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Genre: Adventure Developer & Publisher: Defy Reality Entertainment/MicroProse Released: September 2, 2025 Requirements: OS: Windows 10 or higher Processor: Minimum, 1.8 Ghtz; Recommended,Intel Core i7 3700K or AMD equivalent Memory: Minimum 4 GB RAM; Recommended, 8 GB RAM Graphics: Minimum, DirectX 9.0c compatible or better; Recommended, Nvidia 950 or AMD equivalent DirectX: Version 12 Storage: 40 GB available space
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By flotsam Defy Reality Entertainment / MicroProse (a work in progress) Games like Riven are my thing. Solitary first person explorations in immersive worlds, vague objectives needing to be picked apart, observation and logic front and centre and inventories distinctly in the back seat - Riven itself is what nailed my love of the adventure genre. So when a game proclaims its “in the style” of Riven, I am immediately on board. Which comes with potential pitfalls. As I wrote about another such game many years ago “high expectations can unfairly result in reduced impressions.” By which I mean that if you associate yourself with Riven, I will hold you to a high standard and judge you accordingly. Whether that is fair or not, it is what it is. So let me say up-front, after 4 hours of playtime I am a very satisfied adventurer. Borrowing from the Steam page, Neyyah is set within a collection of remote almost abandoned islands, separated by a series of complex portal machinery and laced with the fingerprints of two intriguing cultures. You have been sent there by Vamir, on a matter of urgency. A wrong needs righting, one that will require you to traverse the islands, linking the portals, unlocking contraptions and deciphering clues as you go. You might have gathered by my playtime and the ‘work in progress’ heads-up that I haven’t yet finished the game. I felt compelled though to put pen to paper, given the impending release, and am confident that I can safely tell you more than I would in a first look. I will come back and update things when I do in fact finish. You will get a distinctive (original) Riven vibe from the very get go, including the node-to-node progression. You can turn left or right, and perhaps look up or down, and helpfully you will also be told whether turning from any node will change your point-of-view by 90 or 180 degrees, improving the efficiency of exploring your environment. Whilst I prefer the go anywhere freedom of the remastered Riven, this form of exploration still provides a more than satisfactory explorative environment. The visuals help. The pre-rendered screens provide an artistic opportunity when it comes to detail, and while the colour is a tad muted, the islands themselves and their structures are enticing places, drawing you on. Lighting is a treat, and whilst each screen is largely static, the ambient sound and things like the shimmer of the sea help the sense of realism. Various environmental animations (doors opening, levers moving, etc.) add another element, and I recently unlocked a vary Riven-ish ride to somewhere else. Sure I would love a more dynamic world, but I didn’t feel a bit disappointed. The curser will indicate when something can be done (e.g., zoom in, pick up, use an item etc). Puzzling has to date been to gather information and use it to solve codes, or restore or redirect power, to open up more areas and do the same again. Some inventory items have been involved, but as an adjunct to the logic. How you progress through the game is something relatively within your control. To start with, three different Journey Modes are available, which you can switch between as you go, and which provide a lesser or more degree of feedback and (possible) assistance. The Guided by Ancients mode provides the most feedback, providing notifications of new maps and locations, tutorials for controls and features, and Travellers Guide notifications (more of them a bit later). The two other Modes provide lesser and then no notifications, although you can tweak certain aspects should you want to. From within the game you can also access various Journey Tools. The Traveller’s Guide records various observations, often complete with image, and perhaps pushing you in the right next direction (and those notifications I mentioned before will tell you something has been added). The Main Goals describes the things you need to do in order to finish the game, and the Character Interaction allows you to replay interactions with the other characters you might encounter. Each is accessed via specific keyboard shortcuts, or the Escape key brings up a ribbon top of screen where you can point and click the relevant tile to access your desired tool. That same ribbon also contains tiles for your inventory, journals you gather, and maps that build as you go, as well as for the more rudimentary game mechanics (e.g., save, options, quit). There is also a Payetta Case tile, which contains culturally specific items and one which is still greyed out which remains to be revealed. The Options tile warrants further mention. As well as the more usual options (e.g., subtitles on or off, adjust music volume) you can enable a fast travel mode, which will enable you to skip intervening nodes and jump to an endpoint, (although you can progress node to node should you prefer) and also turn on colour blind mode, which will tell you the colour you are looking at (which can be important in certain puzzles). Having fiddled, I turned both on using the former sparingly and the latter when a colour puzzle presented itself. Another thing worth mentioning is that notwithstanding the Travellers Guide, you should still take notes. Things I wanted to know weren’t always captured by the Guide, so your pen and paper is still required. Indeed, I intend to turn off all notifications for the next little while and to manually record anything I think I might need. I Googled a bit and found that this has been about seven years in the making, and reflects the sunny and warm environments of the Australian based developers. Both those things are incidental plusses. I have currently accessed a secret lab, which took some getting to and which contains a fair degree of information. I am drawing breath, reflecting on what and where I am at and considering where to next. My Riven gene has been feted by what has come before, and I look forward to what is to come. I played on: OS: Windows 11, 64 Bit Processor: Intel i7-9700K 3.7GHz RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB DDR4 32GB Video card: AMD Radeon RX 580 8192NB
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