Hello, Riven fans!
First off, we’re happy to celebrate 2 years since our remake of Riven was released. Thank you so much to everyone who has purchased, played, and reviewed Riven over the last couple of years. Your support enables us to keep doing what we do.
Second, we’re happy to celebrate this milestone by making the Riven Demo available again for a short period of time. This update includes improvements that don’t just restrict the Riven demo to flatscreen (non-VR) players on Windows anymore - it allows folks to play the Riven Demo on flatscreen Mac and Windows VR as well too! (To be clear: Mac support and Windows VR support already existed in the base game for Riven - including flatscreen support on Windows.) The Demo may be made available again for certain sales or events in the future, but for now, you can expect it to be available until Thursday, July 23rd, 2026.
If you already own the full game of Riven, the Riven Demo being available again may not necessarily excite you - but it may mean a lot to someone who is considering buying Riven. The good news is that if you already own Riven, this update we’re putting out for the base game still comes with a TON of improvements to the rest of the game that you will be able to enjoy starting today.
Please note that the Riven Demo and the base game may share the same user configuration data. Should you change user settings in the Demo, the changes could impact your base game settings (and vice-versa). We do not recommend installing the Demo if you already have the base game installed, because… well… you already have the full game to play as a part of the base game, and the Demo may force-set (or hide) some settings in the Demo (even if you modified them before) in order to provide an optimal Demo experience, in addition to possibly eliminating any auto-saves you may have previously made in the base game. The Demo is really just for folks who have not yet played or purchased the base game… but we certainly can’t stop you if you want to check it out anyway!
Scroll down for the patch notes, and for a Devlog on future support for Riven.
Global
Features
Re-enabled the Riven demo until Thursday, July 23rd, 2026. It may be re-enabled at any time later for special events.
Added VR support to the Riven Demo. (VR is already supported in the base game)
Added Mac support to the Riven Demo. (Mac is already a supported platform in the base game)
Minor
Improved the appearance of shadows on various rocks and steps on Jungle Island.
Improved the appearance of a handle in the Starry Expanse to appear more interactable.
Improved the look of some fire-marble materials.
Adjusted the sound and animation timing with the “bone throne” on Jungle Island.
Adjusted the woodchip pile on Boiler Island to have better shadows and lighting properties.
Tweaked the ocean water at the lower Survey Island maglev dock to appear more calm and opaque.
Improved the general appearance of the Temple Island and Survey Island impostor meshes.
Adjusted a shadow blocker that impacts a specific view on Jungle Island.
Fixed an issue where key icons in the menu might not update properly on Windows handheld devices aside from Steam Deck.
Fixed a small gap shown in a visual element on a rebel viewer puzzle on Jungle Island.
Minor clickable region adjustments made.
Fixed a D’ni script issue in Gehn’s lab.
Fixed a minor visual issue on the Survey Island maglev and volumetric fog that could occur when loading a Survey Island save under specific circumstances.
Fixed an issue where the Survey Island plateau elevator might not turn its lights on when going to a specific floor after leaving the area and coming back.
Fixed a shadowing issue in a hallway on Jungle Island.
Fixed a pipe not appearing properly when looking out of a specific window in the Temple Island subdome.
Fixed an issue where a portion of the Boiler Island bridge appears uncollapsed from different islands despite it having already collapsed.
Fixed an issue where after closing the player’s inventory, the player’s cursor would briefly behave as if Smart Cursor Visibility mode was enabled, regardless of the Smart Cursor Visibility mode being enabled or not.
Fixed a collision issue on Jungle Island.
Fixed a couple of collision issues in Tay.
Fixed a few conditions where the player’s inventory could remain in a weird state.
Fixed a specific ladder loading in with the wrong rotation state when loading a save made while within the submarine.
Fixed the player’s inability to use the woodcart (without exiting and re-entering a woodcart loading zone) after restoring a checkpoint save between Jungle Island and Boiler Island immediately after riding the woodcart in either direction.
Fixed a bad checkpoint save from occurring while the player is using the submarine.
Microsoft Store Only
Key icons now remain as gamepad icons instead of keyboard icons when touch input is attempted to be used while in the menu.
VR Only
Fixed the player position recentering icon appearing incorrectly when the Trap Book is interacted with under certain circumstances.
Quest Only
Improved the lighting on the temple door on Temple Island.
A Devlog About Future Support for Riven (and Myst)
Note that this is basically the same post that we made on Myst’s latest patch notes for patch version 3.3.0, but we’ve reformatted it for clarity.
We’re looking into what it would take to update our remakes of Myst and Riven to the latest version of Unreal (5.8).
Currently, Myst and Riven are stuck on Unreal Engine 5.3.2. There’s a good reason for this – mainly being that native ray tracing support in the engine on Windows, Mac, PS5, and Xbox Series platforms overall outside of the use of Lumen is basically “locked” to this version of Unreal.
If we update Myst and Riven to a version above 5.3.2, we would lose native-to-the-engine ray-tracing support in the game without fully converting Myst and Riven to using Lumen, which is not feasible at this time (especially for Myst) for a multitude of reasons.
There are other possible solutions to the removal of non-Lumen ray tracing in Unreal. One of these possible solutions is using NVIDIA’s ray tracing tech via what they’ve made available on GitHub and other locations… but we’ve historically experienced incompatibilities with building for multiple platforms when you factor in external tech like this, which creates tech debt and more manual exceptions to our engine’s codebase that become hard to maintain over time. Some folks may also suggest “rolling our own” version of ray tracing in the 5.8 engine outside of Lumen, but frankly, that will take up developer resources we simply do not (and will not) have available to create or maintain, especially as it is not an official effort supported by Epic.
Maybe the lack of ray-tracing in the game in the future doesn’t necessarily break anyone’s heart – but we do have to weigh the costs and benefits to any kind of engine upgrade before we proceed.
So what ARE the benefits to an upgrade to 5.8, you ask? Some of the benefits at this point would be:
a much better PSO caching system, which we know has historically been a pain point for some of our users who expect a hitchless experience in Myst and Riven – and many of those PSO micro hitches are unfortunately just not solvable without better engine tech we would need to upgrade to (and no, we cannot realistically selectively merge in the necessary fixes for this tech in to our existing engine),
better platform support feature integration, such as better support for the Steam Frame (both for 2D play and VR play) into the game – which at this time, would be a much better experience than the compatibility support we’d be able to offer through our version of Unreal Engine 5.3.2,
better supersampling support become available to help with performance on existing and future platforms,
other native engine performance gains and improvements that would naturally come with the engine upgrade.
More robust/modern updates that would prevent operating system updates from preventing the game running for more years to come (especially for MacOS, which has historically had breaking changes with our games over time)
Oh, and a pre-emptive clarification in case this comes up from some of y’all inquiring about AI tools in Unreal 5.8: the Myst and Riven remakes were not built using AI tools, and we have no intent to use AI tools in them in the future.
It is possible that when (or if) we do end up releasing a 5.8 version of Myst and Riven, we will make a “legacy” branch available of the 5.3.2 version of the game for a limited period of time, so folks can still experience ray-tracing. This would be similar to what we did for Myst, which allowed MacOS users on older MacOS versions or hardware to still be able to play the game through a beta branch.
It is also possible we will decide NOT to bring this update to platforms where ray-tracing is already supported in the game. The reality is that Myst and Riven currently run and play well on these platforms, and a 5.8 update is currently not mission critical to implement until a compatibility update may force our hand.
In any event… There are plenty of hurdles for us to overcome before we get Myst and Riven running well in Unreal Engine 5.8. We certainly have our work cut out for us in doing so. We cannot give any kind of estimate or timeline as to when this major update will occur, especially as we are now a very small team – other than saying that this will be, at the very least, many months away. What we CAN say though is that, again, your purchase and shared experience of Myst, Riven, and the rest of our catalog is what has supported our team of developers to continue working on our games for both many decades prior, and hopefully many decades to come.
Now, to sum things up for folks who did not want to read all of that, and also based off of concerns or feedback we got on our equivalent Myst patch post:
What are we thinking of doing? We are considering updating Riven (and Myst) to a newer version of Unreal Engine.
When are we thinking of doing it? We do not currently have a timeline for this other than it would be many months away, should it be done.
Why do this future upgrade? See the bullet point list above - an upgrade may bring improvements to microstuttering, performance improvements, platform support improvements for new and existing platforms, more robust/modernized OS support to prevent breaking changes introduced by OS incompatibilities in the future, and much more.
Why not do this upgrade? We have locked Myst & Riven on Unreal Engine 5.3.2 for the last few years to keep ray-traced reflections outside of Lumen enabled. Once we upgrade, ray-traced reflections in Myst and Riven may be removed, which may disappoint some folks.
Will we convert Myst and Riven to using Lumen? We have no plans at this time to do this.
Does any of this plan impact you (our players) right now? No.
Do we intend to help make sure Riven remains playable for everyone in the future? Yes. That is the goal. This update (should it be necessary) would be done to help Riven remain playable moving forward, and even more accessible on more platforms.
If the future upgrade occurs, do we intend to make a “legacy” branch available to play the older version? We are considering this, and have already done so in the past for other situations mentioned above.
Why did we bother posting this information? Well… because we like our fans, and we like telling y’all what’s going on behind the scenes sometimes. It also doesn’t seem like it hurts to share information on how our games may have improved tech in the future, or possibly have a feature removed in the future.
Will this possible future upgrade break my save games? No, the update will not break your save games.
Thanks for reading, and we hope y’all enjoy Riven for many, many years to come.
