Just to avoid suspense:
• If you hated it then, you’ll hate it now.
• If the difficulty kept you from enjoying it years ago, time for a return visit.
• If screenshots of the characters and landscape replaced the family portraits on your wall and you’re wondering if there’s anything new to idolize, not really.
• If you’ve never heard of Riven and your standard of iPhone adventuring is Chaos Rings, this will likely bore you to death.
The point-and-click adventure is, as the subtitle emphasizes, the sequel to Myst, which spawned an industry of mostly awful imitators (and, critics say, killed the true adventure game). It stayed on best-seller lists forever after its release in 1993 because, according to skeptics, it’s one of those safe all-ages titles requiring little gaming creativity or dexterity. It was a true “killer application,” spinning CD-ROMs beyond fledgling status. Like Flight Simulator, Tetris and The Sims, at some point it stayed popular on the charts because it was popular.
The plot involves using books written by someone named Atrus to travel between several worlds, obtaining pages and other clues revealing bits about the unknown land you find yourself in. Riven continues the plot with a mission to free Atrus’s wife in a mostly different set of worlds. The interface might be incredibly simple (you can only carry one thing at a time), but the plot is intriguing and complex enough to inspire a multi-book series many consider better than the games.
Maybe it’s as shameful as liking North Korea’s state-owned newspaper (“U.S. orchestrated the ‘Cheonan’ sinking”), but Myst became one of the few games that immediately absorbed all my spare time until I solved it. I loved how the puzzles seamlessly meshed into the settings (unlike, say, The 7th Guest, also just rereleased as an app). Even better there was no instant undeserved deaths merely for wandering into a location for the first time, nor could you screw anything up so bad that reaching the end of the game became impossible.
Riven came out in 1997, but I didn’t play it until a few years later, waiting until I had a DVD-equipped computer since constantly swapping five CD-ROMs seemed like a less-than-immersive experience. The epic size of the thing is quickly apparent, with plenty to explore even without solving anything.
But a couple of things spoiled what made Myst special for me. Instead of suddenly finding yourself in a strange world with no apparent inhabitants and no idea of your goal, in Riven there are other characters and your goal is spelled out in an opening animation. The fatal blow, so to speak, was reading a review stating “unlike Myst, you can die.” My cumulative video game death tally is competitive with the most recent U.S. Census, but this felt like one arena where that was sacred.
There’s a heavy price to be paid for reentering this twisted fantasy world, but it’s not the $5.99 App Store price that’s minuscule compared to the desktop computer versions. It’s the memory of your iDevice that pays, as this is the first gaming app more than 1GB in size – and it requires 2GB to install. This is still significantly compressed from the nearly 4GB of the original desktop version, especially considering the app adds significant enhancements to assist players.
The most obvious is a hint system which illuminates useful hotspots when the iDevice is shook. An option also shows them automatically after a user-set time. A much more extensive text hint guide is also available – but buried at the end of a general tip sheet where players may miss it – offering assistance in progressive steps from gentle nudges to maps with solutions. This alone makes Riven worth revisiting for me. I was always reluctant to spend extra money on hint books back in the day and – more important – I’m not a fan of computer games that force me to fill a notebook with pages and pages of maps and observations. You’ll still need to do a bit of that here if you don’t want to get completely lost, which might be inconvenient while gaming on the go.
(Speaking of journals, Atrus gives you his at the beginning of the game. It’s rather a lengthy read not made any easier by the handwritten font and tiny screen. It’s one of a few examples of a situation where the internet – where the journal in plain text is easily found – is an invaluable non-cheating tool.)
Playing the game is exactly what I remember, if not quite so immersive on the tiny screen. The diminutive display also hinders the ability to see and touch small items/areas that might contain critical objects or hints. The app does zoom in on areas if you double-tap them (it can and sometime must be done twice). But if I have to start randomly touching every area of the screen to discover a “hidden” item that’s when I’m going to resort to shaking to reveal it.
The app automatically saves your progress and you can preserve your status at a particular spot by using one of four bookmarks. The much-feared possibility of death turns out only to be a factor near the end of the game, so exploring and errors generally aren’t a problem. But it’s nice to be able to retreat when it’s clear a long endeavor in a new direction isn’t reaping any rewards. (My personal second-time-around advice: Be disciplined and don’t go crazy exploring all the terrain you can get to at once. Get familiar with small areas at a time and solve the challenges there as best you can, using nudges when necessary).
It’s not possible to give Riven a top-tier rating simply because it doesn’t have universal appeal (naysayers might not rate it one star, but wouldn’t put it much higher). But old-timers and newcomers into the simple-yet-deep concept will be hard-pressed to find better entertainment. I downloaded this the same week as Aralon: Sword and Shadow HD (doubtless the choice of the modern adventuring crowd) and, while both are worthy of playing to completion, it’s the “boring” old-school quest I’ll be completing first.
Mark Sabbatini
Riven by Cyan Worlds Inc.
$5.99
Category: Adventure
Language: English
Rated 9+ for the following: Infrequent/Mild Realistic Violence; Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
Requires: iOS 3.1.3 or later
1.01GB
