the prison book and releases Catherine. Atrus and Catherine thank the Stranger before linking back to the Age of Myst. The Stranger then falls into the Star Fissure to be taken on the path back to his world. The worst ending involves neither capturing Gehn nor releasing Catherine, which allows Gehn to kill Atrus (and then the player) and escape from his imprisonment. Other endings include capturing Gehn without saving Catherine, or being trapped in the prison book. Development Cyan began work on Riven in 1993, after Mysts release. Before development began, when the name of the game was undecided, the brothers Robyn and Rand Miller said they wanted a "natural flow" from the first game to the sequel. As Myst proved to be a popular and commercial success, the two developers were able to expand their four-person team to a much larger crew of designers, artists, programmers, and sound designers. Development spanned more than four years, and was a much larger undertaking than for the first game; Riven had a budget of between US$5 and $10 million, more than ten times the cost of developing Myst. The design for Riven stemmed from a desire to create something different and more dynamic than the romantic style of Myst. At an early point, the game's world was to be called Equiquay. The first stage of development was to create the puzzles, in an attempt to integrate them as smoothly as possible into the areas in the game. The Millers met their co-designer, Richard Vander Wende, at a demonstration of Myst for the Digital World Expo in Los Angeles. Vander Wende had previously worked for ILM, and at Disney as a designer for the animated feature Aladdin. As the third member of Rivens conceptual team, Vander Wende ended up contributing what Robyn Miller described as an "edgier" and complementary vision, that made the game dramatically different from its predecessor. At the time of Rivens development, publisher Broderbund was facing falling revenues as development costs rose. Two years into the project, Cyan still had nothing they could show them. Broderbund's stock dropped from $60 a share to $22 in 1996, because of a delay in the publishing of Riven. The plan had been to ship the game in time for the 1996 holiday season; Riven was finally published on October 31, 1997. Even though Rivens sales were expected to be higher than any