Developer: Exnilo Studio
Platforms: PC (Reviewed), PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Genre: Adventure
Publisher: Raw Fury
Rivage is a sci-fi first-person puzzle adventure developed by Exnilo Studio and published by Raw Fury. Set in the 25th century, humanity has been forced to expand beyond its solar system in search of a new home. When the planet VESTA is discovered, the A.R.E.S. space station is sent into orbit to study whether it could become humanity’s next home. However, something goes terribly wrong when the station and its crew become trapped in a strange space phenomenon, cutting them off from the outside world.
You play as Miranda, who wakes up completely alone aboard the A.R.E.S. station. With the rest of the crew missing, you’re left to explore the station and piece together what happened. The game revolves around uncovering the mystery behind the disappearance of the crew and the strange phenomenon surrounding the station, with the story slowly revealing itself through your exploration.
Rivage doesn’t really have a traditional enemy working against you. There isn’t some monster chasing you around the station or anything like that. Instead, the game is much more focused on exploring, solving puzzles and putting the mystery together for yourself. It almost feels like playing detective in a sci-fi setting, where every room and object could potentially give you another piece of information.
I felt that the narrative of the game was pretty solid. You get glimpses into the lives of the crew through journals, personal logs, messages and other things they have left behind. These little pieces of information help you understand who the crew were and slowly give you a better idea of what happened to them. I also liked how the story doesn’t just throw everything at you at once, instead letting you discover things naturally as you explore the station.
As for the gameplay, you primarily interact with your environment from a first-person perspective. You can open drawers, pick up objects from shelves, examine artefacts, look through workstations and analyse different pieces of information. The A.R.E.S. station is designed to be highly interactive, with a lot of the environment giving you something to investigate.
That being said, I did find that some of these interactions felt a little irrelevant. There were plenty of times when I would pick up or inspect random objects only to realise they didn’t really serve much of a purpose towards the story or progressing further. I don’t mind having an environment filled with things to interact with, but sometimes it made it harder to figure out what was actually important.
The variation in puzzles was quite drastic. Some puzzles were really straightforward, especially when you simply needed to find a tool to repair or unlock something, while others had me completely stuck trying to figure out what I was supposed to do. There are also some more interesting environmental puzzles that involve things like gravity, magnetism and manipulating the flow of time, which fit nicely into the whole sci-fi setting.
I particularly liked the idea of puzzles requiring you to learn something and then use that knowledge later on. It makes the different mechanics feel like they actually have a purpose rather than just being there for the sake of having puzzles. However, there were a few moments where I found myself completely confused about what the game wanted me to do next.
I do wish some of the more difficult or blunt puzzles had some sort of hint system that could help guide the player. I found myself fairly lost in some moments, and while figuring things out yourself is obviously part of the experience, there were times when I felt like I was just wandering around trying random things. This did get a little frustrating, especially when I knew I was missing something but had no idea what.
The energy system is also an important part of the gameplay. You have to manage the station’s energy levels before everything eventually shuts down, which ties into the game’s time-loop mechanics and gives you another thing to think about while exploring. Almost everything you do around the station can play into how you manage your time and resources, making you consider what is actually worth interacting with.
The K9 System is another mechanic that I quite liked. It acts almost like a journal, allowing Miranda to log discoveries and retain certain puzzle solutions between loops. This means you don’t have to repeat everything you’ve already figured out, which is especially useful in a game where exploration and remembering what you’ve learned are such a big part of the experience.
Visually, I really enjoyed Rivage. The A.R.E.S. station is a great setting for the game, and there is a lot of detail throughout the environment. I found myself enjoying just exploring the different areas and looking at everything around me. The developers clearly put a lot of effort into making the station feel like a believable futuristic environment, and I think that comes across while playing.
The occasional voice acting also helped with the immersion, although it isn’t something that is constantly present. Combined with the visuals, atmosphere and mystery surrounding the station, Rivage does a good job of making you feel like you’re actually there trying to figure out what happened.
Unfortunately, I did run into some bugs while playing. For some reason, the game also took quite a long time to load at the very beginning, which wasn’t the best first impression. Thankfully, once I was actually in the game, I could focus more on the exploration and story.
Overall, Rivage is a pretty solid sci-fi puzzle adventure with an interesting concept and a mystery that kept me wanting to find out what had happened to the crew. I enjoyed exploring the A.R.E.S. station, finding pieces of information about the crew and slowly putting everything together.
The biggest thing holding it back for me was definitely some of the puzzles. When they worked, I really enjoyed figuring them out, especially when they involved using something I had learned earlier. But there were also moments where I felt completely lost, and having some sort of hint system would have made those sections much less frustrating. The bugs and slow initial loading also took away from the experience a little.
If you can look past the parts where the game stumbles, there is a lot to enjoy here. The atmosphere, visuals, exploration and overall mystery work nicely together, and I think Rivage does a good job of playing out its sci-fi concept. Be sure to check it out!
Overall: 7/10
This is S & S. We are world game explorers. We play games. We have played over 10,000+ games! We travel, we write reviews AND we play more games!!!!
