Riven is the 1997 sequel to Myst, the best-selling PC game of the 1990s and one of the most influential puzzle games ever made. The 2024 remake by Cyan Worlds — the studio that made both originals — rebuilt the entire game from scratch in Unreal Engine 5, expanding the story, adding full 3D exploration where the original used pre-rendered still images, and incorporating native VR support for Meta Quest 2, Quest 3, and SteamVR. In May 2026, it also arrived on PSVR2 alongside the Myst remake.

The premise: Atrus, a writer of Linking Books that connect to other worlds, sends you to the island-world of Riven to find and imprison his manipulative father Gehn, and rescue his wife Catherine. Riven is a world teetering on the edge of collapse — its Age (dimension) is fracturing, its civilization is gone, and Gehn rules the remaining population as a self-declared god. Your tools are observation, memory, and logic. There are no items to collect, no combat, and no obvious objectives. You simply exist in the world and piece together its meaning.

The VR version adds genuine immersion: you lean forward to examine carvings, look up at cathedral-scale machinery, peer through windows at the ocean, and operate levers and dials with your hands. Road to VR noted it "still feels like a port" in the sense that it was not designed specifically for VR from the outset, but concluded it "brings enough to the table on its own." The expanded narrative — new content beyond the 1997 original — rewards players who remember the original and surprises those encountering Riven for the first time.