Ritual of Raven

One genre of cosy games that seemingly gets released on a monthly basis is the farming sim. Ever since the success of Stardew Valley, developers all over the world have been scrambling to replicate ConcernedApe’s hit, to mixed responses from audiences. Some have been successful, others have struggled, but all games within the genre seem to face the same problem: the inability to differentiate from their competition. That’s an issue that Spellgarden Games wanted to rectify with their newest release, Ritual of Raven.

In this gorgeous-looking game – which shouldn’t be a surprise considering it’s made by the same devs as the delightful Sticky Business – you get transported from your home world through a portal, ending up in a world where magic is real. You are greeted by Sage, the local witch, who has just lost her familiar Flufferstoop through a portal very similar to the one you arrived through. She decides to help you out by training you to become a witch yourself so you can help her find a solution to the portal problem and can be sent back home, leaving this world a safer place.

To fully embrace your powers as a witch, you need a familiar, so the first thing you need to do is perform a ritual to find one. You forage for the necessary ingredients, shifting the moon phase while you’re at it – the moon doesn’t shift naturally in this world, only witches have the ability to change this – and are ultimately greeted by your new companion, Raven the raven. But before you can then begin your witch training in earnest, another portal appears, and Sage feels the presence of her familiar on the other side, so she decides to jump in, leaving you stranded in a town where you know no one.

So you set out to find out information through the locals. The villagers are in different minds about the portals: two of them have found love and each other through them, so they don’t see the harm in them existing. Others want nothing more than for the portals to be shut forever so life can become somewhat normal again. All of them agree to help you, but only if you help them out as well, which all depends on your ability to perform magic.

Magic in farming sims has, of course, been done before; just think of games like Fae Farm or Fields of Mistria. But from the start, Ritual of Raven sets itself apart from even those games by making magic the central mechanic for your farming. You’re going to need a ton of ingredients for all of the different rituals you’ll be performing, so it’s a good thing you don’t have to do all of that farming yourself, as farming by hand causes the crops to lose their magical power. Instead, you instruct arcane constructs to do everything for you.

You do this through the use of tarot cards, with each one having different instructions for your construct. Yup, while Ritual of Raven is a farming sim, it’s also an automation game! This is going to be a mechanic that people either love or bounce off of, but I certainly had fun with it. It reminded me of a long time ago, when I was still learning how to program software. Sure, you can input a card to harvest, for example, and then repeat that card as many times as you need your construct to do so. But you can also use the loop card, simplifying your workload.

There’s quite some depth that has gone into the farming and automation side of the game, but in the end, you get to decide how much time and effort you’re willing to put into it. The game never pushes you to do things a certain way, aside from some puzzles that you have to solve in order to gain more constructs. So there’s a playstyle for everyone right here, whether you’re into programming or not.

Another thing that sets Ritual of Raven apart from most farming sims is that it’s very much story-based. You’ll be accomplishing tons of quests and sidequests like in most games in the genre, but farming doesn’t need to be the focal point. As you are stuck in a world that’s not yours, and that world is struggling with the number of portals that keep appearing, you’re there to help out and maybe to find a way back home – although you don’t seem to ever really be bothered about that last part. No, your character seems ecstatic to finally be living in a world where magic is real!

But while you might be happy, not all of the villagers are. There are people here who have just arrived through portals and who would be very happy to go home, and there are those who have felt other effects of these freak appearances. The Portal Keepers, for example, have been affected by their failure so badly that they have spread out and disappeared. But without them, there’s no way of fixing things. So getting them back together is of the utmost importance.

There’s also history to Ritual of Raven, with families being torn apart and even scholars of magic disagreeing on things. Despite there not being that many characters in the game, it’s still so full of life, and these characters go through some real growth during the story, despite your conversations with them usually being limited, unless you’re doing something to progress the story.

It’s not just the characters who truly bring this world to life, though. The visuals of this game are just fantastic, and while I was a bit surprised at first by the going for an isometric angle, it really works in the game’s favour. The beautiful colours make this such a vibrant world, and the character designs are all delightful too. The local bard Bowie even skips everywhere instead of walking, which is just brilliant to me.