A game that may have revolutionized fantasy fiction and was perhaps the single best-selling computer game of all time — Myst — now has competition.

As an eager public craved a gaming experience that could recreate the detailed and vivid reality of fantasy writing, authors Rand Miller, Robyn Miller and Richard Vander Wende created new Worlds of their own.

Now the World is back, bigger, louder and more animated than before on the five-disc CD Myst sequel — Riven.

“Our whole motive in creating these Worlds is to make a believable place for people to go to — for people to get lost in,” Robyn Miller said. “I want to give [people] an experience that seems as real as possible.”

The creators of Riven seemed to have reached their goals in the creation of this game, as it has already gained worldwide success.

“There’s a wonderful, fascinating plot to Riven and Myst that I found lacking in games like Heretic and Doom,” Riven player Robin Myers said. “Riven and Myst are not really goal-oriented; the end is not really that satisfying if you are goal-driven. It is more of an experience.”

Fortune Magazine’s Michael Himowitz agreed with Myers and called the game “the perfect anti-productivity tool” further stating that “what you’re seeing is the work of an army of talented artists using state-of-the-art technology.”

Time Magazine’s Web site described Riven as “some of the richest, most detailed animation ever to adorn a home-computer screen.”

Jon Carrol, Wired Magazine, agreed with Time and Fortune. “Like Myst, only more so, Riven is insanely overgenerous with its images. It’s profligate, brazen, unnecessary — you can sense why it took so long, why the Millers renounced up-front money to do it right.”

And how do the users feel about this uniquely “proliferate [and] brazen” new game?

“I spent $70 on it, and it was worth every penny,” Riven player John Smit said. Smit said the game is not at all excessive, nor is the five-disc length too much for just one game.

“I beat it by playing it [for] eight hours straight, but like the original, there’s so much more to do than just beating the game,” Smit said.

Although Riven seems to be enjoying the success Myst did, there is still one selling hurdle it has to jump.

One of the elements that made Myst unusual was that it was the first computer game to attract a 40 percent female share in terms of playing audience.

This statistic has been attributed to the non-violent format of Myst while maintaining the game’s richly detailed graphics and style. But can Riven uphold this standard?

“It takes people about 15 to 20 hours to play,” Myers said. “I found Riven and Myst appealing partly because I don’t get off on blood and guts and killing and because you don’t die if you screw up in these games.”

Another challenge is overcoming the frustration of getting a complex game to work on a home computer.

The creators of Riven have tried to reduce this hassle by making the game’s requirements low for its size.

According to Riven’s Web site, www.riven.com, it takes 100 MHz, 4X CD-ROM, 16 MB of RAM and 75 MB of hard drive on an IBM compatible running Windows 95. Macintosh fares better with the same basic requirements but only 65 MB of hard drive space.

Due to the low requirements, Riven’s producer — Cyan — is putting both Mac and IBM together onto the same CD-ROM.

Co-creator Rand Miller describes the game as a true multimedia experience which heightens the original feeling of the game.

“I would also encourage to use at least a good pair of headphones or speakers,” Rand Miller said, “because all the sound is in stereo this time and it really makes a difference. I think it is a shame when people have to play the game just using the little built-in speaker that is in their CPU box.”