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Riven
- nikodunk 2y agoIncredible game and atmosphere to this day. I would love to see the original models and maybe even try to render them in real time on today’s technology. Or maybe that would ruin the magic.
- RangerScience 2y agoMy understanding is that it would, to some level - I remember reading about how they put effort into every pixel, which child-me took to mean that after the rendering, they went in and modified it to exactly match what they wanted. That can only work with a fixed perspective, which I think was proven out in the later full 3D Myst games. PS - Ever read the books? :)
- VohuMana 2y agoI remember the books existed as a kid but never ended up reading them. Are they worth the read? I’m in between books at the moment
- paul_funyun 2y agoI only read the Book of Atrus and it's worth a read. Can't vouch for any others tho
- ajmurmann 2y agoI loved reading then when I was a teenager. I remember enjoying how the books were used as portals to be worlds. The world building in general was great and I remember the story as quite clever. However, this just have been 25 years ago at least. So it might have been terrible lol
- Nevermark 2y agoBeen a while, but I loved them The author is David Wingrove, whose incredible world building is on display in his Chung Kuo series. Also highly recommended: a future where China has dominated all the continents. Originally 8 books, now 20 due to books splits and additional writing. Only complaint is he could have used an editor. Sometimes his writing could have used some corrections or better wording. But the stories are great.
- lll-o-lll 2y agoThere were three books in total, and I loved the first two. Particularly if you can get hold of the hard-covers, as they are beautiful. As for the stories themselves, the world building and atmosphere are fantastic. As a teenager/young adult, they captivated me in a way that very few books could. I continued to read them about once a year up into my early thirties. And I never played the game! Worth a read in my opinion.
- saratogacx 2y agoThe paperback also had a texture to them as well. It was hard to find them a decade ago and I don't regret the hunt. I'd agree that the first two books are great, the third is nice in rounding out the world but the story doesn't captivate as much.
- beretguy 2y ago> And I never played the game! I keep seeing comments like this on this thread: people who like the game or what it produced (it whatever) without even playing. It’s like me liking all things Alice in Wonderland without ever reading the books. Even though I have them in hot pink hardcover.
- Dove 2y agoI thought the books matched the atmosphere and quality of the games very well. They didn't read to me at all like merchandising, but rather as an expression of the same artistic vision in another medium. I remember reading one as a teenager, and was deeply taken with the message that as an artist and an engineer (and those are deeply related), a commitment to beauty and proper function, indeed the integrity of honoring what you are and what your creations properly ought to be, demands doing things right, which in turn demands deep study and doing the homework. It is a philosophy that was formative for me, and which still heavily influences me today. I hadn't thought about that in years...!
- amatecha 2y agoI've got all three books but only got the hardcover of the Book of Atrus (and a recent anniversary edition reprint of it, just for fun). Wish I got hardcovers of Ti'ana and D'ni!
- cammikebrown 2y agoThere’s a remake coming. Looks gorgeous. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1712350/Riven/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1712350/Riven/
- MenhirMike 2y agoAnd if the 2020 remake* is anything to go by, this should be amazing. If you want to play Myst, get the 2020 version. *not to be confused with the 2000 Masterpiece Edition, the 2000 remake RealMyst or the 2014 remake realMyst: Masterpiece Edition.
- beretguy 2y agoOr 2018 Super realMyst: Masterpiece Deluxe Premium++ Edition.
- callahad 2y agoSpurred on, in no small part, by a community remake effort that lasted nearly 15 years: https://starryexpanse.com/ https://starryexpanse.com/
- parpfish 2y agoI believe that the versus for sale on steam now allows for a modern 3d first person mode and a VR mode
- teraflop 2y agoI think you're confusing Riven with the original Myst. There have been full 3D versions of Myst since way back in 2000, but a real-time 3D remake of Riven has been a long-awaited pipe dream. There was a long-running fan project called "Starry Expanse", aiming to recreate Riven in 3D. They got acquired(?) by Cyan a couple years back and their work got incorporated into the official Riven remake, which is supposed to come out sometime later this year.
- prerok 2y agoThey didn't get acquired but did hire one member of the team as per this post: https://cyan.com/2022/10/31/olttfor/ https://cyan.com/2022/10/31/olttfor/
- teraflop 2y agoSorry, yeah, they didn't "acquire" the whole team in a business or employment sense, but my understanding is they got access to all the code and art assets they had created over the years.
- ironmagma 2y agoIt’s a few members at this point. I was on the SE team, very proud of my teammates (artists, musicians) who have gone on to join efforts with Cyan. The new Riven is going to be amazing.
- parpfish 2y agoyou’re right, I got confused between the two. Side note: I played obduction a while back and it looked great, but the PlayStation fans were going nonstop
- legitster 2y agoMy 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.
- ido 2y agoCyan are still around and still making games[0]! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyan_Worlds#Games_developed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyan_Worlds#Games_developed
- tdeck 2y agoI remember doing this with my dad as well. I was maybe 9 or 10 years old and we were both equally clueless about what to do most of the time :).
- keyle 2y agoCyan hasn't stopped. Although without the same critical acclaim.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y ago> Although without the same critical acclaim. I feel they're still putting out stuff that's just as good, it's just the market has moved on.
- Night_Thastus 2y agoTheir latest game, Firmament was a bit of a let down. The puzzles were far too easy and the game was far too short. It felt like they spent a lot of time making it look pretty, adding VR support, etc instead of just making good puzzles. The one before that, Obduction, was pretty great. I really loved it.
- sirshmooey 2y agoThere 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.
- kelseyfrog 2y agoBoth Myst and Riven kicked started my interest in graphics and programming that eventually led to my career in tech. I still remember swapping out those CDs every time I switched islands. The entire experience was utterly captivating as an 13yearold.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago> I still remember swapping out those CDs... 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.
- Brendinooo 2y ago5 CDs, of course. How perfect for the lore. This game kickstarted my interest in computer graphics. Got a “making of” book and was fascinated by how they did the textures.
- chiph 2y agoRiven 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.
- LeoPanthera 2y agoI bought the game twice, because the DVD version eliminates the disc swapping. (And slightly improved the image quality.)
- why_at 2y agoFavorite 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. https://youtu.be/gcDCZ2TmTck?si=8J8A4ja1vRGDC9c6&t=150 https://youtu.be/gcDCZ2TmTck?si=8J8A4ja1vRGDC9c6&t=150
- LeoPanthera 2y agoCyan, 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.
- stavros 2y agoIn the video, Savage says the falling of the sword was not CG.
- CobrastanJorji 2y agoThey have a photo of that lobby on their website: https://cyan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IMG_1241.jpg https://cyan.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/IMG_1241.jpg
- xyse53 2y agoFun read. I loved these games as a pre-teen/teen. Since I'm a cynic in general: > Cyan was likewise disinterested in pursuing other solutions that would have been even easier to implement than panning rotation, but that could have made their game less awkward to play... I disagree with this paragraph. I think back then, I thought this was intentionally helpful. Thinking on it now, I also think it was part of the character of Myst that would be too risky to lose for Riven.
- Brendinooo 2y agoYeah, I agree: I think there are a bunch of little details that would have been VERY hard to find in a truly open world navigation setup. I do remember being bailed out by clicking around to find paths at least once.
- mst 2y agoI think "a compass would've been nice" is reasonable though and seems like a compromise that probably wouldn't've detracted noticeably.
- tempodox 2y ago> As of this writing, Cyan is preparing a remake of Riven. As someone who regularly despaired over the original, I'm very interested and curious.
- chaostheory 2y agohttps://store.steampowered.com/app/1712350/Riven/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1712350/Riven/ It has VR support
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoLooking forward to it. I know that there was the Starry Expanse project, but I think it was too piecemeal, and disjointed. I think Cyan had to do it.
- rkachowski 2y ago> 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
- Hugsun 2y agoI never played myst or riven. I loved The Witness and the Talos Principle. What concessions were made to the internet age?
- bowsamic 2y agoI 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.
- voganmother42 2y agoTotally open confusion is how I would describe Outer Wilds, long periods where I was lost and making no progress, and it was absolutely one of the most amazing games I’ve ever played.
- SheepSlapper 2y agoMy hometown is also home to Cyan, who made Myst/Riven. I've been to their offices a few times, just to nerd out with some of the devs and play random open source FPS games (the name escapes me). Their offices are really cool, they've got a lot of physical stuff from the games in various display cases around the entrance. It's... weird to visit, though, because they're like the high school quarterbacks we all know. They had some great years when they were younger, but they're continuously trying to relive those glory days while yelling from the bar stool about that one time they threw the game winning pass. Most of their cash comes from remakes or ports of Myst/Riven, and half the time they aren't even the ones making the damn ports (third parties have paid them for the rights to do it, if you buy Myst on GoG then you got a version that was ported by GoG themselves). They recently put out Obduction, which on paper seems to be a commercial failure (though I haven't sold seven figures worth of games so who am I to say), raking in like $5M total. Saving the fact that there are just a handful of dudes left at the studio... I don't know, it feels like the oft referenced online version of Cyan (which again, is 30 years old now) and their current reality are completely divergent. I have some nostalgia for getting trapped in a book in Myst and feeling that fury, but I also struggle to see how they're relevant in today's gaming landscape. It feels like if Super Mario Bros was a one hit wonder, would we still be getting this pumped about crushing turtles three decades later?
- ido 2y agoThe sad truth is that capturing lightning in a bottle is exceedingly rare, let alone twice or more. Cyan made at least 2 massive hits, which is 2 more than almost all game studios manage. Even their contemporaries Id Software didn't make that many more hits (Quake 3 was their last outright hit, releasing only 2 years after Riven). There are almost no Bethesdas/Blizzards/etc that continue releasing hits for decades at a time.
- SheepSlapper 2y agoFair point, and I sort of understand the nostalgia that's involved. A large part of my disappointment probably comes from the fact that the endless remakes never quite live up to the hype. I was a big Diablo 2 fiend, it was one of my formative online games. So a few years ago there are rumblings about D2 Remastered, and I'm obviously pumped. Come launch day, Blizzard has my money and I'm deep into the thing I used to love, but it's just... meh. There was a time and place that made the original D2 fantastic, but it turns out that's not here and now. I feel the same thing for Myst/Riven, they were SO GOOD but who actually gives a shit about doing the same thing again with better graphics? I can't write off the fact that those dudes made a few great games, and that's a crazy accomplishment. I think Myst is the first "real" PC game my family ever bought, and I still remember my mom staying up late at night to click around the world and figure out what the hell was happening. She wrote notes on those yellow legal pads, reminding her of lore and other important shit. But the lightning in a bottle thing works both ways, and that lightning is basically static electricity in todays world :P To borrow your example, id software didn't release the same version of DOOM 30 years later, we got DOOM Eternal. It's not a reskin of their (by today's standards) shitty game, it's a whole new experience that's a damned (hah) blast to play. That's not what's happening with Myst/Riven, unfortunately, but I'd love to see that level of innovation come out of the studio that was once great.
- chaostheory 2y ago> My wife and I are inveterate hikers these days, planning most of our holidays around where we can get out and walk. Riven made me want to climb through the screen and roam its landscapes for myself. I believe Myst, Riven, and Obduction all have VR versions now. Myst works standalone on Quest.
- duskwuff 2y agoRiven doesn't have a VR version quite yet, but it's set for release later this year. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1712350/Riven/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1712350/Riven/
- TiredOfLife 2y agoRiven will also be on Quest
- idk1 2y agoMy 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!
- s3krit 2y ago> Actually, I did phone the super mario 64 help hotline as I was missing level 10 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
- dudul 2y agoSame. 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.
- kingkawn 2y agoTo my young self Myst felt utterly brilliant, and when it finally arrived Riven self-indulgent, a cautionary tale that even the artist does not always grasp what made their work good.
- parpfish 2y agoI remember Myst being eerie and kind of scary due to the vague story and sense of isolation. It had a nightmare-like quality to it. Riven added a lot more world building and that lore took away the mystery and isolation that gave the original its ambiance.
- kingkawn 2y agoIt felt like they didn’t get that it was the unbridled creativity combined with no resources that forced them to make the experience itself good, rather than infinite resources indulging their misconceptions about where the value was
- jimjimjim 2y agoRivan was an insta-buy for me and at that point I hadn't even played Myst. The scenes, the music, the environment, the feeling of exploration were amazing. and there were no walkthrough videos to help back then.
- red_admiral 2y agoThat was an amazing game (along with the rest of the series, there's 5 canonical games in total). When they did try something more "normal" - the multiplayer online URU, a kind of Myst meets second life meets early social network, it wasn't a commercial success.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y agoFun fact, Uru aka Myst Online is still alive. They have added new ages to it, even quite recently. https://mystonline.com/en/ https://mystonline.com/en/
- SirMaster 2y agoI played Myst as a kid and loved it. I never got around to playing Riven, but I plan to as an adult and have been waiting for a proper remake with updated graphics and such and it seems we are finally close to that reality.
- the__alchemist 2y agoRiven, and all the Myst games beyond the original have aged well. It is playable now. (And the original gets a remake every few years!)
- gnutrino 2y agoThe iOS version for ipad is a great way to play it.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y agoAlso on Android if you're not an Apple
- briandear 2y agoMaybe I’m the only one but I thought Myst was pretty but boring.
- acheron 2y agoThat was a very widely-held opinion at the time.
- JKCalhoun 2y ago"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.
- philistine 2y agoFor 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.
- mst 2y agoDisappointed there wasn't a sequel so they could've called it Phantasmagorier.
- TillE 2y agoMyst'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.
- xnorswap 2y agoMyst was a big enough hit it was the reason (or perhaps excuse is a better word) for some of my friends getting a CD-ROM drive. ( While I was "stuck" on an old 386 with only a floppy drive for what felt like an eternity. )
- trimethylpurine 2y agoYou might consider formatting your site for better readability on smaller screens or for use with accessibility options.
- golyi 2y agoWhat a game, the main puzzle which tied all the islands you've visited throughout the story is one of the best in terms of game design, hard as nails too!
- smitty1e 2y ago> Even in the late 1990s, there was the palpable sense that Riven represented the end of an era, that even Cyan would not be able to catch lightning in a bottle a third time with yet another cerebral, contemplative, zeitgeist-stamping single-player puzzle game. Both Richard Vander Wende and Robyn Miller quit the company as soon as the obligatory rounds of promotional interviews had been completed I was an ultra-tourist. I just bought the game and a cheat book and blew through it with my mom in the fashion of watching a movie. Because that is about as much time as I want to sink into any escapist stuff. The other point is that I truly admire anyone ejecting at the top of their game, rather than and endless stream of weaker derivatives.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- the__alchemist 2y agoWhat 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!)
- crhulls 2y agoI 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. Which one of us is the norm?
- Shocka1 2y agoFWIW, 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.
- aidenn0 2y agoI 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- petermcneeley 2y agoThe CGI in riven is fantastic and still rivals most of what you see in a modern game engine. https://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/03/twenty-years-later-offline-vs-realtime.html https://darkcephas.blogspot.com/2018/03/twenty-years-later-o...
- Inityx 2y agoI'm not sure that holds anymore, since that article is 6 years old now and Obduction is coming up on 8... Better to compare it to the upcoming Riven remake: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1712350/Riven/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1712350/Riven/
- daneel_w 2y agoThanks for the amazing childhood memories.
- damontal 2y agoThe novels based on these games were really good. I think they are out of print unfortunately.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2y agoAgreed, worth a trip to Thriftbooks or your favorite used bookstore.
- mynameisvlad 2y agoI got the first of the three in a high school book dump, and liked it so much I bought the trilogy. Still one of my favorite reads.
- quantisan 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myst_Reader https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myst_Reader
- olivierestsage 2y agoDoes anyone have a recommendation for the best way to get the "original experience" playing Myst (i.e. without updated/remastered graphics, etc.)?
- bshep 2y agoinfinite mac and load the myst cd from their UI http://infinitemac.org http://infinitemac.org
- tomxor 2y agoIs there some kind of trick to getting the CDs to load? I've tried Firefox and Chromium, nothing seems to happen on either when clicking on the CDs, no console errors.
- bshep 2y agono really, you click on them and they show up... i'm not sure why it isnt working, they load up from archive.org so maybe its a block in your country?
- dansalvato 2y agoThe Steam releases of original Myst and Riven are the ScummVM ports, which work great on modern hardware. You'll find it as "Myst: Masterpiece Edition". Masterpiece Edition is effectively the same as the original release, but with better color fidelity on the visuals. I think the one downside of Masterpiece Edition is that some of the audio tracks were cut short to fit on the CD. Still, I'd say the Steam release is definitely the most hassle-free way of playing the game today.
- l72 2y agoScummvm plays both myst and riven. It’s perfect if you still have your original cds! https://www.scummvm.org/compatibility/DEV/mohawk:riven/ https://www.scummvm.org/compatibility/DEV/mohawk:riven/
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- Waterluvian 2y agoAnyone know of any Let’s Play of Riven that’s ideally done by someone who hasn’t played before, but is exceptionally bright as to make the LP move forward at a reasonable pace? Maybe this is an odd request. I find that LP’s of games like this that I never finished as a kid work better than some expert playing it for the 12th time.
- phillco 2y agoDay9 / Mostly Walking's is pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_TqymY5fCU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_TqymY5fCU I agree it's tricky to find the balance of a truly blind playthrough, sans hints, and one that's also enjoyable to watch because the inferences are made reasonably quickly.
- Waterluvian 2y agoAppreciate the suggestion!
- hyperion2010 2y agoFascinating 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.
- kibwen 2y ago> 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.
- mst 2y agoShadows 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)
- Hammershaft 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPuhlYDBW7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPuhlYDBW7U Riven is being remade in 3D with full 3D movement right now by Cyan!
- YawHawHawn 2y ago[flagged]
- Rant423 2y agoI played Myst on my second pc, on Windows 98. It was an amazing experience, even if I never finished it. I re-played on the Nintendo Switch, and it was again amazing (I managed to finish it this time). Never played any of the sequels, so I hope Riven makes it to Switch too
- bbstats 2y agothe author arbitrarily discarding the published sales figures of Riven is interesting
- YawHawHawn 2y agoIs... WHAT?