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General Info.If you've played Myst, then you will probably be more prepared for Riven than a non-Myst player. As a game, Riven is very much similar to the Channelwood age of Myst for the most part. Most of the puzzles involve figuring out logical ways to travel around the world and reach places you couldn't reach before. However, a couple of the puzzles in Riven are more reflective of Myst's Selenitic Age in that you have to gather information from one or more different sources located throughout the islands in order to solve a particular puzzle that is very complex. As with Myst, brute force is not the way to go. Most of the difficult puzzles have a variety of possible combinations. So many combinations, in fact, that it would take months to work through them all. If you run into such a puzzle, you must realize that you are expected to find other information elsewhere that will make the solution more obvious. Keep a journal to write down clues. Make diagrams and maps of buildings and islands where appropriate. You will refer back to them again and again. If you get frustrated, leave the game alone for a while then come back. Don't give in to the temptation to completely spoil an experience for you. Better to enjoy the game. The satisfaction when you finish will be much better.In sum... Click everywhere. When walking along pathways, turn right and left and see if there are ways to travel or little items that you have overlooked. There are several places where you can look up or down to see interesting or useful things. Move the cursor around the screen constantly to check for such locations. Keep a sharp eye out for things that are unintentionally camouflaged. Beware of zip mode until you've really done a lot of game playing. You could miss something valuable. Remember that this is a logical world. If you think like you're really there, you'll gain a lot more insight. Virtually every contraption has a useful purpose that you can figure out. Remember these purposes because some of them will be very important. There are some puzzles in Riven that, when solved, do not immediately have a noticeable benefit to you. Remember how everything works logically. If you think you've done something right, go look around for things the "puzzle" might be connected to so you can see if anything has changed. Michael Rosenbush (Michael_Rosenbush@avid.com) adds the following advice for Riven players: It seems to me that a key to success in Riven is patience... It's not meant to address the urge we all have to play a quick shoot-em up. It requires self dicipline and patience to do anything more than load it up and be frustrated. The more patience you have, the better you do. For those really frustrating times, keep a copy of pac-man, space invaders or something else loaded up, and switch to it if you can't take any more. I had spoiled my Myst experience terribly by prematurely learning the end of the game before I really understood what it was about....so I set out specifically to not seek out hints unless I was "stumped." I qualified "stumped" for myself as: "Not able to move forward in the game after at least two hours of (semi)continuous play, walking away for some time (a day?) and then returning and still being stumped." Using that rule, I used only two actual hints. My game didn't break any records...in fact I have had the software for about a month, with average plays of an hour or two at a time, but I have a fantastic feeling now! Chris Rowland (stc@zm.org) offers the following advice to help avoid problems with "unintentional camouflage" and screen darkness: Don't hesitate to turn up the brightness. The Setup sequence for Riven leaves you with a very dark display. This is nice and atmospheric, but their suggestion -- to turn down the brightness until the symbol turns black -- yields a screen that's just too dark. I've found it much more useful to adjust the brightness during the first few minutes of the game (once you can move around freely): Turn it up until the shadows are clearly too bright, then turn it down until it looks good. And even then, adjust it as you need to. Otherwise, you can miss vital details.
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