Riven review – ponderous yet powerful remake of the 90s island classic

Cyan Worlds Inc; PC, Mac, PlayStation
This satisfying reboot of the sun-baked puzzle adventure now features VR clifftop walks, new solutions and star turns from fan Ronan Farrow and more

The bestselling PC game of 1997, Riven now seems like an artefact from a lost creative era. Set on a sun-baked archipelago – the sort to which flocks of Instagram influencers would now stampede, were it real – it combined computer-generated postcard stills with live-action footage to form an elaborate, island-scale escape room. Spread across five compact discs, it was a technological marvel, albeit one whose depths would only be witnessed by the tenacious and persistent who also excelled at lateral thinking. Few other designers since have had the ingenuity or capacity to make Riven-alikes; its memory sank like a pebble in a still sea.

Three decades on and this remake resurfaces Riven’s arcane, alluring world as a fully realised destination. No longer are these islands explored by clicking through a series of richly rendered stills, but by walking along its baked clifftops and stone-cool tunnels (with the option to play via a VR headset, for those with the stomach and equipment for it). The essential beats and rhythms will be familiar to fans: again, you must play with a mouse in one hand and notebook in the other, unscrambling ciphers and figuring out how the world’s creaking, underlying mechanisms fit together. But a great deal has changed too, including the solutions to several puzzles. There are also new characters, including a star turn from real-life investigative journalist Ronan Farrow (who, with his mother, the actor Mia Farrow, is a keen fan of Riven and its predecessor, Myst).