Ah yes, I recall fondly inserting a new CD every 10 minutes when I first played this game as a kid. Hilariously, that seems to be about _all_ I can remember from my childhood attempts
My only relatable experience is constantly swapping in and out disc 1 and 2 from Metal Gear Solid on my old playstation 😅 - I was a console gamer growing up 🤣
It's not everyday you get to watch someone experience Riven for the first time. I'm sure you will enjoy it. In my opinion this is the best of the MYST series.
Welcome to the channel! I've been on a real Cyan Hype Train in the last few months since playing through Myst on a bit of a whim. Now I'm down the rabbit hole!
@@thatdesignfeelgaming Cyan Hype is right, this is genuinely exciting. This game has wonderful puzzles, and well deserved moments of realization. The acting is a serious step up, a prelude of things to come in 3 and 4.
Thank you for doing this. Riven is still the best game I have ever played. To feel the first time again with/through you is almost as wonderfull as my own first time.
I remember the first time I bought a playstation game that had more than one disc My mind was blown because I assumed they'd accidentally put two copies of the game in the box
I just binged all of your myst playthrough and now im starting on your riven series. I truly do enjoy seeing someone have fun with these games. They were innovations in puzzle crafting for video games as a whole. I do find that one particularly effective part of their puzzles is the fact that they are all integrated seamlessly. The puzzles aren't just there as arbitrary obstacles to the player, they're actually a part of the world itself with a reasonable explanation for their existence and purpose. Really the only reason they're puzzles is because the player character is stumbling across them with no background knowledge of their purpose or function and is forced to try and piece context clues from the surrounding environment to make them work so they can continue to the goal. It would be like if i needed to watch a video cassette in order to gain a clue for solving a murder, but had never even heard of a video player and the instructions were in spanish and i have to go root around in the attic for the spanish to english dictionary i saw earlier. Or press buttons until something happens. See? Puzzle.
Welcome to the channel! I have absolutely been loving everything out of the Cyan portfolio so far, and you're absolutely right, (for the most part, barring Myst 3) the whole conceit of these games is that there not arbitrary puzzles for you to solve, but real "lived in" environments. Such a shame that the "knowledge based" Myst-like never took off in the same way that the item based adventure games did in the 90s. Always interested to hear more game recommendations!
The original didn't take 10 seconds to load a new image! There was a two-second fade between images that could be turned off. It was on CD so it was already pretty instantaneous by that point. That said, playing it slowly is absolutely the way to go. I see you have many parts posted already and may have already beaten it. Excited to watch your journey through one of my favorite games of all time.
I'm certainly trying to take my time moving through because I know there are some things easily missable. 10 seconds is probably a wild overstatement. I certainly remember loading screens on the old playstation being quite a thing 😂
@@thatdesignfeelgaming It's so nice to find people discovering these old puzzle games now. It's like vicariously reliving the thrill of all that discovery through someone else's experience. Thoroughly enjoying making my way through your videos. Also fun that you catch on real quick to the puzzles. I remember some of these stumping child-me for a WHILE, lol.
I've hit a wall in my own Riven playthrough, so I'm jumping in to see if I can catch some hints that don't give away the whole puzzle. Bonus points for the excellent commentary 😁 Looking forward to it
Where abouts are you stuck? (I shan't offer hints, just curious!) - I hope you enjoy the Riven playthrough. Are you playing the original or the remake? I'd certainly say the remake is worth a visit even after you complete the original, it's quite different!
@@thatdesignfeelgaming a few places that you've already managed to unjam me from! 1) I missed the marker in the forest behind the giant rebel knife. It just would never have occurred to me to try walking "off path", but I guess that's one of the dangers of the point and click format. 2) I missed a stop on the submarine. I'm still not sure how I reset it, but I also got the sub stuck somewhere I was no longer able to access. I must have wandered around that village for an hour, and then all of a sudden, poof! It's right back where it started. Now I can get to that building that I think is meant to be a classroom, aka PROBABLY the missing piece to the puzzle that will allow me to narrow down the D'ni writing system. I've stopped several domes, but haven't yet worked out the combination(s?), despite having Gehn's journal. I think point 2 will help with that There's some other stuff I'm held up on later on (water marker puzzle, underwater colored lights, marker puzzle solution, so on), but I'm gonna try sorting these out first and see if it illuminates anything else for me. Having a blast so far though, my notebook pages look proper "90s puzzle gamer". Oh, and I'm playing the original. I still have the CDs somewhere, but I bought a Myst bundle on GOG years ago, so I'm using that on my laptop to save me from external CD drive hell
Awesome - sounds like you're making great progress. Don't worry about the submarine - as you suggest, the game will spawn it if you ever leave it somewhere that it's stuck and you can't get back to it again. You might have to leave the island and return to make it respawn.
Yay. I inherited this game many many years ago but have no clue where it went. In any case, never played it. Thrilled to see you wrangle with it. Let's go new game!
Thank you! I'm having an absolute blast so far. Riven 5 episodes in is definitely my preferred game over Myst. The background story elements of the game are so well thought through and integrated into the puzzles
So glad I stumbled upon a blind play of this game. One of my most memorable gaming experiences ever. The visual aesthetic, the ambience, the music, the slow burner realization of how everything comes together... I think it took me around six months to complete, and a whole pile of cheap printer paper filled with jotted notes and symbols. The biggest stump for me was missing what was right in front of me the whole time: The shapes of the animals actually in the environment (I wonder if The Witness was inspired by that). Gaahhh. But when it hit... wow, it was/is one of the greatest euphoric moments I've experienced within the medium of games. I still sometimes have the soundtrack on loop in the background while I'm sketching. ❤ Loved this first part, and seeing how your mind works through what is presented. Subscribed and looking forward to watching the rest of your playthrough.
It's one of the all time great games, totally agree - and the Animal puzzle and the Fire marbles are two absolute 10/10 puzzles Welcome to the channel! Hope you enjoy the rest of the playthrough!
Hey there! Thought I'd just watch the first little bit of your gameplay to check out the graphics quality of the original. Noticed you broke 100 subs! Congrats bud!! ;) (edit): Ha! I must have at least started playing this back in the 90's because I recognize the start! That said, I don't remember a darn thing about it! And I'm impressed with the quality of the graphics! Pretty darn good, especially considering when it came out!
Thank you! 🥳 100 subs! If you're only just coming to my channel now - sorry, the first 100 spots have been taken, but the next 900 are now up for grabs! 💀 I was also expecting this game to feel a lot older than it actually is. Maybe this is my sign to do more 90s nostalgia games!
6:00 You missed a little detail at the very start of the game. At the island where you arrive, the guy in white clothes get hit with a dart and dragged away. Right after when the gate unlocks, you can walk up to the right of you and look down the cliff (in the direction he was dragged), and you'll see his body laying down there. I believe he lies there whole game. I don't think you ever watched down that cliff in your play-through, I was always waiting for you to accidentally click it and see it 😀
That's a nice little detail - you're right, I didn't spot that. I have a feeling the knockout dart wears off at some point and the chap wanders off - probably NOT back to Gehn! 🤣
The only downside to these types of games is that once you know the solutions there is very little replay value. That's where blind playthroughs come in! Always fun to vicariously watch someone else fumble their way through the mysteries. I just found your channel so I'm looking forward to your other videos!
Welcome to the channel! I hope you enjoy this playthrough! 🫶 Hard to imagine it's nearly been a year since we streamed this one - I'm looking forward to starting the remake very soon!
I'm really looking forward to playing it! I hear there might be some tweaked puzzles here and there, I'm looking forward to seeing what changes have been made!
I didn't notice this at all! I wonder if that's something... Village island I think the villagers have free reign to wander about on, and I was *assuming* that it was the villagers cutting the trees (at Gehn's demand, of course)
Omg I don't even want to imagine playing Riven on floppy disks 😂 CDs were tedious enough, especially when you went to an island and then realized you forgot to do something on the previous one and had to go back. I wonder how many floppies it would have required… I feel like each one was maybe 1.2-1.4 MB compared to a 700ish MB CD… good god in heaven 💀💀💀💀💀
A bit technical: How are you playing this? I recognize it's not the original CD release, unless maybe it's in ScummVM? Or is it the GOG or Steam version?
The GOG version is run through ScummVM, and I believe both releases automatically mount the appropriate CD image and handle the game's prompts passively, so the player never sees them
Riven, YAH! Watching this piecemeal in my limited spare time, but at about the 1/3 mark I thought I'd drop in a tiny bit of lore (no spoilers, I think) - Gehn, the dude you're after, has a massive god complex as evinced by the stained glass paintings in the five sided room. Also, that pointy thing on the ceiling is supposed to represent Gehn's pen coming down to create the world. - Correction: Sirrus and Achenar do not have The Art; I think it's established elsewhere that they're functionally illiterate. That said, the Art is not like The Force and only a few have it; anyone can learn to write Ages. It's mostly an Art of the D'ni, but Gehn's own mother (Rand's granny) was a regular human woman and she learned it just fine.
Omg, I'm going to have a look at the roof of that room again! Thanks for the lore info! We still have that book that we've not read yet - perhaps that'll be the first part of next week's stream. The lore of Myst seems very deep, and I haven't been super great at piecing it together yet! I assumed the god like person in the stained glass windows was Atrus! 😂😂
@@thatdesignfeelgaming The lore IS super deep, so don't feel embarrassed or anything. And a lot of it is stuff you won't find in the games -- the Brothers Miller wrote a couple novels to expand on the D'ni and their world. Side note: Atrus is in fact in one of the glass images, he's being cast into the pit by Gehn The God Figure. (You can see the Myst book falling into the pit with him.)
@@ScooterBond1970 I'm pretty hype for Sunday's stream. I think I'll start with the book, researching my recording Atrus literally says it'll "explain everything" and I haven't read it yet 😂 Doing it at the start of Sunday's stream means that people can skip forward if they don't want to hear me audio-booking 😅
Even Catherine (aka Katran), a Rivenese woman, was able to learn the Art, and she lacked any kind of formal instruction whatsoever, merely pieced together an understanding from what she read in Gehn's books
You nock on the door, wait 1 millisecond and then go on. If i nocked on your door would you open in that time? 🤦♂️ Oh, and if you had looked over the cliff in the beginning you would have seen the dead body under you. (I also missed it the first time i played). If you go back now its nolonger there.
At this point in the playthrough I think I was working a lot on standard videogame logic of "input X gives output y". I feel a little more clued in to the designer's way of thinking now, for sure. We missed that cliff for sure, but I like how those little moments exist as Easter eggs for people to draw attention to - this game has a lot of attention to detail!
Ah yes, I recall fondly inserting a new CD every 10 minutes when I first played this game as a kid. Hilariously, that seems to be about _all_ I can remember from my childhood attempts
My only relatable experience is constantly swapping in and out disc 1 and 2 from Metal Gear Solid on my old playstation 😅 - I was a console gamer growing up 🤣
It's not everyday you get to watch someone experience Riven for the first time. I'm sure you will enjoy it. In my opinion this is the best of the MYST series.
Welcome to the channel!
I've been on a real Cyan Hype Train in the last few months since playing through Myst on a bit of a whim.
Now I'm down the rabbit hole!
@@thatdesignfeelgaming You mean, a Cyan Hype Tiny Train? 😉
@@thatdesignfeelgaming Cyan Hype is right, this is genuinely exciting. This game has wonderful puzzles, and well deserved moments of realization. The acting is a serious step up, a prelude of things to come in 3 and 4.
@@vansiker7451 tbf, you weren't lying about the acting in 3 - Brad is acting a storm in there!
Thank you for doing this. Riven is still the best game I have ever played. To feel the first time again with/through you is almost as wonderfull as my own first time.
I played it when it came. Not floppy but 5 or 6 cds. Every island was one cd.
I remember the first time I bought a playstation game that had more than one disc
My mind was blown because I assumed they'd accidentally put two copies of the game in the box
I loved the D'ni numbered CDs
I just binged all of your myst playthrough and now im starting on your riven series. I truly do enjoy seeing someone have fun with these games. They were innovations in puzzle crafting for video games as a whole. I do find that one particularly effective part of their puzzles is the fact that they are all integrated seamlessly. The puzzles aren't just there as arbitrary obstacles to the player, they're actually a part of the world itself with a reasonable explanation for their existence and purpose. Really the only reason they're puzzles is because the player character is stumbling across them with no background knowledge of their purpose or function and is forced to try and piece context clues from the surrounding environment to make them work so they can continue to the goal. It would be like if i needed to watch a video cassette in order to gain a clue for solving a murder, but had never even heard of a video player and the instructions were in spanish and i have to go root around in the attic for the spanish to english dictionary i saw earlier. Or press buttons until something happens. See? Puzzle.
Welcome to the channel!
I have absolutely been loving everything out of the Cyan portfolio so far, and you're absolutely right, (for the most part, barring Myst 3) the whole conceit of these games is that there not arbitrary puzzles for you to solve, but real "lived in" environments.
Such a shame that the "knowledge based" Myst-like never took off in the same way that the item based adventure games did in the 90s.
Always interested to hear more game recommendations!
The original didn't take 10 seconds to load a new image! There was a two-second fade between images that could be turned off. It was on CD so it was already pretty instantaneous by that point.
That said, playing it slowly is absolutely the way to go. I see you have many parts posted already and may have already beaten it. Excited to watch your journey through one of my favorite games of all time.
I'm certainly trying to take my time moving through because I know there are some things easily missable.
10 seconds is probably a wild overstatement. I certainly remember loading screens on the old playstation being quite a thing 😂
Really enjoy your methodical approach and keen observations. This looks like it will be a fun playthrough to watch!
Thank you! I hope you enjoy the playthrough!
HELL YEAH, the OG. The one with the best music. The best atmosphere. The Best.
Best puzzle game I've ever played so far tbh
@@thatdesignfeelgaming It's so nice to find people discovering these old puzzle games now. It's like vicariously reliving the thrill of all that discovery through someone else's experience.
Thoroughly enjoying making my way through your videos.
Also fun that you catch on real quick to the puzzles. I remember some of these stumping child-me for a WHILE, lol.
@@roe_k and hopefully with the remake there's a whole new generation about to play it for the first time!
Oh man, I just finishing blazing through your Myst playthrough. I think you’re gonna absolutely love Riven. Can’t wait to catch up on these!
I am absolutely loving it tbh! Some of the best puzzle design I've ever seen
Fiquei super feliz com esse jogo no sega saturno, a cena do peixe no aquario me marcou muito
Gehn's under water observation platform is quite something!
it took me 20 years to finish it, had to give up multiple times xD
now I know every single detail of the game inside out
It's a real masterpiece tbh, I'm really looking forward to playing through the remake as well
Absolutely in love with this series!
I've hit a wall in my own Riven playthrough, so I'm jumping in to see if I can catch some hints that don't give away the whole puzzle. Bonus points for the excellent commentary 😁 Looking forward to it
Where abouts are you stuck? (I shan't offer hints, just curious!) - I hope you enjoy the Riven playthrough. Are you playing the original or the remake? I'd certainly say the remake is worth a visit even after you complete the original, it's quite different!
@@thatdesignfeelgaming a few places that you've already managed to unjam me from!
1) I missed the marker in the forest behind the giant rebel knife. It just would never have occurred to me to try walking "off path", but I guess that's one of the dangers of the point and click format.
2) I missed a stop on the submarine. I'm still not sure how I reset it, but I also got the sub stuck somewhere I was no longer able to access. I must have wandered around that village for an hour, and then all of a sudden, poof! It's right back where it started. Now I can get to that building that I think is meant to be a classroom, aka PROBABLY the missing piece to the puzzle that will allow me to narrow down the D'ni writing system.
I've stopped several domes, but haven't yet worked out the combination(s?), despite having Gehn's journal. I think point 2 will help with that
There's some other stuff I'm held up on later on (water marker puzzle, underwater colored lights, marker puzzle solution, so on), but I'm gonna try sorting these out first and see if it illuminates anything else for me. Having a blast so far though, my notebook pages look proper "90s puzzle gamer".
Oh, and I'm playing the original. I still have the CDs somewhere, but I bought a Myst bundle on GOG years ago, so I'm using that on my laptop to save me from external CD drive hell
Awesome - sounds like you're making great progress. Don't worry about the submarine - as you suggest, the game will spawn it if you ever leave it somewhere that it's stuck and you can't get back to it again. You might have to leave the island and return to make it respawn.
I decided I'm going chronological with all your Myst vids. There's so much cozy content to catch up on! Love thrse vids ❤
It's a pretty decent chunk of videos nowadays for sure!
Glad you're enjoying them - thank you for the comment 🫶
Yay. I inherited this game many many years ago but have no clue where it went. In any case, never played it. Thrilled to see you wrangle with it. Let's go new game!
New game! New game!
I'm really hype for this one - I think it's going to be a real laugh 😁
Fantastic play through already. I hope you play the whole series!
Thank you!
I'm having an absolute blast so far. Riven 5 episodes in is definitely my preferred game over Myst. The background story elements of the game are so well thought through and integrated into the puzzles
So glad I stumbled upon a blind play of this game. One of my most memorable gaming experiences ever. The visual aesthetic, the ambience, the music, the slow burner realization of how everything comes together... I think it took me around six months to complete, and a whole pile of cheap printer paper filled with jotted notes and symbols. The biggest stump for me was missing what was right in front of me the whole time: The shapes of the animals actually in the environment (I wonder if The Witness was inspired by that). Gaahhh. But when it hit... wow, it was/is one of the greatest euphoric moments I've experienced within the medium of games. I still sometimes have the soundtrack on loop in the background while I'm sketching. ❤
Loved this first part, and seeing how your mind works through what is presented. Subscribed and looking forward to watching the rest of your playthrough.
It's one of the all time great games, totally agree - and the Animal puzzle and the Fire marbles are two absolute 10/10 puzzles
Welcome to the channel! Hope you enjoy the rest of the playthrough!
When it's a game you know too well, blind playthroughs are the best.
I hope you enjoy the playthrough! 🫶
@@thatdesignfeelgaming I am. I already watched the first two parts!
Note from my future self: 40:31 might be a relevant time to come back to... 😅
Hey there! Thought I'd just watch the first little bit of your gameplay to check out the graphics quality of the original. Noticed you broke 100 subs! Congrats bud!! ;)
(edit): Ha! I must have at least started playing this back in the 90's because I recognize the start! That said, I don't remember a darn thing about it! And I'm impressed with the quality of the graphics! Pretty darn good, especially considering when it came out!
Thank you! 🥳 100 subs!
If you're only just coming to my channel now - sorry, the first 100 spots have been taken, but the next 900 are now up for grabs! 💀
I was also expecting this game to feel a lot older than it actually is. Maybe this is my sign to do more 90s nostalgia games!
6:00 You missed a little detail at the very start of the game.
At the island where you arrive, the guy in white clothes get hit with a dart and dragged away.
Right after when the gate unlocks, you can walk up to the right of you and look down the cliff (in the direction he was dragged), and you'll see his body laying down there.
I believe he lies there whole game.
I don't think you ever watched down that cliff in your play-through, I was always waiting for you to accidentally click it and see it 😀
That's a nice little detail - you're right, I didn't spot that.
I have a feeling the knockout dart wears off at some point and the chap wanders off - probably NOT back to Gehn! 🤣
He doesn’t stay there the whole game. You read about him waking up in ghens journal on the 233rd age. He does go back to ghen
The only downside to these types of games is that once you know the solutions there is very little replay value. That's where blind playthroughs come in! Always fun to vicariously watch someone else fumble their way through the mysteries. I just found your channel so I'm looking forward to your other videos!
Welcome to the channel! I hope you enjoy this playthrough! 🫶
Hard to imagine it's nearly been a year since we streamed this one - I'm looking forward to starting the remake very soon!
And Tomorrow they are releasing a remastered RIVEN in 4k with no point and click. So Hypeddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd.
I'm really looking forward to playing it! I hear there might be some tweaked puzzles here and there, I'm looking forward to seeing what changes have been made!
You looked at the axe. Did you noticed that all trees where cut down by a chainsaw? Maybe a miss by the developers..
I didn't notice this at all! I wonder if that's something...
Village island I think the villagers have free reign to wander about on, and I was *assuming* that it was the villagers cutting the trees (at Gehn's demand, of course)
Omg I don't even want to imagine playing Riven on floppy disks 😂 CDs were tedious enough, especially when you went to an island and then realized you forgot to do something on the previous one and had to go back. I wonder how many floppies it would have required… I feel like each one was maybe 1.2-1.4 MB compared to a 700ish MB CD… good god in heaven 💀💀💀💀💀
Yeah, I think I'm wildly mis-remembering the state of technology in 1997 😂
Otimo!
Thank you!
A bit technical: How are you playing this? I recognize it's not the original CD release, unless maybe it's in ScummVM? Or is it the GOG or Steam version?
We're playing on Steam 👍
Thanks for coming along to the Hollow Knight Path of Pain stream, was great fun having a chat
The GOG version is run through ScummVM, and I believe both releases automatically mount the appropriate CD image and handle the game's prompts passively, so the player never sees them
Riven, YAH!
Watching this piecemeal in my limited spare time, but at about the 1/3 mark I thought I'd drop in a tiny bit of lore (no spoilers, I think)
- Gehn, the dude you're after, has a massive god complex as evinced by the stained glass paintings in the five sided room. Also, that pointy thing on the ceiling is supposed to represent Gehn's pen coming down to create the world.
- Correction: Sirrus and Achenar do not have The Art; I think it's established elsewhere that they're functionally illiterate. That said, the Art is not like The Force and only a few have it; anyone can learn to write Ages. It's mostly an Art of the D'ni, but Gehn's own mother (Rand's granny) was a regular human woman and she learned it just fine.
Omg, I'm going to have a look at the roof of that room again!
Thanks for the lore info! We still have that book that we've not read yet - perhaps that'll be the first part of next week's stream. The lore of Myst seems very deep, and I haven't been super great at piecing it together yet! I assumed the god like person in the stained glass windows was Atrus! 😂😂
@@thatdesignfeelgaming The lore IS super deep, so don't feel embarrassed or anything. And a lot of it is stuff you won't find in the games -- the Brothers Miller wrote a couple novels to expand on the D'ni and their world.
Side note: Atrus is in fact in one of the glass images, he's being cast into the pit by Gehn The God Figure. (You can see the Myst book falling into the pit with him.)
@@ScooterBond1970 I'm pretty hype for Sunday's stream. I think I'll start with the book, researching my recording Atrus literally says it'll "explain everything" and I haven't read it yet 😂
Doing it at the start of Sunday's stream means that people can skip forward if they don't want to hear me audio-booking 😅
@@ScooterBond1970 Fun fact - 60% of viewers skipped ahead in my Myst playthrough during the section where I read all the books in the library 😅
Even Catherine (aka Katran), a Rivenese woman, was able to learn the Art, and she lacked any kind of formal instruction whatsoever, merely pieced together an understanding from what she read in Gehn's books
You nock on the door, wait 1 millisecond and then go on. If i nocked on your door would you open in that time? 🤦♂️ Oh, and if you had looked over the cliff in the beginning you would have seen the dead body under you. (I also missed it the first time i played). If you go back now its nolonger there.
At this point in the playthrough I think I was working a lot on standard videogame logic of "input X gives output y". I feel a little more clued in to the designer's way of thinking now, for sure.
We missed that cliff for sure, but I like how those little moments exist as Easter eggs for people to draw attention to - this game has a lot of attention to detail!
Not quite dead. 😉 The same guard can be seen in multiple bad endings.