REVIEW / Ritual of Raven (Change)

I discovered myself enveloped in a curious mix of on a regular basis magic and pixel-charm taking part in Ritual of Raven, the place tending gardens and enchanting constructs turns into a part of a witch’s on a regular basis duties. As an apprentice witch tasked with repairing a fractured world after a portal mishap, I navigated spells, relationships, and routines that felt as intuitive as studying tea leaves. The gameplay leans towards peaceable routine reasonably than flashing motion, inviting a extra reflective tempo that celebrates the sacred within the mundane.

Ritual of Raven sidesteps conventional cozy video games’ farming mechanics by placing robots referred to as Arcana Constructs between you and the harvest. You don’t hoe and decide, you program and bless, and that shift provides the loop a programmatic really feel. Enchanting and positioning constructs turned gardening right into a programming puzzle: the herbs reply visually and audibly as your spells take maintain, and the E book of Shadows retains your to-dos feeling like a mixture of spellcraft and logic puzzles. That mentioned, a few of the UI feels constructed round mouse controls; I discovered sure choice and placement duties fiddly once I tried to muscle them by with the gamepad and thought this might be higher performed on a PC or Change 2 with a mouse.

On a pure sensory degree, Ritual of Raven is a love letter to witchy aesthetics. The pixel artwork palette is mushy and unusual, brimful of lavender nights and emerald brambles. The soundtrack leans into lullaby synths and delicate percussion that made me wish to mild a digital candle and take notes in an actual pocket book; it’s the type of rating that turns idle strolling into reflective observe. These design decisions make the sport’s world really feel like a functioning coven: heat, a bit uncanny, and all the time prepared to show you one thing new.

Narratively, I appreciated how the sport weaves folklore with small human losses. The portal mishap leaves a private grief for the primary non-playable character you meet on the planet. Conversations are brief however candy, and the ritual beats (studying a brand new glyph, performing a balancing ceremony) land emotionally as a result of the world clarifies what’s at stake: stability, belonging, and the affected person rebuilding of belief. If you need huge, explosive plot twists you gained’t discover them right here. You’ll as an alternative you get slow-burning character work and rituals that really feel significant as a result of the sport treats them with ceremony.

There are quality-of-life hiccups that poke on the cozy veneer. As beforehand talked about, Stock screens and a few menu navigation are constructed for pointer enter, and whereas the cursor-based design works superbly in idea, utilizing a controller can flip even easy actions into awkward and irritating actions. I ran into at the very least one enter quirk the place closing menus or flipping by my grimoire felt clunky, breaking the immersive rhythm the sport in any other case builds so effectively. 

Efficiency-wise, the sport runs easily and retains its concentrate on the environment and routine. Load occasions are brief, transitions are clear, and the mild pacing feels completely tuned for late-night play classes. The magic of Ritual of Raven lies in how little it tries to impress you; it’s content material to hum softly within the background like a consolation spell that by no means overstays its welcome.

Ritual of Raven is a mild spell woven from stardust, soil, and sincerity. It captures the rhythm of magical dwelling (i.e., gradual, deliberate, and deeply private) whereas often stumbling over its personal management scheme. Nonetheless, when the candles are lit and the soundtrack hums like a distant incantation, it’s straightforward to forgive these flaws. The center of the sport beats regular, like a chant repeated beneath moonlight.

This evaluate relies on a retail copy of the sport supplied by the writer.