Riven
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Riven: The Sequel to Myst is a 1997 adventure game developed by Cyan Productions and published by Red Orb Entertainment. The second installment of the Myst series, Riven was released for Mac and Windows personal computers on October 31, 1997, in North America. Riven was also ported to several other platforms. The story of Riven is set after the events of Myst. Having been rescued thanks to the efforts of his sons, Atrus enlists the help of the player character to free his wife from his power-hungry father, Gehn. Riven takes place almost entirely on the Age of Riven, a world slowly falling apart due to Gehn's destructive rule.
Development of Riven began soon after Myst became a success, and spanned more than three years. In an effort to create a visual style distinct from that of Myst, director Robyn Miller and his brother, producer Rand Miller, recruited former Aladdin production designer Richard Vander Wende as a co-director. Broderbund employed a multimillion-dollar advertising campaign to publicize the game's release.
Riven was praised by reviewers, with the magazine Salon proclaiming that the game approaches the level of art. Critics positively noted the puzzles and immersive experience of the gameplay, though publications such as Edge felt that the nature of point-and-click gameplay limited the title heavily. The best-selling game of 1997, Riven sold 1.5 million copies in one year. After the game's release, Robyn Miller left Cyan to form his own development studio, ending the professional partnership of the two brothers. Rand stayed at Cyan and continued to work on Myst-related products including The Myst Reader and the real-time rendered game Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. The next entry in the Myst series, Myst III: Exile, was developed by Presto Studios and published by Ubisoft. A remake of the game, recreating the world in fully explorable 3D and supporting both normal and virtual reality, was released in June 2024.
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