In October of 2022, Cyan announced that a new version of Riven was in progress. This was explicitly not the Starry Expanse project but Cyan acknowledged the help of Starry Expanse in getting the project started.
I am keeping copies of the public statements, for the sake of the public record.
[Discussion of 2019 progress omitted]
A Special Announcement
As many of you know, we’ve operated for a long time with Cyan’s blessing. This enabled us to work with our minds at ease, knowing that Riven‘s creators trusted us to treat their masterpiece with the respect it deserves. But we’ve always operated independently, as a group of fans volunteering their time toward a passion project.
As we’ve continued to make progress on the game, however, questions about resources and distribution have grown (which many of you have asked us, too). This prompted us to reach out to Cyan directly to talk through different options for completing and publishing the game. They welcomed our questions, and after a series of conversations, we are incredibly excited to announce that we are officially working with Cyan Worlds to bring the dream of a real-time Riven into reality.
This is the culmination of a lot of hard work, both on the game itself, and on our team’s development pipeline and internal structure. We’ve always held Cyan in the highest regard (that’s our professional way of saying we’re their biggest fans), and it is literally a dream come true to be moving forward with the project in this way. After Mysterium concluded, we even had the opportunity to sit down for a meeting with the team at Cyan headquarters, which was both wonderful and a little surreal for all of us.
[Image omitted: The Starry Expanse team with Rand Miller at Cyan HQ]
There’s still plenty to figure out, and there will be more details to share in the future. Right now, we are just excited to be a part of the extended Cyan family, and thrilled to be able to share this major development with all of you. This is the beginning of a new chapter in the development of the Starry Expanse Project, and we can’t wait to write it together.
Q: Are you working on a remake of Riven?
A: Yes.
Q: Is it a remaster or a from-the-ground-up modern remake?
A: It is a modern remake.
Q: Is this remake point-and-click only like the original Riven was, or will it be traversable in 3D space?
A: The remake of Riven will be fully traversable in 3D space. Any other supported navigation methods will be announced at a later date.
Q: Why did this take so long? It’s been 25 years!
A: Riven is one of the most highly regarded games in Cyan’s history. We didn’t want to approach it lightly or frivolously. Cyan is a small indie studio. We wanted to make sure we could take on such a difficult, costly and complicated endeavor – and do it well.
Q: Is this the Starry Expanse Project?
A: No, this is a from-the-ground-up remake of Riven from Cyan. However, the Starry Expanse team did assist in kicking off this project. See our blog post here for more details on that.
Q: Which platforms is it coming to, when it is coming out, what are the system requirements… etc.?
A: We don’t have information to share about that yet.
Q: If I purchased a copy of the original Riven, will I get a free copy of this remake?
A: Thank you for your support over the years! But, no. This new Riven is not an update or upgrade, it is a modern from-the-ground-up remake that has required (and will continue to require) a substantial investment of resources.
Q: I must know more! Where can I find out more information about this new version of Riven?!
A: The best way to keep up with the development process is to subscribe to our Cyan Insider newsletter, as we typically share the latest news with our subscribers first!
On this day 25 years ago, Riven: The Sequel to Myst was released. It sold like wildfire and has gone on to become one of our most cherished and critically acclaimed games. Riven’s aesthetic realism, cohesive puzzle integration, and narrative depth contributed to it being touted as a masterful example of building an interactive experience which felt like a real place, not just a game… This has allowed Riven‘s legacy to endure through the years.
Unlike Myst, no official Cyan remake of Riven had been seriously considered before…
But there was a grassroots effort.
13 years ago, a community effort called “The Starry Expanse Project” came to life. This group of dedicated fans took it upon themselves to begin the faithful recreation of Riven in a fully-realized realtime-3D environment, which took many years of camera-matching efforts and texture comparisons to what the original Riven’s still-image renders displayed. Most of their efforts to recreate Riven were undertaken entirely from scratch, driven solely by the desire to see Riven come to life in a new format.
We spoke confidentially with the Starry Expanse team a couple of years ago about the exciting news that Cyan finally had the resources to tackle remaking Riven. Together, we reached an agreement which allowed us to reference core pieces of their efforts to jump-start our development. They subsequently ceased development on The Starry Expanse Project, as our official efforts to remake Riven began.
Some questions from our community have come up since then: “Was the Starry Expanse team absorbed by Cyan?” “Is the Starry Expanse team still in charge of the remake of Riven?” “Are you keeping the Starry Expanse team trapped in your basement?” “Did you KILL AND EAT THEM???”… to all of which the answers are “no”. The Starry Expanse Project team members are very much alive and exist independently from Cyan. Over the past couple of years, we have worked with and continued to stay in contact with various members of the Starry Expanse team, and have even hired one of their members to join our Riven team at Cyan.
So for the first time publicly, we are happy to report that our effort to remake Riven officially here at Cyan is alive and well, and it was helped by the Starry Expanse team’s years of effort, enabling us to begin the huge task of rebuilding Riven from scratch. With a very focused development team here at Cyan, Riven is well on its way to being reborn!
We will have plenty more to share about this at a later date.
So on this 25th anniversary, now that Riven is officially old enough to rent a car in the United States, we hope our fans can rest easy knowing that you haven’t seen the last of Riven! And when you get a chance, please thank the members of the Starry Expanse team for being a part of its creation and for keeping the dream alive.
Sincerely,
The team at Cyan
It’s been some time since our last update. Trust us — we know!
With today’s exciting announcement from Cyan and the accompanying Open Letter to Fans of Riven, our team has been given the opportunity to speak publicly about our collaboration with Cyan.
We are beyond excited to share in Cyan’s announcement that the Riven remake is finally official, and that our team’s efforts have been instrumental in providing a foundation upon which the new Riven can be built. Although our part of the journey has come to an end, the next chapter will be an exciting one to follow for all Myst fans.
Our project began with a laudable (and what seemed like an easily achievable) goal: To keep the promise made by realMyst and recreate its successor in real-time 3D.
[Image omitted: A sampling of our team's work over the years recreating Riven]
As our plans became more ambitious, and we moved beyond recreating Riven in the Plasma engine as a mod for Uru, the team grew in size and matured and our skill sets diversified.
Several (in)famous engine switches later, we had transformed from a group of students and hobbyists into a tight-knit team of professional artists and programmers united by our passion for doing our project justice.
In August 2019 we were invited to come to Cyan HQ to share our work, vision, and plans for the future. We are so grateful to have been given this opportunity, and for Cyan’s willingness to dive into our development process and methodology, one uniquely suited to recreate this one particular game.
[Image omitted: The Starry Expanse contingent outside Cyan HQ, Mysterium 2019]
We’ve kept a pretty low profile since that time — which was a shift for us after so many years of public transparency — but while we’d handed the reins over to Cyan in the months following our meeting, they were not ready to make a public announcement just yet.
Now the details have been ironed out and the torch has been passed. After well over a decade of planning, developing, and endless camera-matching, this amazing world that we pored over for so long is going to be realized. Riven is real.
So what happens now?
Cyan has definitely got their work cut out for them, and our team (with one notable exception) are moving on to other projects, but our love for Riven hasn’t faded. We’ll still be both here and in our Community Discord, just like we have always been.
We are looking forward to sharing more of our story and the things we’ve learned along the way in the coming months. And we’re really excited to be able to talk to you directly again, after all this time.
We would like to extend our most heartfelt thanks to all of our fans for their passion, encouragement, and most of all their patience. It’s been a long road. Thank you for walking the distance with us.
If you want to learn more about Cyan’s update, you can read it in full here. Likewise, there is an FAQ about the new Riven project posted on their website.
If you have any questions about the Riven project, we encourage you to join the Cyan community Discord. For anything else Starry Expanse related, you can find us here.