Riven on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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Uncover a story of intrigue, betrayal, and a civilization teetering on the brink of collapse as you solve intricate puzzles to unlock the secrets of Riven. Built from the ground-up and expanded from the award-winning original game released in 1997.
Riven is a puzzle, adventure and exploration game
developed and published by Cyan Worlds Inc.
Released on June 25th 2024 is available on Windows and MacOS
in 11 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Simplified Chinese and Spanish - Latin America.
It has received 2,295 reviews of which 2,149 were positive and 146 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.9 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 20.39€ on Steam with a 40% discount.
The Steam community has classified Riven into these genres:
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10 or 11
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X Eight-Core Processor (16 CPUs), ~3.7GHz; Intel i5 7000 series
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: AMD Radeon RX 5700XT; NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 8GB; at least 6GB VRAM
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 30 GB available space
- VR Support: Quest 2 over Airlink or Link cable, HTC Vive Pro, Valve Index
- Additional Notes: Note that laptops with a 3050 or 3050 Ti GPU do not fit the requirements of the above. We recommend checking your preferred PC Benchmark site to confirm if your specs meet or exceed the above.
MacOS
- OS: macOS Sonoma 14.5
- Processor: Apple Silicon
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Apple Silicon
- Storage: 30 GB available space
- Additional Notes: M-series MacBook Air
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
I was late to the Myst franchise party - having first played both Myst and Riven within the last decade or so. I may lack the nostalgia factor, but I can't understate how much I've come to admire the passion that Cyan puts into rebuilding their old classics through a modern lens. Riven's puzzles are notoriously difficult, and I have no shame in admitting I needed a guide for my initial playthrough of the 1997 version (I simply lack the puzzle-solving chops that some folks have). That being said, this in no way detracted from my appreciation of the world building and exquisite atmosphere presented in the 1997 version. I've come to love the lore of this franchise, it ranks highly as one of my favorite fictional worlds. As for the remake - it's clear that a great deal of thought was put into how best to translate these old puzzles to a real-time format, unrestrained by point-and-click navigation and fixed perspectives. Some things are simplified, some are COMPLETELY different - some of these changes are controversial, others are clearly necessary to accommodate the new playstyle, including VR! I played the whole remake using my Valve Index, and I must say - Cyan is one of the few companies that truly *gets* VR design. It's evident throughout Riven that they considered how well these mechanisms and landscapes would function under the context of VR. This is accomplished impressively while retaining the familiar yet otherworldly visual style of the original. As I streamed the game to my friends, they can attest to my excitement when I encountered a familiar area that had been totally revamped - there were multiple points where I was absolutely blown away. FMV characters are gone, replaced by mocapped 3D models. Many have criticized this, but I understand that it was simply necessary with the real-time format with the ability to be viewed in VR, it "comes with the territory", as they say. Despite that, barring some weirdness, the characters are some of the more impressively captured and rendered characters I've seen from an indie studio. Avoiding more spoiler-y topics, I will wrap up my long winded review here. This is not the same Riven from 1997. It is a new, refreshed experience put together by a very talented team who clearly loves the source material from which they worked. This is a worthy remake of an all-time classic, with enough new content and lore to provide a fresh experience for existing fans, while retaining enough complexity and intrigue to once again stump a new generation of fans.
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Finally a remake >Please Enter disk 3 of the classic Riven >Please enter disc 5 game with new puzzles. >Please enter Disc 2 After countless remakes of Myst it's nice to see >Please enter disc 5 the glory of Riven in HD. >Please enter Disc 4 Totally recommended.
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Riven remains the single best adventure game ever made, and it's not close. 2024 is the year that real-time 3D graphics can finally live up to the promise of photorealistic pre-rendered scenes from 1997; the game is so gorgeous is hurts a bit. The puzzles and the way the game progresses have been made more accessible at the cost of a little bit of the brilliantly organic verisimilitude of the original game, but I can forgive the game for that. Riven deserved a full 3D remake, and this game absolutely does the original justice. I am blown away. It was like I was a kid again playing with my mom and my sister, except I'm older so I had more of an idea of what I was doing and was better equipped to fully appreciate and enjoy it. I really just can't speak highly enough of the remake, as someone for whom the original is one of THE three games that got me into game development.
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Some thirty years ago, my brother and I were two little kids that hopped on our family's humble Macintosh IIci and became enamored and awestruck by an immersive 3D-rendered world that was Myst and then later Riven. It was very different from any of the sprite-filled 16 or 32-bit games at the time and seemingly beyond the scope of what two tiny grade schoolers would comprehend. We'd confuse our teachers as to why we would go to school drawing black triangles on the corners of our composition notebooks, complemented by a rune on front and square drawing on the first page, and then treating them as mystical teleportation books (and yes, with the added sound effects). Or bewilder our family by walking around the house with our hands stretched outright, "clicking" our way across the house. There was also never a shortage of Myst or Riven island drawings, or increasingly ornate Linking Books, strewn about our family and friends homes and classrooms. My brother even created an Atrus outfit for Halloween once. Eventually, my interests turned elsewhere in games, but Riven always maintained an impact on my brother. He even promised me that he would one day work for Cyan. At the time, I kind of shrugged it off as a cute but unrealistic dream. Riven had inspired my brother so much that for Christmas one year he didn't ask for toys or video games like a typical kid would, but instead a complicated 3D modeling software called StrataVision 3D, the very same software used to render scenes in the original Myst. I had no idea what my Dad was thinking to get his grade-school child an expensive piece of software that he may have no idea how to use, let alone for however long, but he did. With only the paperback manual, my brother went on to teach himself how to craft an impressive 3D island-world directly inspired by Temple Island in Riven and navigate it using HyperCard. And throughout his school years he continued to model and draw art for many of his projects because of this. Eventually, as an adult, he finally broke into the gaming industry and I figured that was the end of it. Much more recently, I returned home after living ten years abroad as an expat. I came home to find his computer on and that some kind of game was running on it. I was shocked to find out that he created a welcome home game in Unreal Engine to greet me. And woe and behold, the first thing I'm greeted by is the very island-world that he created as a kid. It was instantly recognizable and only something that we would understand, as we shared it together so many years ago. Somehow he was able to painstakingly port it over from that old 3D software and turned it into a playable adventure world. It was a small game to play through, but it was chock-full of inside jokes and childhood references to Macintosh games or pop culture we once used to enjoy as kids. I was also surprised when he told me that he got into the Starry Expanse Project, who were working on the remake of his favorite childhood game, Riven. Little did I realize that some thirty years later my brother would come full circle from the dreams and imaginations of his childhood self to end up contributing to the development of the very game that inspired him to break into the gaming industry in the first place. The fact that he achieved his childhood dream and pursued his inspiration due to this game has left me incredibly astonished and proud. Truly, there is no one in life that you will know longer than your own sibling and I only have one. I love him very much and this accomplishment is a memory I will treasure. I am buying this game once more to show how grateful and supportive I am to Starry Expanse and Cyan in remaking such a fantastic world and story to get lost in once again. Thank you for the impact and inspiration you've had on our lives. Edit: Clarifying that he was involved with Starry Expanse not Cyan.
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The most essential VR game since HL: Alyx I never expected to see a fully-3D Riven remake, not just because the game is massive compared to Myst, but because the original 1997 Riven is still possibly the best-looking pre-rendered adventure game of all time, outdoing even its own sequels for just how believable each of its scenes look. The first thing I did when I booted up this remake in VR was let my jaw hang in awe at just how perfectly the very first area matched the original Riven's opening image 1:1 while giving me the ability to fully explore it. I'm not exaggerating when I say Riven may be the most important VR game since HL: Alyx. You can play this flatly, but it feels like VR was made for Riven, and vice versa. Either way, the only thing you're missing out on by playing the remake over the original are the (IMO) stellar live-action performances by Rand Miller and the late John Keston. What you get instead is a chance to experience a dark, diabolical narrative set in an expertly-crafted world in a whole new light.
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The information presented on this page is sourced from reliable APIs to ensure accuracy and relevance. We utilize the Steam API to gather data on game details, including titles, descriptions, prices, and user reviews. This allows us to provide you with the most up-to-date information directly from the Steam platform.
Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 13 April 2025 11:20 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 07 April 2025 04:39 |
| Steam price | 15 April 2025 04:49 |
| Steam reviews | 14 April 2025 23:56 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Riven, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Riven
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Riven concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Riven compatibility
Online players
31
Developer
Cyan Worlds Inc
Publisher
Cyan Worlds Inc
Release
25 Jun 2024
VR
VR Supported
Platforms