A little ways into Riven, you stumble upon an impossible village of huts haphazardly slapped across a cliff face. Although you catch stray glimpses of its inhabitants from a distance, it seems deserted by the time you reach it. If you knock on one of the hut doors enough times, however, a peephole opens just long enough to glimpse a face before it quickly shuts again. It doesn’t sound (or look) like much, but in the moment this struck me as one of the most arresting images I’d seen in a game for some time. I don’t think I’ve entirely fathomed out why this image is so seared into my cortex, but I do think it embodies what makes this game special and what sets its vibe apart from the one elicited by Myst
Myst’s atmosphere hangs heavily on its smothering sense of solitude. It feels relentlessly foreboding being in places that bear so much fruit of past human labor, yet contain nary a soul beyond your own. Riven carries on this legacy but delivers it with a twist: the islands on which you mosey are presently inhabited, but you catch only fleeting peripheral glimpses of these people. 99% of the time the game is just as devoid of human life as Myst, but because of that other 1%, you now feel like you’re being watched by unseen eyes every step of the way. It’s marvelous
Riven’s other interesting departure from Myst is the scope and inscrutability of some of its puzzles. Myst kept its puzzles localized to smallish areas, and though I had to internet my way out of a couple stumps, it never felt obtuse. Solutions to Riven’s most important puzzles must be pieced together across the entirety of its game world. To see it to its (good) end, a player needs to grow intimately familiar with these islands, investing a sizable amount of time just walking around, soaking it in as you slowly piece it all together—or who knows maybe you just need to be smarter than me. This is to say I relied heavily on guides to make it through this game. The Wellesian fakeout of this review is that I didn’t even witness the memorable image from above while actually playing the game (I didn’t think to knock on the door more than once). I encountered it while watching a video walkthrough of the game. Part of the magic of Riven is the experience didn’t feel cheapened seeing it this way. It still felt like an extension of playing the game itself. I’m fully at peace with the puzzles of this game being as inscrutable to me as the nature of these islands themselves
Myst’s atmosphere hangs heavily on its smothering sense of solitude. It feels relentlessly foreboding being in places that bear so much fruit of past human labor, yet contain nary a soul beyond your own. Riven carries on this legacy but delivers it with a twist: the islands on which you mosey are presently inhabited, but you catch only fleeting peripheral glimpses of these people. 99% of the time the game is just as devoid of human life as Myst, but because of that other 1%, you now feel like you’re being watched by unseen eyes every step of the way. It’s marvelous
Riven’s other interesting departure from Myst is the scope and inscrutability of some of its puzzles. Myst kept its puzzles localized to smallish areas, and though I had to internet my way out of a couple stumps, it never felt obtuse. Solutions to Riven’s most important puzzles must be pieced together across the entirety of its game world. To see it to its (good) end, a player needs to grow intimately familiar with these islands, investing a sizable amount of time just walking around, soaking it in as you slowly piece it all together—or who knows maybe you just need to be smarter than me. This is to say I relied heavily on guides to make it through this game. The Wellesian fakeout of this review is that I didn’t even witness the memorable image from above while actually playing the game (I didn’t think to knock on the door more than once). I encountered it while watching a video walkthrough of the game. Part of the magic of Riven is the experience didn’t feel cheapened seeing it this way. It still felt like an extension of playing the game itself. I’m fully at peace with the puzzles of this game being as inscrutable to me as the nature of these islands themselves