Return to Ringworld

Return to Ringworld is a video game in the adventure genre developed by Tsunami Media, Inc. and published by Tsunami Media, Inc. originally released in 1994. It is currently playable on DOS.

A much better game than its awful predecessor, Return to Ringworld is a fun adventure still based on Larry Niven's best-selling science fiction series.

While the plot will be familiar to Niven fans and the puzzles still border on easy, Return to Ringworld is much more game this time around, with some engaging puzzles and good plot development. The game starts right where the first Ringworld: Revenge of The Patriach game left off. You are Quinn, a fugitive from the 29th century, hunted by every society in known space. It's a strange reward for preventing a genocide of the puppeteers and avoiding another interstellar war between men and kzin.

There is a computer aboard his ship that contains a lot of information about the races, planets and artifacts that populate Niven's Known Space. This is an excellent idea because it quickly introduces players unfamiliar with Niven's books to a universe rich in content and detail. However, it places a heavy reading burden on the player early in the game. Since there are clues to several puzzles later in the game buried in the database, it is advisable to dedicate a save slot to the point before leaving the ship.

The gameplay is much improved over the first game, though not perfectly implemented. You can now switch between the three characters (Quinn, and his companions Seeker and Miranda) at will, and solutions to various puzzles require you to play with the correct character, or coordinate actions between them. While the character switching is fun and adds to the game's appeal, it's not well managed. Many times, it will seem like all three characters are stuck, when in reality you just need to perform some action you did earlier in the game that failed because the other two characters didn't do something else earlier.

It's not always clear that actions should wait, and redoing everything you did before can wear on your patience. Fortunately, most of the game's puzzles are logical and have only one solution. The worst, unfortunately, are some of the game's huge mazes. While some of them are quite ingenious (one of them requires you to think in three dimensions), many of them don't make sense. The game designers decided to give the player an idea of the size of Ringworld by showing screen after screen of similar or identical graphics. This means that you will have to cross ten or more screens just to get to a monorail car, for example. This is very annoying, because it makes you unsure if you're walking in the right direction or not, and going back somewhere to try something else can be very frustrating.

However, despite all its weaknesses, Return to Ringworld is a satisfying game that should please all science fiction fans. Its depiction of Niven's complex political drama is more faithful this time around, and coordinating the actions between the three characters and listening to them tease each other is a lot of fun. Recommended for anyone interested in the genre, although expert players will find it an easy challenge.

It is possible that we have multiple downloads available when different versions exist.