.
Riven is a remake of a game called Riven: The Sequel to Myst, which was originally released in 1997. As such, it embodies game design elements from its era, including the lack of a HUD that I so dramatically described earlier. Riven was a sequel to a similarly puzzling adventure game from Cyan Worlds Inc. called Myst and, together with other narrative-driven puzzler adventures like Grim Fandango, the two carved out a niche in their genre that represented the era quite well. Released at the latter end of the gaming industry’s avant-garde era and now translated to contemporary standards, it truly stands out as both a time capsule of that era’s practices and a love letter to its artistry.
At its core, Riven is a point-and-click puzzle adventure…at least, it was. Now given the modern remake treatment, you can freely walk around in 3D space and explore things at your own pace instead of just panning from room to room by clicking. Instead of getting closer to elements by tapping them, you can just walk up to them and have a good look. It’s a step in the right direction for a remake because not only did it make the game more accessible to modern players by giving it familiar controls, but it also allows the majesty and grandeur of Riven’s architecture to be inspected from every angle—not just the ones that the camera would allow.
Speaking of Riven’s architecture, let’s talk about the game’s puzzle elements because even that isn’t from this era. You’re not going to find any Resident Evil-level puzzles here with various locked-off areas and logic puzzles uncannily built into supposedly everyday objects. Riven embraces the surreal nature of puzzles in a 3D world and creates an island that’s both convincingly natural and unquestionably artificial.
Among the brambles and canopies of the island’s forests lie resplendent golden domes and churning machinery, purpose-built for the game’s story and puzzle elements. Instead of playing some modified version of a classic logic puzzle, you explore the island collecting tools and clues, often backtracking to see how they fit into the context of the surreal architecture. The game doesn't shoehorn itself into something to be easily understood; instead, it creates an environment to be explored and experimented with. One of the first puzzles you encounter is simply a spinning room with various exits, and yet, there’s so much to discover about it that doesn't help with the puzzle but enhances the artistry and exploratory value of the entire experience.
Half of the time, you’re finding puzzles you simply aren’t meant to solve yet, encouraging you to explore more and not overthink it. In the end, I think Riven’s puzzles aren’t meant to bend the mind; rather, they’re meant to be vehicles for the game’s story and world-building. This way, the intrigue isn’t lost in translation but enhanced by the puzzle’s innate mystery.
While on the topic of the game’s story being conveyed through its puzzles, let’s talk about Riven’s narrative structure as a whole. The story itself is a rather simple one and it’s laid out from the very beginning in a short intro cutscene. You’re here to a woman named Catherine and ensnare someone named Gehn with a trapped book. You’ve no way out until you do, and things are complicated by your immediate capture by one of Gehn’s men and the loss of your trapped book. It’s a simple and effective story, all things considered, and it has a healthy amount of world-building to unearth alongside its premise. My problem is more with how this story was told.
I recognize that it’s a product of the era’s practices, but Riven’s story is a bit loosey-goosey. As I said earlier, there isn’t a questline to follow, only a way forward, and sometimes that way forward isn’t so clear. Therein lies the puzzle, but therein also lies the confusion. There’s also the fact that Riven is a remake of a sequel to Myst, so, there are no character introductions. The guy who sends you on this quest is named Atrus, not that you’d ever know what that name meant in the world of Riven. Gehn and Catherine are also sprinkled about, but they aren’t really characters, more like names assigned to story elements we don’t know the significance of.
It’s not Riven’s fault that it’s a sequel, of course, but I think there was a missed opportunity to be more forthcoming with the game’s story this time around. I don’t think it would be detrimental to the game’s attempts at being genuine to the original, and, if anything, it’d be beneficial for new players looking to appreciate this particular way of game design and storytelling. All of this is to say that there’s way too much up in the air with Riven’s story and while the puzzles help instill intrigue, they don’t help in telling a story all too well.
In terms of visuals, Riven evokes the hard industrialism of steampunk mixed with the visceral and animalistic beats of tribalism, with notes of grand and surreal architecture punctuating its most prominent features. I can see pieces of Étienne-Louis Boullée’s monumentality blended with Dali’s esotericism and surrealist structures. It’s not quite Bosch-level in terms of absurdity, but there’s a permeating sense of otherworldliness that encompasses even the hardest angles and most solid foundations of the game’s structures. I particularly love the usage of domes to symbolize places of great power, evoking religious themes that mirror the game’s tribal aspects.
Audio-wise, this game is incredibly detailed in its sound design, and I am adamant that its narrative and world-building hinge on how well this audio represents the world. From the groan of machinery to the crisp calls of nature, a clearer image is painted in each player’s mind, greater than the visual stimulation provided by the game’s surreal structures. Together, the artistry is sold to the player, allowing them to bask in the environment as if they were really there. This was harder to capture in a point-and-click game from the late '90s, but now that the player can freely move about, it’s a completely different experience of a familiar environment.
And that’s about it for Riven. It’s a great game that stands out as a testament to its era’s game design, one that introduces itself well to the modern audience, barring a few missed opportunities narrative-wise. It looks and sounds good, better, and far more absurd than most of what contemporary game studios could muster. It’s a celebration of art, intrigue, and imagination that few but itself can compare to.
Pros of Riven
| Things Riven Got Right |
|---|
|
A Remake Done Right Positively Brain-teasing Truly Captivating |
A Remake Done Right
As much as I want to praise Riven for its own merits, it is a remake of a previous game, and with that status comes criticism of its value as a remake. I’d say that this game is a good remake because it captures the charm of the original while still innovating in meaningful ways. The biggest innovation was the recreation of the game’s iconic set pieces in 3D, allowing players to explore at their leisure instead of the railroaded point-and-click experience. The improved graphics enhance the game’s visual appeal, and the impact of the upgraded sound design on the game's narrative and aesthetic value cannot be overstated.
Positively Brain-teasing
I enjoy this game’s puzzles not because they are elaborate and complex (I reserve such praise for The Room and its many sequels), but for their simplicity and captivating nature. In addition to stimulating the mind and providing a welcome break from the monotony of exploration, they also serve as amazing set pieces in the game’s captivating setting. It involves more note-taking and backtracking than pattern recognition, but I think even Resident Evil fans might find this game’s puzzles positively brain-teasing.
Truly Captivating
I mean that in every sense of the word across each of the game’s facets, except perhaps its story. The sights and sounds of Riven are enthralling in more ways than one, stimulating the senses and piquing curiosity with puzzles. The blend of artistry across its mediums borders on the divine if you can appreciate them.
Cons of Riven
| Things That Riven Can Improve |
|---|
|
Story is Hard to Follow Not a Puzzle Game in the Traditional Sense |
Story is Hard to Follow
Riven’s story is hard to follow and offers little more than a breadcrumb trail in terms of progression. Snippets of names, identities, deeds, and stories are scattered throughout the world, serving as set pieces without much meaning to the uninitiated. This isn’t entirely the game’s fault; such is the fate of many sequels, after all. However, this does not excuse the fact that most players will see this as nothing more than a flashy puzzle game with lots of exploration, not as a story to be told.
Not a Puzzle Game in the Traditional Sense
Riven’s puzzles aren’t what the modern gamer would typically consider puzzles. Gone are the keys and pattern-recognition challenges that Resident Evil and hidden-object games have popularized. Instead, scattered clues across various islands require proper note-taking and good memory to piece together. It’s not too hard for the modern gamer, of course, but if you were expecting something with more hints and clues, then Riven isn’t the game for you. In fact, the developers even released a DLC for the game that’s just a 133-page guide for its puzzles.
Is Riven Worth It?
Worth It, But Even More So If You’re Nostalgic
I’ll be upfront and state that this game is worth its price, although that value can vary slightly depending on the amount of nostalgia you feel for it. With nostalgia factored in, $35 is a great price for this game. Without it, such a high price tag for an adventure puzzle game might give some people pause. Either way, you’re getting your money’s worth; it’s the "and then some" that’s not guaranteed.
| Digital Storefronts | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
GOG |
App Store |
Meta Quest |
| $34.99 | |||
Riven FAQ
Why Did Riven Take So Long to Make?
Riven’s developers had the following to say about the massive time gap between the original Riven and the Remake:
"Riven is one of the most highly regarded games in Cyan’s history. We didn’t want to approach it lightly or frivolously. Cyan is a small indie studio. We wanted to make sure we could take on such a difficult, costly and complicated endeavor – and do it well."
Is Riven a Remake or a Remaster?
According to the game’s developer, Riven is a remake of the original 1997 game Riven: The Sequel to Myst, as it has enough new features and graphical updates to surpass the status of a remaster.
If you’d like to know more about the differences between remakes, remasters, and reboots, you may refer to our article going over the topic.
Game8 Reviews
You may also like...
Riven Product Information
 |
|
| Title | RIVEN |
|---|---|
| Release Date | June 25, 2024 |
| Developer | Cyan Worlds Inc |
| Publisher | Cyan Worlds Inc |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam) |
| Genre | Adventure, Puzzle |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Riven Website |
