Riven | Official Launch Trailer | Available June 25th

https://lemm.ee/post/33718777

Riven | Official Launch Trailer | Available June 25th - lemm.ee

There is a “puzzle” in Riven that I got stuck on for hours, just searching the map looking for anything that I had left to do. I couldn’t find any more interactable things that hadn’t been done. Then I looked it up and found it was a door that you had to enter, turn around and close and then go through the hidden passageway behind it. There was no puzzling value to it being hidden like that, it was something you either simply found or didn’t. I put it down to old-style game design that hadn’t yet learned what not to do in a somewhat open world game.

Honestly this iteration could move the entrance like one metre to the left so it’s not hidden and it would be a better game for it.

I think there’s two of those in a row. It’s on the island with the big boiler and Gehn’s study and such, there’s the door into the cavern(?) where you can find the frog trap thing, and you have to close those doors to find the corridor to the spinning orb, then you have to close the door you came in to find the little syncroscope in a side chamber in a wall to stop it.
I don’t remember the second one, but it’s possible I was checking behind every door after that so it would’ve been much easier to notice.