In my last post, I mentioned I’d only played one demo for Steam’s latest Next Fest. In the very short time since then, I played two more that I decided to throw in, though one game is still going to dominate the post. Maybe it’s best to start with the appetizers (these are all kind of hors d’oeuvres, right? Like the fancy cheese plates I’ve seen in the very few classy parties I’ve ended up at somehow by accident, it’s nowhere close to a full meal but you’re also not paying.)
Tiny Glade
The first game up is less of a game and more of a home/castle design simulator without any of the money, resource, or time constraints you’d get with an actual simulation. This is even more of a peaceful no-stress “place pieces on the board and add accessories” title, then.
But that’s not a bad thing. I can see the appeal in games like this, especially if it’s possible to build massive labyrinthine bullshit designed to drives occupants insane. I didn’t see any kind of interior mode in Tiny Glade, but maybe all that chaos can be implied from the outside. Just imagine that weird SCP cube being in there that expands space inside the room it’s in without increasing its size. I barely remember anything about that crap, but that’s one of the few entries I do remember because I liked the concept among the far larger sea of standard “scary spooky thing scares me” stuff and some truly embarrassing self-inserts and overly edgy nonsense. If they made this game with a House of Leaves horror mechanic, I might be more interested, but then that would also spoil its peaceful feel.
It has day/night cycles too, pretty nice.
Tiny Glade isn’t the kind of relaxation I go for in my relaxing games, but I can see it working for people who would also enjoy building a model train set complete with a town. It looks to me like a decorative game, but again, that’s not to put it down: just to say that though I didn’t find any gameplay of the kind you’d usually think of, I think you can also have a game that’s just about not being completely fucking stressed. This is all to say that I won’t be buying Tiny Glade, but not because I think it’s bad — if it’s for you, you may want to check it out.
Victory Heat Rally Shakedown
It’s so exciting that someone stole one of its e’s
Another game that’s not for me, but for different reasons this time. Victory Heat Rally Shakedown is a 90s retro racer in the style of OutRun a little — the graphics here are far more cartoony but also more detailed, but the general feel is similar with the Sega Genesis electronic funk and fusion, this time mixed with 90s butt rock. A lot of the music reminds me of a track off of Sonic Rush way back in the early DS days, which is a good thing, since the soundtrack was the best part of that game (how many Sonic games are only worth as much as their soundtracks, I wonder?)
The reason I’m going on so much about the music is that I liked it, but also because while I liked the music and the style in general a lot, I’m also not much for racing games. Much like with fighting games, my being terrible at them dampens the fun somewhat, though I also get that I could probably be decent at them with some practice. I used to practice at Touhou a little bit way back when I had far fewer responsibilities, and hell if that got me anywhere.
Once again, though Victory Heat Rally Shakedown isn’t for me in terms of gameplay, it’s definitely for some people, and hopefully for you. This is part of why I barely play anything but indie games now: pushing back against that constant ultra-realism with some color and style and personality. There’s also a lot of drifting if you like that.
But now for the main course, a 3D remaster of a game I played as a kid, and one that some people have been waiting on for over 20 years:
Riven
Oh yeah. Still looks weird seeing this in such high resolution.
It’s hard to overstate just how big Myst was back in 1993. I was a small boy then and I remember — the only games I got back then were for the PC, since my parents were staunchly against buying a console (which I played at friends’ places anyway.) I got Myst, marketed as a peaceful, lush exploration game with graphics that were impressive as hell at the time. Riven was its sequel, released in 1997, and I got a copy of that too, and by that time I’d aged enough to probably better understand the puzzles (though now a lot more difficult than before) and the actually pretty violent story behind all the peaceful island and forest scenes.
You probably can’t build a giant gold dome without getting a few people killed (also thanks to the demo for reminding me of my place.)
This Riven is a complete 3D remake of the point-and-click original with a VR function implemented. I don’t have the money or space for a VR headset yet, so I only played the non-VR demo and got maybe a lesser experience as a result. The demo restricts the player to the first of the game’s several islands that you have to unlock to explore and solve the game’s mysteries, but there’s enough on the temple/dome island to give you a sense of what Riven is about, featuring its first major puzzle leading to some interesting sights.
Not this guy, though. The original game used FMV featuring real actors, but the new version uses 3D models that look pretty crusty. Maybe you can’t help that with VR.
While the demo is short, I was mostly impressed by what I saw. Myst has gotten plenty of remakes and remasters, some in full 3D, but the much larger Riven was always going to be a far more difficult proposition, no surprise it took over 25 years to get there. I feel old now looking back at my time with the game in 1998.
But hey, it works in the demo at least, so who cares about how long it took. I was also happy to see that this isn’t an exact recreation of the original Riven, with puzzles carried over including new elements and structures having different layouts. Even slight differences can be important given how many locked doors featured in the puzzles of Riven — I still remember at least some of the solutions from the original, even after 25 years, but it’s clear that even old players won’t just be able to coast through the game.
Whoever runs this place loves lavish golden ornaments, not sure if that’s a good sign
If you’re wondering who the hell the guy talking to you at the beginning of the game is, or who Gehn and Catherine are and why you have to capture one and save the other, don’t worry — even people who played Myst were pretty much in the dark at the beginning of Riven, though that game does foreshadow the events of its much more ambitious sequel and shares some similar themes and mechanics. This game and the others in the series rely heavily on journals to provide background information, but most of the story is revealed through the environments you’ll be exploring, so just go out and explore.
Just their luck, they try to build a maglev train and it gets swallowed up by a rift in the sea. Still better than my city’s mass transit system.
Here’s an example of how developer Cyan might be able to tell that story more effectively with 2020s technology. The original was essentially a really nice-looking, detailed slideshow with some FMV elements, but as much as I like old games and old stuff in general, it was interesting to see what they’ve been able to achieve with this fully 3D environment. Like the menacing ocean rifts above — these exist for story-related reasons, and while I think they were mentioned in the original, I don’t think we were able to ever see them, and even if we could see them, we couldn’t hear the water rushing into them like you can in this demo. It adds a lot to the atmosphere in a game built on its atmosphere, and I imagine that’s all the more true in VR.
I won’t get into the story here — there’s a lot of lore to the Myst series, and I’ve only played the first two games anyway, along with some clips of Brad Dourif in the lead role in Myst III and of some acting on the opposite end of the quality spectrum in Myst IV. If you’re interested, I’d just suggest checking the demo out. It’s worth a try even if, like me, you don’t have a VR headset. I don’t know if I’ll buy new Riven either, since I’ve already played the game and know the story (and if I buy any new premium game at full price this year, it’s going to be Shin Megami Tensei V finally) but Cyan may have included some extra story elements as well. They did throw in at least one big surprise for old players, though I’m betting it will be removed in the full game for reasons that may be obvious if you discover it.
That’s it for now. Until next time, whenever that is.
Everything is bad for you 