Last night, I zipped through Riven at phenomenal speeds until the game crashed and I realized I hadn’t saved since the first island. I restarted, it forced me to start a new game, and then wouldn’t let me open the saved game. I believe I’ve had this problem since I bought it as I knew the solution was to go to the saved game file in the Riven folder and double click it. I then played until the puzzle island where you first encounter the grid. In the past I mapped out the location of the golden balls with graph paper – I have no idea why as a simple X,Y coordinate system notation does the trick.


The image to the right is my notes so far.

I’m not enjoying the game: it’s too easy. It’s not so much puzzle solving for me as data-gathering. What I’ve realized is that the reason I’m not enjoying the game is the same reason that it’s such a good game: it’s a series of higher order, or conceptual, puzzles.

Take an actual, jigsaw puzzle. On the box cover is an image and in the box is a set of pieces you connect together to make the image. The process is all lower order; the difficulty is fitting things together bit by bit in order to construct something you already know about. When I say Riven is higher-order I mean that it gives you the pieces and asks ‘What’s the larger image?’ The difficulty is in exploring the world and coming to understand the larger image. Once you get it, the pieces take no time to put together. [1]

I already understand the big picture – the rolling eyeballs represent an animal both visually and aurally, the number on the other side represents what order the animals come in – so I’m not puzzle solving, just picking up the list of animals and numbers.

I will probably uninstall and try Exile instead, which I don't recall finishing.


[1] – There are lower order puzzles in Riven as well in the form of finding the various hidden objects you have to operate, e.g., to lower the telescope, you have to notice the little stop that’s blocking it and move it out of the way. The lower order puzzles are binary though: Do you notice the stop or not? Did you close the doors behind you or not? Did you notice that you go under the locked gate or not?