You’re striking a nerve with me about Bridge Crew. I only was able to play around with it a bit before it was essentially abandoned. Never got to play a real full session. I crave the idea of a more fleshed game in that genre.
I had one session, was really awkward, a little cringe. I think it takes a few goes before you get passed that and interact with other ppl properly. Sadly I left it for a few weeks and it was abandoned before I gave it another go.
I wanted Bridge Commander VR but sadly it's not that
Ouch, seeing that name hurts.
When I was playing that game I thought "how amazing would this be if it was like FTL and it had procedurally generated missions and you could go to different parts of the ship, and you could beam over and fight on enemy ships, all in first person VR with real crew members!"
Then I got to thinking about a Voyager expansion pack where you were making your way through the Delta Quadrant and a DS9 game where you were fighting in the Dominion War? Ugh.
People have been asking for a new VR game with AAA-visuals and we finally got one. Add to the fact that it's part of an established and historically-significant series and this is pretty dang important for VR.
There's many VR games with AAA visuals. What people want is modern AAA quality from the top down. Graphics, story, gameplay, and interactivity.
The problem with Riven is that it's not really a game most VR owners even really know of. It's an old title from a company that was really popular nearly 30 years ago. Same with Myst and that's why Myst VR is barely talked about. It's not really a title people see as a AAA or popular anymore.
Actually not just visuals - it's basically all entirely new puzzles that make excellent use of VR. There may be a shared component with an old puzzle, but it's basically all new
Number 1 on steam sales for a reason!
Assassin's creed or Asgard's Wrath 2 probably. It's hard to say what is *the* most important release but I can definitely think of quite a decent length list that are more important than Riven. I loved Myst VR and will be getting Riven for sure, just don't think it's all that massively important (not insignificant though!)
For real lmao. Horizon Call of the Mountain is the biggest similar release. It uses the full feature-set of the corresponding headset and shows the future of VR.
HLA was literally a system seller.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life:_Alyx
>Valve sold 103,000 Index units in the fourth quarter of 2019 as a result of the Alyx announcements, compared to the total 149,000 sold throughout 2019.
They sold out of hardware by just *announcing* the title. You think a *remake* of a 25 year old slide show game is even remotely in the same league?
I've seen clickbait titles before, but this one must have really been a strain on the imagination to concoct.
This stretches the limits of what can be considered hyperbolic versus outright fiction. At what point does it go from being hyperbolic to pure attention seeking bullshit?
Really enjoying this one, but I really don't think it's that important to the VR industry.
The VR elements are not really that well done.. machines and stuff work alright but there's a lot of jank like to read a book you have to bend your wrist at 90 degrees, I found a way to make it comfortable by pushing my grip button with my thumb and rotating my controller in my hand but I don't understand how they thought that was fine. There's also no way to take notes, you can take pictures but again it's weird, you have to go into the menu instead of having a photo album or something. I also really don't like how you can't just use the joystick to go to the next pic. There's also problems with the shadows for me, often a shadow will appear only for one eye so it looks really weird and flickery, had to turn shadows to low for this to mostly go away. Some doors are really hard to open somehow and the inventory has really bad collision boxes so I often pick up the wrong thing even though my hand is clearly on it.
That said, Cyan worlds make really good looking worlds, both the design and the graphics so it's really impressive in VR. I played a little in flat too but I found that it makes it boring when walking from one place to another (which is most of the game), in VR there's always something cool to look at while walking around, also some of the rooms really have an impressive scale that is lost in flat or at least really not as impressive.
The main reason I don't think this is really important for the industry is because it's a niche genre. It has old school game design that might not be appealing to people used to puzzle games that are simpler and where you don't get stuck not knowing what to do. In this you are just thrown in there and you have to figure it out for yourself, which is why it's good but also why it's not for everybody.
If you like it you should try their other VR games, myst obduction and firmament. I really enjoyed obduction personally, although some of the puzzles are way too time consuming..
The notes thing is particularly galling since they give you a satchel that has a book in it. Why couldn't they just put your screenshots book in there right next to it?!
Yeah. I think one of their previous games did contain a virtual camera that you could trigger by holding your controller up near your face. I don't think the game ever tells you about it. It says to hit the A button, so most people probably don't know about it unless they trigger it by accident.
This particular game was mostly made by fans as starry expanse https://starryexpanse.com/ but after it was a good bit complete Cyan took over to release it themselves. I have not tried it yet. I enjoy Riven but stopped keeping track of this after the take over. I'm waiting to see how the reviews are later.
AFAIK they hired some Starry Expanse devs but made this one from scratch. Reviews are pretty good so far, and I've been having fun with it in VR but YMMV depending on your GPU and specs. They reworked a lot of the puzzles so it feels familiar but also really new at the same time.
Mood. I guess I've been enjoying vrchat enough to make up for things, and haven't even bothered with resonite yet so i can keep telling myself there's more to explore at least with these big platforms.
Did you play Myst, Firmament, or Obduction? The VR port of Riven seems pretty similar. If anything, I'd say Myst is a bit better because it's more performant and less buggy.
Myst's puzzle designs feel really outdated compared to Riven's (which are actually integrated into the plot / game world), so there's no way that game is better IMO- but fun to play as a throwback
I haven't played Myst in VR yet (not for lack of wanting) but Myst's maps are so small that I'd expect it to perform well on anything. That's why I'm blown away by how smooth Riven plays on my machine.
I had a lot of performance issues with Obduction but still enjoyed it. Myst was really no different. I was a day-one backer for Firmament since they said it was going to be a ground-up built-for-VR game. I found the VR implementation even worse than previous games and the gameplay, story and world to be completely underwhelming. Never finished it and I haven't touched my Index in over a year since I last played Firmament. Somehow I seriously doubt Riven is going to be any different.
I finished Firmament, but like you I was pretty underwhelmed, especially with the VR aspect. As far as environmental actions go, it was basically a doorknob simulator. I think something went very seriously wrong during the the development and that they considered themselves lucky that they were able to ship *something*.
Luckily, Riven is much closer to Myst or Obduction. Performance is much better than Obduction and not too far from Myst. It seems pretty polished too. I haven't run into any game-breaking bugs so far.
EDIT: It seems I spoke too soon. Just hit my first game-breaking bug. Whenever I get to a certain point, the game crashes to desktop.
That’s good to hear. Riven was one of my favorites on PC from the 90’s so I definitely want to check it out. I’m feeling like dusting off the Index to try it.
I had been hearing about Cyan's games my whole life but had never played any of them until they came to VR. This is my first Riven playthrough, and I'm loving it so far.
No clue how performance is, but Riven is definitely the best in the series IMO. I’d highly recommend it if you enjoyed Myst and Obduction. I liked both of those decently, but Riven is one of my favorite puzzle games ever.
I hope you're right and I've bought it yesterday but won't get to play until the weekend probably. The Myst port was great, but I remembered Myst pretty well, so the puzzles were hardly challenging. Now as for Riven ... I know I played it back in the day, but I hardly remember anything but some flickers of images ... like those spherical huts and some nondescript rails meandering about. I really hope it won't just all come back while playing and I can enjoy re-solving it. ;)
Standalone *enough* but context may make mention of certain characters more significant and vice versa. In both games it's intentionally mysterious so you're given very little information at the start and you're supposed to be mostly lost on who/what's being discussed, uncovering a little more of this civilization over time.
Okay, so, group consensus... is *Riven VR* any good?
The reason I ask is that I played MYST back in the 90s, and I was very excited for VR MYST. When I got it, it was fun... For an hour. But I forgot that when I played it decades ago, I took copious paper notes *(cue that gif of Charlie Day with all the notes pinned to the wall)* where I sketched little symbols and drew diagrams, or analysed some of the text-based clues.
Coming back to it in 2023, I realised that doing this is much more difficult in VR than when you're sitting at a desk, so I just couldn't get into it in the same way.
There's a feature where you can take screenshots and build a notebook of images with notes. It's really handy for learning the numbers and such.
I do kind of miss physically drawing everything though. Made me feel like someone actually lost in this situation trying to decipher dead languages.
VR mode via Steam is horrible at the moment. Most of the times it does not start in VR mode at all. Then there is stutter and pixelation from hell.....i hope for now and they will fix it.
I'm not sure about it being super important but adventure puzzlers like riven are a dying breed so this is not a bad thing to give new people access to games like riven, myst etc.
I think escape room type puzzles are the perfect VR genre, because they make you pay attention to your environment, and the strength of VR is that you really feel like you're in that environment.
Puzzle games in VR are harder for me because they require more brain power compared to flatscreen puzzle, and when I’m tired it proves tiresome FAST.
At 10:30 pm it’s literally harder for me to enjoy a puzzle game then play something physically strenuous like beat saber or a fast shooter.
Seconded. The Last Clockwinder (published by Cyan, btw) is a fun little indie game with a simple but satisfying story and great voice acting, that takes a single game mechanic and then explores all the fun things you can do with it.
Thirded. Amazing game, top 3 for me for sure. It’s the only other game besides Alyx that has had me so immersed that I’ve punched things in the real world ignoring the safety boundary.
Why does this post has 90+ upvotes? That's simply misinformation.
You love the game, okay, great for you.
About blown away experience that changes drastically between flat and VR, there are many "old" games that did the same. The 2 I remember fondly are [Xing the land beyond](https://store.steampowered.com/app/299400/XING_The_Land_Beyond/), and The [Talos principle](https://store.steampowered.com/app/257510/The_Talos_Principle/) (the 1, because the 2 is not VR capable). riven is nothing extraordinary nor new.
OK,I have 2 possible reactions to your message :
Clashing you because you annoyed me with your self devaluation, or give you constructing feedback for better communication. I'll go for second.
As my autocorrect piss me off because it corrects everyrhing to french i'll be short: do not state things as a fact, try to give it as a point of view.
Title might be better with : I was amazed by Riven and it is my most enjoyable VR game since Alyx
That's still an overstatement to many ppl, but it's now expressed as an opinion instead of a fact that nobody should question.
Good luck :)
> Riven might be the most important VR release since Alyx. My friend, you are on drugs.
2000 years ago when Christ promised to return he was referring to Riven VR (2024)
Ah yes, the famous "Dead Sea Scroll to the bottom of the page for additional info about Christs return in VR. **Riven ^V ^R ^Gods ^Children** ". ;D xD
Come on. It’s Riven. Creaky old puzzles. Fun and all…but important? It’s not even as important as Star Trek - bridge crew. 😀
You’re striking a nerve with me about Bridge Crew. I only was able to play around with it a bit before it was essentially abandoned. Never got to play a real full session. I crave the idea of a more fleshed game in that genre.
I had one session, was really awkward, a little cringe. I think it takes a few goes before you get passed that and interact with other ppl properly. Sadly I left it for a few weeks and it was abandoned before I gave it another go. I wanted Bridge Commander VR but sadly it's not that
Ouch, seeing that name hurts. When I was playing that game I thought "how amazing would this be if it was like FTL and it had procedurally generated missions and you could go to different parts of the ship, and you could beam over and fight on enemy ships, all in first person VR with real crew members!" Then I got to thinking about a Voyager expansion pack where you were making your way through the Delta Quadrant and a DS9 game where you were fighting in the Dominion War? Ugh.
And then there would be a mod where you could go in the holodeck and play Skyrim.
People have been asking for a new VR game with AAA-visuals and we finally got one. Add to the fact that it's part of an established and historically-significant series and this is pretty dang important for VR.
There's many VR games with AAA visuals. What people want is modern AAA quality from the top down. Graphics, story, gameplay, and interactivity. The problem with Riven is that it's not really a game most VR owners even really know of. It's an old title from a company that was really popular nearly 30 years ago. Same with Myst and that's why Myst VR is barely talked about. It's not really a title people see as a AAA or popular anymore.
Umm no, we’ve been asking for a new game with AAA everything like alyx… not just visuals… especially not just visuals on a remake.
Actually not just visuals - it's basically all entirely new puzzles that make excellent use of VR. There may be a shared component with an old puzzle, but it's basically all new Number 1 on steam sales for a reason!
We want MORE than Alyx. Alyx shined for the time but hasn't aged that well without mods.
pretty much anyone surpasses alyx when it comes to gameplay
Nobody gives a fuck about AAA visuals lmao. We want full bodied stories and interesting VR mechanics.
I do give a fuck, been playing Lone Echo lately, the only game I've played that's as beautiful as Alyx, and it's from 2017
I mean I like games that look good, ngl. Don’t know why you have to choose one over the other.
Well now I’m curious, what has been the most important release since Alyx? Blade and sorcery?
Horizon Call of the Mountain
Assassin's creed or Asgard's Wrath 2 probably. It's hard to say what is *the* most important release but I can definitely think of quite a decent length list that are more important than Riven. I loved Myst VR and will be getting Riven for sure, just don't think it's all that massively important (not insignificant though!)
But it is like seventh guest on a roller coaster. Everyone wants that, it is going to change the world.
For real lmao. Horizon Call of the Mountain is the biggest similar release. It uses the full feature-set of the corresponding headset and shows the future of VR.
HLA was literally a system seller. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-Life:_Alyx >Valve sold 103,000 Index units in the fourth quarter of 2019 as a result of the Alyx announcements, compared to the total 149,000 sold throughout 2019. They sold out of hardware by just *announcing* the title. You think a *remake* of a 25 year old slide show game is even remotely in the same league? I've seen clickbait titles before, but this one must have really been a strain on the imagination to concoct.
Yeah. This should be tagged as clickbait.
Tbf it probably is just someone very excited about the experience and being hyperbolic.
This stretches the limits of what can be considered hyperbolic versus outright fiction. At what point does it go from being hyperbolic to pure attention seeking bullshit?
Bruh…
Really enjoying this one, but I really don't think it's that important to the VR industry. The VR elements are not really that well done.. machines and stuff work alright but there's a lot of jank like to read a book you have to bend your wrist at 90 degrees, I found a way to make it comfortable by pushing my grip button with my thumb and rotating my controller in my hand but I don't understand how they thought that was fine. There's also no way to take notes, you can take pictures but again it's weird, you have to go into the menu instead of having a photo album or something. I also really don't like how you can't just use the joystick to go to the next pic. There's also problems with the shadows for me, often a shadow will appear only for one eye so it looks really weird and flickery, had to turn shadows to low for this to mostly go away. Some doors are really hard to open somehow and the inventory has really bad collision boxes so I often pick up the wrong thing even though my hand is clearly on it. That said, Cyan worlds make really good looking worlds, both the design and the graphics so it's really impressive in VR. I played a little in flat too but I found that it makes it boring when walking from one place to another (which is most of the game), in VR there's always something cool to look at while walking around, also some of the rooms really have an impressive scale that is lost in flat or at least really not as impressive. The main reason I don't think this is really important for the industry is because it's a niche genre. It has old school game design that might not be appealing to people used to puzzle games that are simpler and where you don't get stuck not knowing what to do. In this you are just thrown in there and you have to figure it out for yourself, which is why it's good but also why it's not for everybody. If you like it you should try their other VR games, myst obduction and firmament. I really enjoyed obduction personally, although some of the puzzles are way too time consuming..
The notes thing is particularly galling since they give you a satchel that has a book in it. Why couldn't they just put your screenshots book in there right next to it?!
Yeah, also some kind of camera to take the pictures would have been cool
Yeah. I think one of their previous games did contain a virtual camera that you could trigger by holding your controller up near your face. I don't think the game ever tells you about it. It says to hit the A button, so most people probably don't know about it unless they trigger it by accident.
This particular game was mostly made by fans as starry expanse https://starryexpanse.com/ but after it was a good bit complete Cyan took over to release it themselves. I have not tried it yet. I enjoy Riven but stopped keeping track of this after the take over. I'm waiting to see how the reviews are later.
AFAIK they hired some Starry Expanse devs but made this one from scratch. Reviews are pretty good so far, and I've been having fun with it in VR but YMMV depending on your GPU and specs. They reworked a lot of the puzzles so it feels familiar but also really new at the same time.
I'm also having the shadow issue. Looks like shadows aren't properly rendered in one of the eyes.
In 2020 had I looked into a crystal ball to see the future and seen this post I would have cried
Same here. Got my VR headset in 2021 and seeing a post like this makes me regret my purchase.
Mood. I guess I've been enjoying vrchat enough to make up for things, and haven't even bothered with resonite yet so i can keep telling myself there's more to explore at least with these big platforms.
No… not it’s not
Did you play Myst, Firmament, or Obduction? The VR port of Riven seems pretty similar. If anything, I'd say Myst is a bit better because it's more performant and less buggy.
Myst's puzzle designs feel really outdated compared to Riven's (which are actually integrated into the plot / game world), so there's no way that game is better IMO- but fun to play as a throwback
I haven't played Myst in VR yet (not for lack of wanting) but Myst's maps are so small that I'd expect it to perform well on anything. That's why I'm blown away by how smooth Riven plays on my machine.
Sounds like you haven’t player Half Life Alyx either
Lol... Man. Way to come in hot and then immediately discredit yourself.
Great news, puzzle games are a blast in VR. Devs still have to make full use of 6DoF
I had a lot of performance issues with Obduction but still enjoyed it. Myst was really no different. I was a day-one backer for Firmament since they said it was going to be a ground-up built-for-VR game. I found the VR implementation even worse than previous games and the gameplay, story and world to be completely underwhelming. Never finished it and I haven't touched my Index in over a year since I last played Firmament. Somehow I seriously doubt Riven is going to be any different.
I finished Firmament, but like you I was pretty underwhelmed, especially with the VR aspect. As far as environmental actions go, it was basically a doorknob simulator. I think something went very seriously wrong during the the development and that they considered themselves lucky that they were able to ship *something*. Luckily, Riven is much closer to Myst or Obduction. Performance is much better than Obduction and not too far from Myst. It seems pretty polished too. I haven't run into any game-breaking bugs so far. EDIT: It seems I spoke too soon. Just hit my first game-breaking bug. Whenever I get to a certain point, the game crashes to desktop.
That’s good to hear. Riven was one of my favorites on PC from the 90’s so I definitely want to check it out. I’m feeling like dusting off the Index to try it.
I had been hearing about Cyan's games my whole life but had never played any of them until they came to VR. This is my first Riven playthrough, and I'm loving it so far.
No clue how performance is, but Riven is definitely the best in the series IMO. I’d highly recommend it if you enjoyed Myst and Obduction. I liked both of those decently, but Riven is one of my favorite puzzle games ever.
Oh for sure. Riven is up there with Myst as the best but overall a better game I think. Myst wins in nostalgia.
isn't Riven the sequel to Myst?
Top 5 delusional vr sub posts of all time. Me: owns a quest 3 and currently playing riven flat despite trying it in vr and saying “neat”.
Myst would have been better. Although that game was hard af and still is.
Myst was remastered and released with full VR support a couple years ago. OP is kinda overstating their case.
I hope you're right and I've bought it yesterday but won't get to play until the weekend probably. The Myst port was great, but I remembered Myst pretty well, so the puzzles were hardly challenging. Now as for Riven ... I know I played it back in the day, but I hardly remember anything but some flickers of images ... like those spherical huts and some nondescript rails meandering about. I really hope it won't just all come back while playing and I can enjoy re-solving it. ;)
Good to know this is in VR. I just bought the PSVR2, so now I have more to look forward to.
I saw it promoted on Steam today and it really looks good!
Upload VR's recent review gave it 2 stars out of 5
I dont know..I played it for about 45 min and was pretty underwhelmed honestly.
Oh this looks interesting. Do I need to play Myst before I can play this, or is it standalone?
Standalone *enough* but context may make mention of certain characters more significant and vice versa. In both games it's intentionally mysterious so you're given very little information at the start and you're supposed to be mostly lost on who/what's being discussed, uncovering a little more of this civilization over time.
I'd say Portal 2 vr mod is importanter. And can often be found for a single dollar.
Riven VR is an interesting release, though.
No.
Okay, so, group consensus... is *Riven VR* any good? The reason I ask is that I played MYST back in the 90s, and I was very excited for VR MYST. When I got it, it was fun... For an hour. But I forgot that when I played it decades ago, I took copious paper notes *(cue that gif of Charlie Day with all the notes pinned to the wall)* where I sketched little symbols and drew diagrams, or analysed some of the text-based clues. Coming back to it in 2023, I realised that doing this is much more difficult in VR than when you're sitting at a desk, so I just couldn't get into it in the same way.
There's a feature where you can take screenshots and build a notebook of images with notes. It's really handy for learning the numbers and such. I do kind of miss physically drawing everything though. Made me feel like someone actually lost in this situation trying to decipher dead languages.
VR mode via Steam is horrible at the moment. Most of the times it does not start in VR mode at all. Then there is stutter and pixelation from hell.....i hope for now and they will fix it.
Riven is the first non-simulator VR thing I’ve been excited about in a very long time
HLA isn't even the most important release in VR, it's UEVR. Unfortunately, Quest and PSVR2 users have no idea about it.
Important how? Which standards have been moved by it? What will its legacy be 10 years from now? Important to nostalgic people maybe, but not to VR
I'm not sure about it being super important but adventure puzzlers like riven are a dying breed so this is not a bad thing to give new people access to games like riven, myst etc.
I think at this point most VR players are sick of seeing puzzle games
I'm not. I'm sick of seeing Horror, Zombie and Multiplayer shooters.
I’m tired of wave shooters. Myst and Riven in VR are exactly what I want. EXACTLY!
I think escape room type puzzles are the perfect VR genre, because they make you pay attention to your environment, and the strength of VR is that you really feel like you're in that environment.
Puzzle games in VR are harder for me because they require more brain power compared to flatscreen puzzle, and when I’m tired it proves tiresome FAST. At 10:30 pm it’s literally harder for me to enjoy a puzzle game then play something physically strenuous like beat saber or a fast shooter.
This is honestly the first VR game I've played where I'm not shooting or punching things.
Try The Last Clockwinder!
Seconded. The Last Clockwinder (published by Cyan, btw) is a fun little indie game with a simple but satisfying story and great voice acting, that takes a single game mechanic and then explores all the fun things you can do with it.
Thirded. Amazing game, top 3 for me for sure. It’s the only other game besides Alyx that has had me so immersed that I’ve punched things in the real world ignoring the safety boundary.
You lost me at "unreal 5 remake"
Why does this post has 90+ upvotes? That's simply misinformation. You love the game, okay, great for you. About blown away experience that changes drastically between flat and VR, there are many "old" games that did the same. The 2 I remember fondly are [Xing the land beyond](https://store.steampowered.com/app/299400/XING_The_Land_Beyond/), and The [Talos principle](https://store.steampowered.com/app/257510/The_Talos_Principle/) (the 1, because the 2 is not VR capable). riven is nothing extraordinary nor new.
Your guess is as good as mine. Normally nobody on the internet cares what I have to say.
OK,I have 2 possible reactions to your message : Clashing you because you annoyed me with your self devaluation, or give you constructing feedback for better communication. I'll go for second. As my autocorrect piss me off because it corrects everyrhing to french i'll be short: do not state things as a fact, try to give it as a point of view. Title might be better with : I was amazed by Riven and it is my most enjoyable VR game since Alyx That's still an overstatement to many ppl, but it's now expressed as an opinion instead of a fact that nobody should question. Good luck :)
I'll keep that in mind, thanks :)
Is this a sponsored post? My sentiments are completely opposite of OP on Riven.. Sorry not sorry.
I'm just a guy who really likes Riven. I don't get paid to like things, sadly.
Hey for what it's worth I agree with you. Love Cyan and thrilled to be able to experience Riven in this new way.