Hey Duders,

Here is a Deepish Look! My usual Deep Look videos focus in on a cool gameplay mechanic or story element from a game I have played the heck out of, in the hopes that I can share what makes that mechanic so cool. This Deepish Look is a bit less critical and a bit more review-y or Quick Look-y. I still try to give some good insight into the game I'm playing, but this video is geared a little bit towards people who may not have played the game in question. Also I aim to keep the videos under 20 minutes.

In this Deepish Look I meander through Riven for 14 minutes as I slowly lose my sanity. I explain some of the cool level and puzzle design in Riven that makes it great. Then I veer into ranting about why some of the puzzles are terrible and poorly designed. I try to make some actual progress only to find myself lost, wandering aimlessly. I finish up by wondering why I am playing this game at all. In short, its the full Riven experience in 14 minutes. Let me play it so you don't have to.

Nice video! These games have always driven me crazy because of the pixel hunting and strange puzzles ( like the door example ). As soon as I'm required to go read gamefaqs, the magic is lost for me.

Good stuff.

I'll check it out when I get back from work, but a random factoid: my video production professor in college did some of the modeling of small objects for Riven. His name is Mike Bostick (hope I spelled it right, it's been a while) he's a cool dude if you ever meet him.

@mannymar: that's pretty cool

@mannymar: Very cool! I would love to hear what he has to say on this game. The design is so meticulous and intentional, but so much of it is just designing ways to hide cool stuff from the player. I wonder what the team thought as they were making this game. I also wonder if they did QA or focus testing.

@jslack:I found the animal circle puzzle after recording this. I think I have a new contender for worst puzzle. Its amazing the contrast between these two terrible puzzles. One is a set of doors that you have no reason to click on that hide crucial locations. The other is the most intricately designed game of "what sound does the cow make" that I've ever seen. Its Satan's baby choochoo.

Man Riven's environments are so gorgeous, much easier to appreciate now that I'm not playing the game. Even now I think the art design really holds up.

Awesome stuff @thatpinguino ! Boy did you sound frustrated by the end there , can't say I blame you.

I think you ought to make your podcast mates play Riven too, after all Misery loves company :). You guys have been playing and discussing games you consider great so far, maybe you ought to mix in some flawed ones like Riven too.

After having played several of these games myself I can tell you that those doors are actually quite a typical puzzle in these games. You said it yourself actually: the developer is using perspective to it's full advantage. Once again we delve into the whole "well this was made with a different time in mind" sort of argument. In 1996 players were very much used to clicking on everything and pixel hunting because thats just how everything worked. Today we are conditioned to receive clues from the game about the interactivity of the environment. Is it a bad puzzle? I'm tempted to say that even in 2015 it's not really a "bad" puzzle because it requires you to be extremely inquisitive about the environment you occupy - which always has been the main focus of the games.

Nice video - it's the first I've watched. As a personal suggestion I would drop the standard YouTube intro of name/nickname and just introduce yourself using your name. Maybe that wrecks havoc with SEM or whatever but it's a lot more human and you don't sound like a dozen other channels which have adopted this as some weird standard intro.

@slag: The art, sound design, and even the acting hold up remarkably well. Like Myst, it is kind of amazing how dense this game is.

That's not a terrible idea. It is my turn to pick a game in a few weeks. I was thinking of picking Kingdom Hearts, but I think Riven has a lot of very cool things to examine. I think @zombiepie and I might do a thing after we each finish our parts of the bargain so that might be my avenue for venting.

I would argue that not enough players were conditioned to just accept this kind of puzzle since the genre basically died after the 90s. The more you lean on people's prior experience, the less new blood you get with each release. Just like SF3: Third Strike is one of the fighting game community's favorite games ever for its high level play, it was also the game that drove out the mainstream audience for a decade due to its high barrier to entry. Developers have to be very careful to when they add complexity and unintuative elements because each addition asks for more effort or buy-in from the player, and at a certain point the burden on the player is too great for the game to be successful. That's not even mentioning that the first two Myst games have great stories that could draw people as much as the puzzles do. If someone is coming to these games for the story, then puzzles like this kill the pacing and, in this case, bar you from seeing the thing you care about since Ghen's lab is behind one of those doors.

The first of these puzzles, the locked door, had a visual clue that helped with the clicking. The lab doors don't have any indication that they are interactable or significant in any way. I wouldn't say that forcing the player to click everywhere on every screen they encounter is a fair requirement. Especially since so many seemingly functional objects are not interactable. In this case the game is arbitrary in terms of what you need to click on to progress and what is just a bit of environmental flavor. I see the cleverness in the wooden eyes, the number toy, or even the door. But, without tons of prior knowledge about the genre, puzzles like this make Riven neigh unbeatable (at least without hours upon hours of playing). I think we can look back on this as a learning experience and say that this style of design is interesting and has a place (as smaller games like Fez and to a certain extent Braid showed), but it's a dead-end for big budget games.

Thanks for the advice on the video. I think I'll try that next time. Saying my username has always felt weird to me anyway.

These are the kind of videos I love seeing, giving you true perspective from others who played it. Riven is truly a fascinating game to analyse, cause there's just so much thought that went into the design of this game (from the lore-building to the way hints are incorporated...). And then there's the pixel hunt, click everything adventure game theory that's left over from the era, the door puzzle being one of the most egregious example. However, while that might be far-fetched, a very faint hint might have helped solved this one: this set of doors is the only one (bar the heavy stone door from the temple) that won't close by themselves once you get away. The amount of attention the game expects you to be playing at all time is truly incredulous. Want another case of when the game deliberately breaks it's own rules as a clue? In all the game, only one set of cutscenes will allow you to move before the animation has stopped playing. And you need to realise that to be able to complete the game. I tell you, the game's got issues, but I gotta give credit to the devs for thinking up such devious puzzles. Until your next update!

(BTW I had to use the guide at numerous occasions too. I've yet to see someone be able to figure everything by it's own. Ultimate couch co-op game? Did our generation of games got us used to make progress so quickly that we no longer have the attention span necessary to keep trying when we are stuck in this game? Or is it simply broken? I've yet to make up my mind...)

I have no problem with being stuck in game when I'm simply not understanding something. I do have a problem with being stuck when the game is just poorly designed or never accurately articulates what you are supposed to do.