Ravenlok Review

It's great to see games becoming more realistic, tackling larger problems, and dealing with long complicated storylines, but every now and then you need something lighter to cleanse the pallet. After playing Cococucumber's 'Kids on Bikes in a small town' RPG Echo Generation last year I was extremely excited to hear about Ravenlok and another whimsical adventure. With Ravenlok being the third game in their "Voxel Trilogy" I was excited to see if Ravenlok could land the same level of charm and polish that previous titles nailed.

The player character and her family arrive at their new home, a farm in the middle of a rural town that has been left to your family by a deceased relative. Your mother and father are busy getting things moved in but while exploring the barn you discover a mirror. Falling through it you end up in a world of vibrant colors and fairy tail homages. You quickly learn from a talking rabbit that you're what's known as the 'Ravenlok' (because you have raven-colored locks) and that it's been prophesied that you'll be the one to end the terrible Caterpillar Queen's reign. Without much thought, Ravenlok nods her head and says let's go!

The structure of Ravenlok is simple enough, you need to travel to the three different areas in the game, explore and complete quests, and earn the three heart-shaped keys to open the door to the Queen's castle. While the narrative driving Ravenlok is heavy, consisting of the safety and freedom of the denizens of this fantasy world, at no point is it played up to the point of melodrama. The story was enjoyable, if not a bit predictable, but "hero summoned to another world to stop an evil queen" is enough of a classic that the buy-in is easy.

What was the driving factor of Ravenlok is the quest system. As soon as you arrive in the hub area you'll obtain a quest to get a weapon, a quest to receive a blessing from the forest witch, a quest to get to the forest by obtaining an item, a quest to open the door to the Queen's castle, and more. All of these quests and their steps are presented to you throwing out a wall of things that need to be done. As a part of one quest was completed it might grant me the item to complete another quest and suddenly those 8 separate quests begin to weave into one another. I found it hard to put down my controller as I could always tell that the next checked box was just around the corner.

Across the course of the game, you'll visit a Mushroom Forest, Mansion for Harlequins, an overgrown and ruinous labyrinth, and a Clock Tower that is a museum to time itself. Each of these settings oozes with Cococucumber's design style. As you step into the Mushroom Forest you're bathed in deep blue and purple lights, mysterious music begins to emanate, and your sight is filled with a mixture of high-fidelity enemies and voxel structures. The world itself is relatively small, but the radical shifts in environments made it feel much larger.

While it's part of their Voxel Trilogy Ravenlok features the least voxel structures. You'll see set pieces and structures in the environment made out of small cube shapes, almost close enough to be smooth, while natural elements of the world look a bit more realistic. I was a big fan of the use of mixed media as it made the world feel even more magical, even a step removed from real life.

While you'll spend a fair bit of time in Ravenlok engaged in combat, it's definitely its weakest point. Early on you're equipped with a sword and shield, and will obtain further magical attacks as you progress through the story. There's a single button for attack, one for pulling up your shield (not that you'll need it), and each shoulder button corresponds to a special attack. Where combat's weakness stems from is that every enemy can be infinitely stunned just by attacking and walking into it. Even when you're swarmed by dog creatures spitting poison and walking cactus-looking creatures you just need to keep walking and mashing attack and you'll come out with barely a scratch.

The one exception to stun-locking enemies in combat is in boss fights, you can't stun these as easily, but with the potions you buy or find around the world, you also don't even need to be fearful of death. Through the entirety of Ravenlok, I died maybe 3 times, and that was because simply before I forgot to look at my health as I confidently tanked damage to get a few more hits in.

I'm the kind of player who will always be fueled by "another piece of candy" in the form of collectibles or a checklist. It was that mission list that compelled me to continue playing the game and even beat it in a single sitting in roughly 4 hours, but if you're looking for a game to buy into for the story alone or a new action-adventure game with combat you can sink your teeth into Ravenlok won't be the game you're after. With its short timeframe, the story lasted just long enough to be interesting but did not need to force my attention, and the simplistic combat didn't get too repetitive.

Ravenlok Review | Final Thoughts

Shifting from the 80s turn-based RPG to a fairy tail action-adventure game set in a fairy tail world there was some concern I had for whether I would get lost in this world as intensely as I did with Echo Generation, and while Ravenlok was certainly shorter and faster paced it's exciting to know that Cococucumber has nailed it again. Ravenlok is brimming with charm and character, delivers a light story that you can get through in an afternoon, and while the combat is extremely shallow it doesn't overstay its welcome. If you enjoy the reward of checking boxes off a list as you explore a magical world then Ravenlok might just be the next game for you.

Ravenlok was reviewed on Xbox Series X using a copy provided by the publisher over five hours - all screenshots were taken during the process of review.