Myst for the iPhone and Riven X
May 19, 2009 - 2 Comments - iphone games
Myst was probably the first point-and-click adventure games I ever played, even before I played any of the older black-and-white adventure games (such as the excellent adventure games of Ray Dunakin). It had been many, many years since I’d played Myst, so when I heard it had been remade for the iPhone, I immediately cleared out enough music to make space for it so I could experience the mystery once again.
Due to my familiarity with the game, it didn’t take me long to crack the puzzles again, but the magic was still there, and quite intoxicating. Then I remembered that I had never played any of the sequels. Suddenly I felt incomplete as a human being, so I sought out Riven, the sequel to Myst.
Unfortunately, further development of Riven has been discontinued; the last build would only run in Mac Classic mode, a technology which no longer worked for those of us who have made the jump to Intel Macs. It seemed as though Riven was sadly going the way of the Ray’s Maze games, the advance of technology having left it behind.
Fortunately, one Jean-François Roy has taken it upon himself to rebuild the Riven game engine as Riven X, following after prior efforts to reverse-engineer the Riven data files. All you need is an actual copy of the game on disc, and Riven X will let you play on your Intel Mac.
This project is still under development, and there are some bugs; notably, the ripple effect in watery scenes causes some major graphical glitches, and not all of the game’s puzzles have been fully implemented, so it’s not yet to a point where you can have the complete Riven experience. However, it is amazing how far it has already come, and I’ve managed to get to the third island, but there is a critical puzzle-related bug preventing me from continuing further. (This bug is in the tracker, and Mr. Roy is aware of it.)
I look forward to Riven X approaching a 1.0 release so I can have the chance to test my problem solving skills through this gorgeous adventure game. Kudos to Mr. Roy for his efforts!
Chris Carpenter said:
Nerd.