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Myst riven7/24/2023 You learn to count by playing with a child’s toy. There’s one puzzle in Riven he loves to talk about as “a perfect example of what made that game what it was.” A ways into the game you find your way into a children’s classroom, and by fiddling with one item on the shelf, you can learn how to count in Riven’s number system. Obduction also brought back a similar take on a puzzle that Jeremy loved in Riven, though this time around he thought it fell short of the original. His favorite addition to Obduction was a camera, which allows you to take photos to reference later, a great help for puzzle solving and documenting potential clues. Just do whatever the next thing you can do is, and keep doing that, until you win.” “It’s a more linear experience … There were a few stretches where I didn't feel like I had to use my brain. The late game, he said, ended up a little less interesting. It’s open-ended enough to let you wander between puzzles, but not so big that you’ll get lost wandering as you would in Riven. Jeremy called out the opening hours of Obduction as the cleanest experience Cyan has made: there’s a character who gives you some high-level direction and goals to pursue, but it’s still up to you to find your way to those goals. "I didn't have confidence, even in Robyn and Rand, to create something that quite did for me what Riven has done." It's a lot easier because of that, to begin with, but it's a more normal videogame learning experience to get up to speed with it. They really guide you very nicely into the mindset that you need to be in for the game. I think they were already good at coming up with interesting worlds to explore, they've been on point with that since the early days, but the one thing they've really gotten good at now is just game design. “I was really pleasantly surprised, especially out of the gate. “I didn't have confidence, even in Robyn and Rand, to create something that quite did for me what Riven has done,” he told me. When Cyan Worlds launched its Kickstarter for Obduction in 2013, Jeremy backed the project but tried to keep his excitement in check. It might've been a weird perfect storm thing, where some of it is even accidental.” “It's also a ridiculously hard game, and I don't know how much of that is intentional, and how much the development effort got out of hand. They subsequently ceased development on The Starry Expanse Project, as our official efforts to remake Riven began.”Ĭyan did not offer any information on a release date or window for the remake, but noted that the best way to stay abreast of Riven news would be to subscribe to the company’s newsletter.“It’s such a cool feeling,” he added. Together, we reached an agreement which allowed us to reference core pieces of their efforts to jump-start our development. “We spoke confidentially with the Starry Expanse team a couple of years ago,” Cyan said in a blog post last year, “about the exciting news that Cyan finally had the resources to tackle remaking Riven. Starry Expanse was a fan-developed attempt to recreate the series of 2D images that made up Riven’s locations, scenes, and puzzles as equally impactful 3D environments. The announcement may come as a surprise to most, but absolute Riven nerds - *glances around nervously* *coughs* - got a bit of a heads up a year ago, when Cyan announced its agreement with The Starry Expanse Project, saying that it was in touch with the Starry Expanse team, and had even hired from their members. We wanted to make sure we could take on such a difficult, costly and complicated endeavor – and do it well.” We didn’t want to approach it lightly or frivolously. The company addressed why it took so long to bring Riven into three dimensions in an FAQ: “ Riven is one of the most highly regarded games in Cyan’s history. And for the game’s 25th anniversary, Cyan, the occasionally wobbly indie studio that crafted it, will remake the game as a “fully traversable” space. Developer Cyan Worlds announced Monday that it’s in production on a full remake of Myst-sequel Riven, taking the blockbuster 1997 adventure-puzzle game somewhere it’s never been before: 3D.Īmong the most sublimely constructed feats of puzzlemaking through environmental storytelling in video games, Riven bedeviled millions of players who dared click their way through its lush, two-dimensional world.
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