Riven
Fully titled Riven: The Sequel to Myst, a 1997 PC-Mac game that is the sequel to the world-famous PC-Mac game Myst. The story of Riven continues exactly where Myst left off. In the previous game, a man named Atrus is part of a splintered civiliation called the "D'ni" (pronounced "Duh-NEE"), who have the ability to create portals to alternate realities within special books, simply by writing the description of the reality in the book. Atrus was trapped in a stone hall prison by his two twisted and evil sons, who in turn trapped themselves in separate ages (the name for these alternate realities) by accident. However, an unknown character only known later as "The Stranger" appeared on Atrus' home age of Myst. The Stranger pieced together the clues of what happened on the lone island of Myst, and rescued Atrus by freeing him from his stone prison.
But now, Atrus's wife Catherine was trapped on another age called "Riven" by their sons. It gets even worse that the age was created, and is ruled over by Atrus' twisted and deluded father "Gehn", who sees himself as a god, and who has also imprisoned Catherine.
The beginning of the game sees you meeting Atrus again after an inordinate amount of time. With this, he sends you to the age of Riven with a special book designed to capture Gehn, and the main mission to rescue Catherine.
- All There in the Manual: A lot of the backstory and character motivation is explained in The Book of Atrus, which is never fully explained in the game.
- Arc Number: 5. Too many examples to list, but most notably the title (Riven has five letters, the full title has five words, the game comes on 5 discs, and the V is made prominent).
- Ascended Glitch: Some of the glitches in the game involve various moving segments of machines and paths being in the wrong position on certain screens, a number of them involving the submarine train in the village. One of these misplaced images of the sub was eventually used in the easter egg path.
- Covers Always Lie: The Age of Tay is shown on the box art, but in-game, your only exploration of it is the shoreline, and a small prison cell, where you can look out into the Age's inner village, but never explore it.
- The End of the World as We Know It: If you do anytime when you get a special hatch combination, access to a steam-powered activation lever, and lower a telescope too much, you can trigger the beginnings of this. However, there is only ONE correct time to do it.
- Indo-European Alien Language: The Rivenese language that the Moeity and Cho speak is actually Tok Pisin, a dialect known to a certain area of Papua New Guinea. Direct translations for the dialogue have not been released though.
- Nintendo Hard: It's generally regarded to be the hardest in the series, with many clues to the few puzzles scattered across the game world, and integrated into it, rather than signposted as clues.