Riven: The Illustrated Journal

An old art school project inspired by one of the greatest video games of all time.

While at my parents recently going through boxes of old stuff, I came across a project that I’m still hugely proud of; a partial journal of my exploration through the video game Riven: The Sequel to Myst.

For those that may not be aware, Riven is a puzzle adventure game created by Cyan Worlds who, in 1993, released the hugely successful Myst, the highest selling game until the release of The Sims in 2000. While Myst is regarded as a classic game, it is Riven that took the formula that Myst started and perfected it. Unlike other puzzle games, Myst included, the puzzles in Riven are perfectly integrated into the game’s world. There are no arbitrary puzzles like Myst’s piano-in-a-spaceship puzzle, but rather everything is integrated naturally into the worlds of Riven. So well done is this, that sometimes you don’t even realise you’re looking at a puzzle or a puzzle clue until much later.

Due to the puzzling nature of these games, it is not uncommon to keep copious notes while playing. Within the Myst fan community, this note keeping evolved into writing actual journals - in character - of players time through the games. It’s pretty fascinating, really.

I came to the Myst series pretty late, albeit in a rather appropriate manner for Myst, which was via the novels. As such, it was in the early 2000s - around 2004 or 2005 - that I finally played Riven. During this I was in art school, specialising in illustration. At some point, we were given a project with the theme of “adventure.” As you can probably guess, Riven was a huge inspiration for what I produced.

Taking the idea of a player’s journal, I decided to make an illustrated journal based on Riven, but as if it were real. To this end, I made the physical book myself, sewing together parchment paper and a horse-hair cover. All the text and images were drawn by hand, first in pencil and then inked over with dip pen. I added the various ink marks and washes in an attempt to make the book appear as if it was written while “on the road;” sitting on the rocky shore of Tay rather than at a comfy desk.

Although this was made approximately 19 to 20 years ago now, it’s still a project I’m really proud of. I never had a decent digital reproduction of the journal, so when I found it at my parents’, I tried to produce some decent scans of the pages. Only having an A4 flatbed scanner, I did not achieve the best results, but I think they are good enough to be able to read, if you wish to do so. At the very least, they give a pretty good idea of what the journal looks like.

Given the number of pages and the size of the image files, I’ve not included the scans here. However, I have uploaded them all to a Google Photos album, which you are more than welcome to have a look at if you wish. All the pages are in order, so the story, if you choose to read it, should make sense.

It was really great to re-discover this Riven journal. It’s one of the first examples of me trying to write “seriously,” and it’s one of my most fondly remembered projects from my time in art school. I’ve often thought it might be fun to revisit the idea one day, be it with Riven again, another Cyan game, something like No Man’s Sky, or an original story. Perhaps at some point I will, but for the moment I hope you enjoy this look at my old Riven journal.

TTFN.