Favorite piece of Riven trivia:
If you've played the game you might remember the one spot where there's a giant sword sticking out of the ground. Since this place also appears in one of the game's FMV cutscenes they had to use a real giant sword prop for filming. The person that made the giant sword prop was Adam Savage from Mythbusters.
Cyan, by the time they got Adam's dagger prop, figured out they could do the whole thing in CG and so did not use the prop. They still thought it was cool as hell and hung it up on the wall. It was only after MythBusters started airing that they found out it was Adam's work, because he mentioned it in an interview. As shown, it now has a place of honor today in Cyan's lobby.
> Your reaction to Riven when approached in “gamer” mode will depend on whether you think this kind of intensive intellectual challenge is fun or not, as well as whether you have the excess intellectual and temporal bandwidth in your current life to go all-in on such a major undertaking.
There's a period of time between the nineties and mid 2000s when ubiquitous and fast internet access wasn't easily accessible, and so games like Myst and Riven had the space and time to be digested and savoured. Now it seems this just isn't feasible anymore. There are of course games in the same category, e.g. Outer Wilds and The Witness, but these have much more concessions to the internet age
To me, both Outer Wilds and The Witness were absolutlely savourable, and I made a point of never looking up anything on the Internet while playing these games. That would rob me of the feelings these games were designed to impart.
There's definitely games in this category and I do still think they work even in a digital age. It's a relatively niche microgenre though, and I think in a sense that is why it works.
Immortality and The Signifier are both solid games where most of the enjoyment is interpreting the world.
They aren't hypercard-esque puzzle games like Myst and Riven, but what they share in common is that the enjoyment of the game is figuring out the somewhat ambiguous world major beats occur in the negative space of what you are explicitly shown and told.
The former has sort of Lynchian undertones that slowly emerge over the course of the game, and the latter benefits from at least a cursory understanding of Freud and/or semiotics.
Any Daniel Mullins game, Noita and Animal Well are excellent high depth and intellectually stimulating puzzle games. I highly suggest them all if you're looking for a puzzle box to rip apart.
I love the environmental simulation and deep secrets in Noita but it's not quite like Riven. Riven had me filling out pages and pages of a journal with notes and drawings. Many of these notes and drawings were my observations ended up being extraneous details about the visual design and lore of the world, because in Riven it can be very difficult to parse what is and is not relevant to progressing in the game. It's a very unique experience, I love a lot of puzzle games with secrets and meta layers, and I love Outer Wild's knowledge based metroidvania design, but no other game has had me scouring and mulling on every detail of this virtual world like Riven.
I haven't played the latter, but The Witness avoids, as one example, a common problem in games like Riven or many other old adventure games. That is, The Witness understands that huge challenge is completely fine, so long as it's isolated to a specific virtual space, such as a given panel and room. Instead many old games give a strong sense that a solution may be found anywhere in the game so far, or anywhere on any random bitmapped area from a set of 10+ screens. I think the "concession" The Witness makes is to focus itself in order to ask the player to focus. I don't think it's possible to ask the player, like Riven does, to be comfortable living in the world for extended periods. Riven does so by unfocussing and spreading itself out over everything: anything might be interactable, anything might be a clue and important.
Today, people want progress, and if they are stuck, they want to know exactly where. The sense of anxiety created by totally open confusion is not acceptable. For me, personally, that's the moment I open a walkthrough: for example, the moment I feel like I missed something important and I have no idea where.
Excellent comparison. I would consider those both Riven-Tier games in terms of awe and wonder. There are a few factors affecting emotional appeal, including phase in life, age, how much you're used to games, and your main point but...
I will say I had nearly as much of a good time with those two games as with Riven. For all three, I had this sinking feeling while playing "I will rarely find works as lovely as these in my life".
I recall the graphics of titles such as Myst and Donkey Kong Country were in itself newsworthy.
There was definitely something appealing in these lower-resolution rendered graphics for the way they hid the imperfections of computer graphics and conveyed more detail than was actually present. In a way our minds filled the gaps.
A good example of this are the trees in Myst in this image (https://i.ytimg.com/vi/E9ZtXtFXE84/maxresdefault.jpg). They're just textured cones with a central cylinder, but as composed they look far more richly detailed.
I totally agree. The thing about Myst and Riven is that they really are full of the kinds of things that players will naturally try to circumvent by looking up solutions: non-obvious interactable objects, branching paths, easy to accidentally backtrack. Basically, full of ways to feel like you are wasting your time. The concessions that Outer Wilds and The Witness make are naturally related to this. Particularly with the latter, Jon Blow stated how much they changed the game to make it clear that the panels were the only thing that needed to be interacted with, and the game makes it very clear from the beginning that each panel can be approached independently. It's only with the game's environmental puzzles that this starts to devolve, but they are not necessary by any means. Outer Wilds also does a great job of making you feel like you are getting something significant from each time loop.
But I must agree with you, the ship has sailed with this kind of game. You can of course go back and enjoy it but you do so with the knowledge that you can be doing other things that feel as meaningful but without the feeling of frustration.
Another similar example are MMOs. When I was a kid, my dad and I were really into Star Wars Galaxies. Well, people made emulation projects to go back and play it, but it's just not the same for various reasons. I feel the same way with World of Warcraft. It is almost more stark than Riven, because you not only miss the word of mouth and lack of easy "cheating" aspects, but you also feel the distinct lack of open socialising in modern online gameplay.
A good example of the opposite would be old Nintendo games. Super Mario Bros 3 is still one of the best 2D Mario games of all time, and in no sense when playing it do you feel compelled towards a modern experience.
I had a similar experience when I bought an iOS remake of legend of Zelda three… Within an hour I found myself circling the border of the accessible area of the game looking for the door or NPC interaction I was missing. Absolutely Not fun. I chalked it up to gameplay of a bygone era and gave the rest a miss.
There's another thing about hyper-prevalent internet: there are wikis and guides documenting every detail, every nook and cranny, detailing every optimally min-maxed strategy. Exploration is dead.
You reminded me that when the CD drive kicked out the disc for the first time and asked for the next, you knew that you had broken through and that some new shit was about to land.
Riven is why I got a CD drive (Plextor) that used caddys rather than a tray. I knew that I was going to be swapping discs fairly often and the caddy gave them more protection. Every time I went to a new island, it was a furious sorting of caddys to find the right one, then slam it into the drive to avoid wasting time out of the game.
What a story, and what a game. I remember being thrilled receiving this as a gift. Thankfully, my parents already had our PC upgraded to accept CD-roms; a technician had come to our home to replace the Floppy B drive with a CD-drive. I was confused about how the CDs would fit and mechanically operate in such a slot, but it all worked out. Let us play The Lost Mind of Dr Brain, which talked!
Regrettably, Riven still wouldn't run, as it required display hardware that could display thousands-of-colors. Bummer.
With a new PC many years later, I finally played it. It was one of those experiences where I wish I could forget it, so I could play it again. I tried again decades later, (after having played and loved all the other Myst games; IV was my favorite; outstanding atmosphere and scope; especially the starting and starry worlds). Regrettably, I still remembered how to solve almost every puzzle, and remembered the map layouts in detail. However, I remembered absolutely none of the plot of dialog!
(The latest Myst re-releases are worth a play through too, as is Obduction. My favorites are still Riven and Myst IV though!)
I wonder if your memory is an outlier? If I play a game, read a book, or watch a movie within a year or two I remember the edges and themes but I’ll forget the details of the plot.
Myst is an exception which is probably a testament to how impactful it was to 11 year old me, but I’ve played Riven twice and I could barely tell you what it is about. If I play it again, I’ll start getting my memory jogged and it won’t completely be like starting from scratch but pretty close to it.
Dementia runs in my family so I am always paranoid about lapses in my memory (I’m 40). When I talk to others I don’t seem to be alone.
FWIW, I remember the games I was really into fairly well. I'm not sure if I'll ever forget the Red Dead Redemption 2 main quest line. Games like Halo 3 are a bit harder for me though, because it's a lot of the same grinding over and over.
I have bounced off of Myst so many times. It's just not my thing. I was in 8th grade when it came out, and the majority of my friends liked it, but I solved maybe 3 puzzles before becoming bored. The world felt sterile and uninteresting next to nearly every single adventure game I'd played so far.
As the digital antiquarian is happy to point out, most of the Sierra adventures were poor games, but few were sterile. And the Infocom games were almost overflowing with life.
"Myst" coming out on a CD at the time struck me as a very risky move as so few people had optical drives on their PCs. What I failed to appreciate (and why I must suck at marketing) is that everyone with a CD-ROM drive bought the game. You almost had to either to justify the device or perhaps to lord it over those who did not have one.
Myst's 1994 Windows release is pretty far into the CD-ROM era. I was playing Monkey Island with its great CD soundtrack in 92, and the talkie versions of Fate of Atlantis and King's Quest 6 in 93, for example.
For my friends, they lorded their CD-ROM drive with the purchase of Phantasmagoria. No time for those wimpy Myst games. My friends needed hardcore dramatic depictions of sexual violence.
My dad adored the Myst games. We would plug a computer into a big screen (eventually projector) and try to solve the games as a family over a Christmas break
Not enough can be said about the quality of the writing and worldbuilding in the universe. It's as pity that the format died around the game.
Highly recommend Obduction, also from Cyan. As a guy who had Myst when it dropped for PC (and spent 32 hours straight with two friends, chugging Coke, to solve it) I feel like it's a worthy addition to the genre.
There are some terrific point & click games on iOS (preferably iPadOS). The Room series, The House of Da Vinci series (superb Room knockoff), and The Eyes of Ara (personal fav) just to name a few.
My intelligence level at the age of 14 was that I could finish Myst and loved it, but not Riven and had to buy a guide to help me with it. I think it might be the only game I bought a guide for. Never got over that.
Actually, I did phone the super mario 64 help hotline as I was missing level 10. 60p a minute!
Same. Riven was such a massive step up in difficulty from Myst.
Of all the 4 games (yes 4, I refuse to acknowledge the last entry) it is definitely the most difficult. I had to wait for it to come out on GoG and replay it as an adult to finish it.
Fascinating to compare the take on storytelling/worldbuilding articulated at the end of the article to a game at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Dwarf Fortress which has the explicit aim of being a story-generating tool, but creates worlds sort of as an accidental byproduct. What would it take to be able to generate a puzzle game with the kind of depth seen in Riven using a generative tool like Dwarf Fortress? A deeper question might be, is there any generative process that would produce the complexity of Riven without an explicit desire or demand to create such complexity. The complaints by the author in a sense echo the utter impracticality of creating such complex puzzles. Most of the time the practical solution is just to have a key, but that leads to boring bog standard gameplay. Maybe a virtual civilization that only allows initiates that demonstrate a certain persistence and curiosity, but how do you weed out those that simply follow the instructions that others have given? Well, if you have the ability to generate a whole new set of equally challenging puzzles that can't be rote memorized and copied, maybe that is sufficient.
> What would it take to be able to generate a puzzle game with the kind of depth seen in Riven using a generative tool like Dwarf Fortress?
You'd need AGI.
Standard procedural generation, even the most advanced versions, aren't any good at consistently making interesting things. Procedural generation is only good for making things that probably haven't been seen before, and the vast majority of what gets spit out via procedural generation will be bland and uninteresting.
In other words, there's a reason that 99% of any given Dwarf Fortress world's legends mode will be mind-dullingly boring, and a reason why Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has an autoexplore key.
But if you're willing to tolerate somewhat-bland open-ended procedural murder mysteries in a highly simulated film-noir setting, check out Shadows Of Doubt.
Shadows of Doubt actually sounds quite interesting, seems like the sort of game where dipping in and solving one case, then putting it down for a few days/weeks, might keep it feeling at least somewhat fresh.
A game that fits between 'hard puzzles' and 'action' and will always have a new puzzle available to me might be really nice.
(I am not certain of this enough to buy it -yet- but I'm now definitely considering it)
Readit News
https://youtu.be/gcDCZ2TmTck?si=8J8A4ja1vRGDC9c6&t=150
There's a period of time between the nineties and mid 2000s when ubiquitous and fast internet access wasn't easily accessible, and so games like Myst and Riven had the space and time to be digested and savoured. Now it seems this just isn't feasible anymore. There are of course games in the same category, e.g. Outer Wilds and The Witness, but these have much more concessions to the internet age
Immortality and The Signifier are both solid games where most of the enjoyment is interpreting the world.
They aren't hypercard-esque puzzle games like Myst and Riven, but what they share in common is that the enjoyment of the game is figuring out the somewhat ambiguous world major beats occur in the negative space of what you are explicitly shown and told.
The former has sort of Lynchian undertones that slowly emerge over the course of the game, and the latter benefits from at least a cursory understanding of Freud and/or semiotics.
Not having Internet really makes my experience better with games. I wish I had the discipline to just not reach for a Wiki.
Today, people want progress, and if they are stuck, they want to know exactly where. The sense of anxiety created by totally open confusion is not acceptable. For me, personally, that's the moment I open a walkthrough: for example, the moment I feel like I missed something important and I have no idea where.
I will say I had nearly as much of a good time with those two games as with Riven. For all three, I had this sinking feeling while playing "I will rarely find works as lovely as these in my life".
There was definitely something appealing in these lower-resolution rendered graphics for the way they hid the imperfections of computer graphics and conveyed more detail than was actually present. In a way our minds filled the gaps.
A good example of this are the trees in Myst in this image (https://i.ytimg.com/vi/E9ZtXtFXE84/maxresdefault.jpg). They're just textured cones with a central cylinder, but as composed they look far more richly detailed.
But I must agree with you, the ship has sailed with this kind of game. You can of course go back and enjoy it but you do so with the knowledge that you can be doing other things that feel as meaningful but without the feeling of frustration.
Another similar example are MMOs. When I was a kid, my dad and I were really into Star Wars Galaxies. Well, people made emulation projects to go back and play it, but it's just not the same for various reasons. I feel the same way with World of Warcraft. It is almost more stark than Riven, because you not only miss the word of mouth and lack of easy "cheating" aspects, but you also feel the distinct lack of open socialising in modern online gameplay.
A good example of the opposite would be old Nintendo games. Super Mario Bros 3 is still one of the best 2D Mario games of all time, and in no sense when playing it do you feel compelled towards a modern experience.
I’d say that dragons dogma is in the same vein as Riven and does fairly well.
Dead Comment
I still remember swapping out those CDs every time I switched islands. The entire experience was utterly captivating as an 13yearold.
You reminded me that when the CD drive kicked out the disc for the first time and asked for the next, you knew that you had broken through and that some new shit was about to land.
This game kickstarted my interest in computer graphics. Got a “making of” book and was fascinated by how they did the textures.
Regrettably, Riven still wouldn't run, as it required display hardware that could display thousands-of-colors. Bummer.
With a new PC many years later, I finally played it. It was one of those experiences where I wish I could forget it, so I could play it again. I tried again decades later, (after having played and loved all the other Myst games; IV was my favorite; outstanding atmosphere and scope; especially the starting and starry worlds). Regrettably, I still remembered how to solve almost every puzzle, and remembered the map layouts in detail. However, I remembered absolutely none of the plot of dialog!
(The latest Myst re-releases are worth a play through too, as is Obduction. My favorites are still Riven and Myst IV though!)
Myst is an exception which is probably a testament to how impactful it was to 11 year old me, but I’ve played Riven twice and I could barely tell you what it is about. If I play it again, I’ll start getting my memory jogged and it won’t completely be like starting from scratch but pretty close to it.
Dementia runs in my family so I am always paranoid about lapses in my memory (I’m 40). When I talk to others I don’t seem to be alone.
Which one of us is the norm?
As the digital antiquarian is happy to point out, most of the Sierra adventures were poor games, but few were sterile. And the Infocom games were almost overflowing with life.
( While I was "stuck" on an old 386 with only a floppy drive for what felt like an eternity. )
Not enough can be said about the quality of the writing and worldbuilding in the universe. It's as pity that the format died around the game.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyan_Worlds#Games_developed
It never died. It just got buried under the rubble of “AAA” games.
I feel they're still putting out stuff that's just as good, it's just the market has moved on.
Actually, I did phone the super mario 64 help hotline as I was missing level 10. 60p a minute!
Aha, snowman’s land! Jump through the wall that has the snowman portrait reflected in the mirror. Blew my mind as a 10 year old
Of all the 4 games (yes 4, I refuse to acknowledge the last entry) it is definitely the most difficult. I had to wait for it to come out on GoG and replay it as an adult to finish it.
You'd need AGI.
Standard procedural generation, even the most advanced versions, aren't any good at consistently making interesting things. Procedural generation is only good for making things that probably haven't been seen before, and the vast majority of what gets spit out via procedural generation will be bland and uninteresting.
In other words, there's a reason that 99% of any given Dwarf Fortress world's legends mode will be mind-dullingly boring, and a reason why Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup has an autoexplore key.
But if you're willing to tolerate somewhat-bland open-ended procedural murder mysteries in a highly simulated film-noir setting, check out Shadows Of Doubt.
A game that fits between 'hard puzzles' and 'action' and will always have a new puzzle available to me might be really nice.
(I am not certain of this enough to buy it -yet- but I'm now definitely considering it)