Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8179 in Computer & Video Games
• Brand: UBI Soft
• Model: 18240
• ESRB Rating: Everyone
• Platforms: Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me
• Format: CD
• Dimensions: 1.75" h x 8.00" w x 9.75" l, .58 pounds

Features

• Enter a deceptively beautiful world torn apart by age-old conflicts... where secrets lie hidden at every turn and nothing is as it seems.
• You must search. You must explore. You must summon every spark of intellect and intuition. Only then will you learn the truth about this troubled land and its inhabitants.
• You must let Riven become your world - before an entire world is lost.

Amazon.com Product Description
Prepare to enter a world "torn asunder" by timeless, unresolved conflicts--a world of incomparable beauty, intrigue, and betrayal. Prepare to go to Riven. Journey through vast, awe-inspiring landscapes, where clouds sit nestled in a deep blue sky and the rolling sea waters shimmer from bright morning sunlight. But be forewarned: nothing is quite as it seems. Reclusive beings and mysterious creatures populate the land. Deep, dark secrets lay hidden at every turn. Your utmost powers of observation and reason are required to complete a most elusive task. You must let Riven become your world. Only then may the truth be discovered and a world saved. Riven stands as a story for all time, a story that evokes a sense of awe, wonder, and profound purpose. Prepare to go to Riven--a world unlike any you've ever known.

GameSpot Review
Myst, at more than 3.5 million units sold, is the world's most popular PC entertainment title, and after four years is still riding the top of the charts. This fact remains, despite a significant number of players who never get past the game's first tough puzzle: the rotating lighthouse.

For whatever reasons that Myst was such a success, Riven has a lot of the same. You'll see the same click/move/slide-show interface, along with similar mechanical and navigational puzzles and the now familiar wander and wonder gameplay. Riven's markedly improved graphics and sound further enhance the ambiance and make Riven even more immersive than its predecessor. The puzzles and problems are more cohesive, and there is more of a storyline, but in the end, Riven is only an evolutionary improvement over Myst.

You begin where Myst left off. Atrus (played once again by Rand Miller), the father of the two feuding sons in Myst, has another task for you: Rescue his wife from the evil clutches of Atrus's father Gehn, then permanently imprison Gehn in one of those "trap" books from Myst.

Your quest takes place in Riven, a fanciful world created by Gehn in the tradition of his ancestors - by simply imagining it and writing about it. Riven (from the ancient English word "rive," which means "to rip apart") is a collection of small islands connected with catwalks, aerial trams, and a minisubmarine. You will expend much of your effort just figuring out how to get around. In many instances you'll find a switch in an obscure location, then take a circuitous route to the gate it opens.

Unlike Myst, these islands have human inhabitants, although you'll be hard-pressed to actually see any. There are plenty of spherical, earthen huts and occasional fleeting human encounters, but there is no interaction or dialogue. The oblique storyline is played out in the islands' objects and the implications you can draw from them, such as a disturbing kid's toy, a Wizard of Oz-like throne, and a frog trap. And if these are too obtuse you can always arduously pore through the voluminous journals you'll acquire.

Riven's two major puzzles require solving several miniproblems that in turn require close observation of Riven's denizens, colors, and unique numbering system. Gathering those elements becomes routine but just as you get comfortable with the concept there is a clever extra challenge tossed in - a missing color, a broken device, an obtusely revealed animal. Much of Riven's prerelease PR emphasized the environment as a source of clues and puzzle solutions. It is, but not to the large extent and subtle degree you may expect.

There are no technological breakthroughs but plenty of high-quality production values. The QuickTime animations - doors opening, levers moving, drawbridges dropping - are larger and blend well with the backgrounds, but that's principally a reflection of improvements in that display method. The sound effects are perfect and worth the price of high-end speakers, but there is no support of newer 3D audio technology. The graphics are superbly, even fanatically, detailed but that's more an aesthetic decision than a technical achievement.

For a game that has low-tech system demands, it consumes an inordinate amount of hard drive space - 140MB. Plus, if you play it for an extended period of time, you may encounter audio lapses. I missed a critical end-game aural clue, but after rebooting, and replaying that scene, it played just fine. Riven ships on five discs, but you can start saved games with only one of them and must click slowly through four animations before you can load a game [editor's note: This is not the only way to restore games - but it is the only intuitive way].

With a walk-through in hand, Riven took only about four hours. Without it, I'd still be at it, doing a lot of wandering, mapping, and recording of my observations. And just like Myst, that's what Riven is all about: exploring a new world full of unique beings, organic machines, and family intrigue. There is no inventory, no need to combine mysterious potions, and no board game puzzles with little connection to Riven's world. Rather, it's a leisurely paced, all-encompassing, mentally challenging experience. If you enjoyed Myst, you'll thoroughly enjoy Riven. -- Jeff Sengstack
--Copyright ©1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Customer Reviews

None better
Riven, like Myst is still awesome, many years after release. . . Nobody does it better than Cyan. If you haven't tried these games, and you think you would enjoy a non-violent adventure, You MUST play them all. You will not regret it

A gem
The original CD-ROM Riven I gave a 4/5, and also a 4/5 for the Playstation version mainly due to the disc swapping. But the DVD-ROM version is a relief. Now you can enjoy this great adventure without switching discs every few minutes which makes it feel more realistic in my opinion. This is a great game. I recommend it to any video-gamer who is up for a new, unique, challenge.

very fun, VERY DIFFICULT
I enjoyed Riven very much. It wasn't a game that you got through in a single afternoon, and it keeps you challenged, but with adequate rewards for defeating puzzles. It is nice that you can wander and choose your puzzles at the beginning. Be warned, however, the game gets VERY DIFFICULT when you get to the fire marbles,and at this point, figuring out the location and the color of the marbles, the game requires Albert Einstein IQ, but you can handle it....right? The only dissapointment that I experienced was that of capturing Ghen. When I opened the book, I had expected something to the effect of: NO! How could you do this to me! Instead, you merely see dunny swirling around. No big deal, but slightly dissapointing. If you are looking for a clean, challenging game that will keep you busy for a long,long time, look no further. Riven is the game for you.