57 people found this review helpful
4 people found this review funny
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 2.0 hrs on record (0.7 hrs at review time)
Posted: Apr 1, 2014 @ 8:40pm
Updated: Aug 26, 2014 @ 7:36pm

Not very compatible with Windows 8.1. I was hoping that the availability on Steam meant this awesome game would be miraculously ported to modern platforms, but I had the following problems:
- no animations worked. Anything that was animated just didn't happen, such as the message from Atrus giving you the clue to rotate the tower.
- occasional full crashes. You can't even use Task Manager to kill the process, you have to reset the machine to recover. The crashes were mostly due to saving the game, but also occasionally due to animation.

I got it to work through the whole Channelwood Age (+- about 5 reboots), but because of the above I had a hard stop at the clock tower, whose puzzle involves animation and continually triggered a freeze.

I'm off to try realMyst-Masterpiece, which was developed much later (2014) than this (2000).

UPDATE: "realMyst: Masterpiece" is definitely the way to go. Even ported to a 3D engine, the game still looks visually appealing, but more important is that it is rock solid on Win 8.1, and they cleaned up a few gameplay issues.

If you're interested in playing Riven, I can highly recommend the one from GOG.com over the one on Steam. I tried both, and the GOG version was also rock-solid compared to the Steam version.
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7 Comments
Trtlman Nov 26, 2015 @ 7:13pm 
Worked fine for my pc running 8.1
DayOfTheSheep Jul 27, 2015 @ 5:54am 
Try disabling the Steam Overlay and see if that works. Would like to know if it does.
XPAHITEL Jan 29, 2015 @ 9:50am 
"that the availability on Steam meant this awesome game would be miraculously ported to modern platforms"

Ha-ha three times.. Steam and care about gamers.. Phh... :csgoglobe:
cheetomonster Dec 20, 2014 @ 10:12pm 
Hey guys -- thanks for the pointers on compatibility mode, but I had indeed tried that. My recommendataion to buy "realMyst: Masterpiece" instead stands, if not for stability than at least because of the cleanups they did. :)
Noitalever Dec 6, 2014 @ 11:22am 
Try using compatibility mode.

[whatever drive you have it on C for most people] -> Program Files [It might be Program Files (x86)] - Steam -> steamapps -> common -> Myst. That could be entirely wrong depending on where you installed it to, but basically you have to find the Myst folder. Within that folder, find the application. It should end in .exe. Right-click it and select properties. Click on the compatibility tab, try setting it to win xp service pack 3, if that does not fix the problem also try vista and me.
mrere Aug 12, 2014 @ 9:43pm 
I ran it with Windows ME/98 compatibility mode on my Windows 8.1 and it worked without crashing once
XPAHITEL Jun 27, 2014 @ 7:45am 
Oh yes... this 'hope' I left a ton of old games ago.. Steam just playing fools of us, selling the same 'as is'..

For this 'miraculously ported to modern platforms' we must go to GOG or torrents.. *sad smile*.

:tl2engineer: