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 and 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 2,413 reviews of which 2,242 were positive and 171 were negative resulting in a rating of 8.9 out of 10. 😎
The game is currently priced at 35.49€ on Steam, but you can find it for 14.17€ on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified Riven into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Riven through various videos and screenshots.
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: 36 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.
Oh my God. Oh Great Yahvo. Oh Praise the Maker, and take it from this Myst Saga fan - this version of Riven. Is. Perfect. In every single possible way, Cyan has done it again - they created the definitive Myst, and now, they have created the definitive version of Riven. I'm going to assume if you're reading this, you have some familiarity with the Myst games or you like puzzle games. If that's you, and you have not played the original Riven, want to revisit the Islands you fell in love with in a new and more immersive way, or could not finish it, then this version is 100% FOR YOU. Because it improves every single flaw the original Riven had in every way. The puzzles are less obtuse, but still tease your brain until it cries and still have the exact same soul of revealing pieces of one big puzzle. The clues and storybuilding draw you in so much further. The music and the feel of Riven is 100% intact with some extra details and twists, including the BRILLIANT level of too-real-to-be-a-game detail the original had. The urgency and paranoia of your mission on Riven is so much more intense and nerve wracking. And yes, you FINALLY get to see some of the things you wanted to see, and more, adding yet more depth to the game. I promise you, your jaw will literally be dropping open every five seconds as more and more beauty and truths reveal themselves and as Riven slowly draws you into its irresistibly cryptic grasp. For those who have not played Riven but have played Myst, Riven is its sequel. The story is more complex - Atrus tasks you, his close friend, with undertaking a dangerous mission to the dying Age of Riven to save his wife from death, rescue an oppressed native population, and capture his tyrant father Gehn. But unlike Myst, you are not alone on Riven and the puzzles aren't quite so simple - Riven is an Age tearing itself apart at the seams of reality, where everything is an enigma wrapped in a paranoid conspiracy of a mystery and everyone has secrets and eyes on you. The puzzles melt more into the environment feeling less like a game and more like a world you conduct digital archaeology on, a world in its final days. As you move along, you begin to realize that because you're not alone you're being watched, and because of that... you aren't safe. You're not in an archipelago paradise, you are in the brutal regime of a tyrant that is a living hell for its people. You're in a liminal space that isn't liminal because it's weird, but liminal because it's dying and not quite right, and you don't belong there. Riven's puzzles live in infamy, but here, they feel approachable. There's even some brand new ones! Touches like a fast travel system (which I cannot bear spoiling for you save to say it's a SPECTACLE) really help the player get around while not making it too easy. You even get a built in screenshot key and notepad for all the details you have to be looking out for - and really, the changes to the puzzles here still keep their spirit while making them enjoyably different for returning fans. I cannot emphasize either how GORGEOUS this game is, in VR or in original format now with freeroam for the first time. Riven now more than ever feels ALIVE in every way, like a place you are in, a world you have gone to - not just a game. I really, truly could be lost in it for hours in a way I never was in the original, though I still do love the original and its five discs. Cyan has OUTDONE itself with the details, the vibe, and the weird little touches that show how Riven is dying here. It all breeds this absolutely oppressive, brooding, "time is running out" atmosphere in a way that builds on the already paranoid and tense "I absolutely should NOT be here in this world" atmosphere of the original. Riven is beautiful, tragic, and peaceful yes... but it's also dangerous, deceptive, and unnerving in ways that feel almost Lynchian in this interpretation. Ways that might make Uru/Myst V's Bahro look natural and realistic in comparison. It's creepy and unsettling in ALL the right ways, my jaw was dropping just as much as I was wondering "Is Gehn or one of his cronies about to turn the corner and face me RIGHT NOW?" The only two flaws I really have with it are to do with glitches and the 3D models. For the glitches, it seems to mainly rendering and pop-in glitches, though it's likely a raytracing issue and I can forgive it because Riven is literally falling apart, so it's fine. You shouldn't encounter anything gamebreaking like a puzzle not working, though I did once have it crash while idling above the Fire Marble Dome on Boiler Island. Otherwise the game is really smooth, I noticed no chugging or lag at all in any way. You might also want to, like I did, turn OFF the motion blur feature - yes it's immersive, but I found my gaming laptop disliked that combined with recording video for it. It also made me really queasy. As for the 3D models, it's sad that we don't have the FMV anymore but understandable - it wouldn't have worked here and wouldn't have fit. Plus, two of the actors - the great John Keston and Sheila Goould, who play Gehn and Katran/Catherine respectively, have since shuffled off this mortal coil and could not have come back even if they wanted to. This is tragic, but well... not unexpected. As Riven itself shows us, everything changes, and everything dies. These flaws really are just quibbles though. This game is otherwise the PERFECT recreation of Riven for the modern day in LITERALLY LITERALLY every possible way. It's weird and unnerving and beautiful and brain-teasing and still just a masterpiece of world-building and puzzle design. It is a spectacle built on the great shoulders of a game that is already a spectacle, a polishing of an already golden standard for point and click adventure and puzzle games. It sets the bar ONCE AGAIN for puzzle and logic games of its nature, and throws back to the classic era of CD-ROM games across several discs while moving boldly forward into the future. If someone asked me in the past, "Hey, are games art?" It used to be I would point to the original Riven. I can still do that now. But now, for my money, pound for pound, if you ask me now "hey, are games art?" Odds are, I'm going to point to this version of Riven and say, "I dunno, Stranger... what do you think?" What are you waiting for, already? If you love puzzle games, if you loved Myst, if you're an old returning fan or a newcomer just getting into this fantastic series of games with such deep lore you could drown in that Starry Expanse of it... come to Riven. And let it become your paranoid, beautiful, terrible, mysterious, and compellingly strange world.
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One of the first games I ever played, and one of my favourites ever. I first played it though with my dad and I must have been around seven at the time. Every night he'd help me solve the puzzles and I remember being so immersed in the story, the worlds and the attention to detail. The excitement of putting a new disc with each island transition. The mesmerising sound track. Some discs you don't use till later in the story, and I remember wondering about them, what was on the disc? Where would it take us? It's has a special place in my life, that time spent with him, and the game that facilitated that. The remake is brilliant, and most importantly truly captures the ephemeral experience of being lost in an unknown and strange world, with it's intricate technology and elusive people. 10/10
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The gaming zeitgeist forever changed in ’93 with the release of Myst, a puzzle game that challenged all contemporary ideas of videogame success. It lacked the energy of Doom or the brand recognition of NBA Jam, yet it sold over 500,000 copies in the first year. Due to their unprecedented success, all industry eyes turned towards the Miller brothers in anticipation of Myst’s inevitable sequel. Four years and one painful development cycle later, it released as “Riven”. If there was a word to describe Riven, it would be “restraint”. This is reflected from its delayed release to the reduced number of Ages and puzzles. While this sounds like design suicide at a time when Myst was the best-selling PC game, it showcases a level of confidence at Cyan that few studios could have matched. Gone are the sporadic mechanical devices that seemingly served no function other than to impede player progress, Riven’s puzzles feel diegetic, making its world come alive. Within its five connected islands, Riven managed to tell a story rich in lore by balancing exposition with environmental storytelling that rewarded observant players. With these achievements, Riven might be the best classical puzzle game ever. While nothing can top the experience of playing the original for the first time, the remake is a compelling addition to Cyan’s library. It introduces new, smaller puzzles that balance the pacing for new players while giving veterans something to look forward to. There’s no better time to visit the Age of Riven, and one can hope that Cyan continues this level of quality for Myst III: Exile.
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EDIT (2025.06.17): After playing the Myst remake (2021), I would suggest playing that game first before playing this one. It'll improve the overall world building experience and make a lot of this game make more sense. I think Riven is a better overall game, but Myst does a good job introducing the series and introducing the general gameplay loop/puzzle structure. Was recommended to me by my wife who had played (but did not finish) the 1997 original. I never played the 1997 original and would consider the prequel Myst after my experience with this game. Positives: - Great visuals and voice acting. - Good world building, easy to immerse yourself into. - Good puzzles, nothing too over-the-top in difficulty. Negatives: - Can be hard to notice interactable buttons and levers, causing you to get stuck by not looking twice in an area. - Missable achievements. - A few crashes on my PC while running an Intel processor (solved this by underclocking my CPU using Intel Extreme Tuning Utility) Suggestions: - Make multiple manual saves to allow for back-tracking, to allow for getting 100% completion in a single playthrough. - Take notes by both using the screenshot functionality and on pen and paper, refrain from looking up solutions as your notes will provide the answers once you've explored enough. Really refrain from looking up solutions until you're really stuck and make sure you've checked around areas for any buttons/levers you've missed.
Expand the review
Absolute must play. Ignore the negative reviews, as far as I can see, they are all people with skill issues (people that don't have the patience to focus for 2 seconds), people with self-inflicted technical issues, or people who want to complain that the game was changed to be too easy but don't want to put two seconds of thought into it to realize that the game is easy for them because they remember the original and therefore already know how to solve the puzzles, removing half of the challenge of the game. It's really, really excellent. Don't go into it expecting quite the same experience as Myst, though. In Myst, you solve a puzzle to open a door. In Riven, opening the door IS the puzzle, sometimes literally.
Expand the review
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Frequently Asked Questions
Riven is currently priced at 35.49€ on Steam.
Riven is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 35.49€ on Steam.
Riven received 2,242 positive votes out of a total of 2,413 achieving a rating of 8.88.
😎
Riven was developed and published by Cyan Worlds and Inc..
Riven is playable and fully supported on Windows.
Riven is playable and fully supported on MacOS.
Riven is not playable on Linux.
Riven is a single-player game.
There are 2 DLCs available for Riven. Explore additional content available for Riven on Steam.
Riven does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
Riven supports Remote Play on TV. Discover more about Steam Remote Play.
Riven is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Riven.
Data sources
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 | 01 May 2026 08:39 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 27 April 2026 10:55 |
| Steam price | 01 May 2026 04:50 |
| Steam reviews | 29 April 2026 16:03 |
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
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Game modes
Features
Online players
19
Developer
Cyan Worlds, Inc.
Publisher
Cyan Worlds, Inc.
Release
25 Jun 2024
VR
VR Supported
Platforms
Remote Play
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