Ritual of Raven review — Witchcraft meets farming meets programming

I didn’t plan on investing a lot of my time in a new farming sim, as I often leave quite a lot of space between each big venture. With these types of games, we are talking about a commitment of at least 30 hours, so you can probably understand why. If you follow my reviews, you’ll know I’ve just tackled the beast that is Fields of Mistria, and I thought I was done until my anticipated dive into Coral Island—please don’t expect it any time soon; she’s big. However, on a whim whilst browsing the catalog of demos on offer at Steam Next Fest, Ritual of Raven’s cartoony, bright palette caught my attention, and it was definitely a different experience than I was used to. Consider my interest piqued. Fast forward to when I receive a key from the lovely devs, and I find myself enthralled in this unique and charming farming sim.

Ritual of Raven has you playing as a little goober—god, look at the art style, it’s so cute!— That just stumbled through a glowing portal into a world of magic and witchcraft. Despite the portal closing straight after you, your character is nothing but ecstatic and flips their lid when they meet Sage, a witch who’s looking for an apprentice. The game is hilarious in how it establishes the plot, as our new witch doesn’t seem phased at all that they may not be able to get home. This is probably due to her life as a grad student; as one, I can confirm it’s not sunshine and rainbows. She chucks herself straight into it, and your time as a witch begins. 

Sage will take you to her cottage and show you the mysteries of witchcraft through the Ritual of Raven’s farming system. In your standard farming sim, you’ll do virtually everything, including planting, watering, harvesting, and more. But in Ritual of Raven, everything is done for you through your magical tarot constructs. This game is an automated farming sim and can be quite hard to get a grasp of if you’re not used to this kind of gameplay, but I’ll explain how it works later on. These constructs taking the wheel are explained through pretty understandable means, as in this world, you’ll disrupt the magic infused in its crops if you touch them with your stinky human hands.

Once you’re all set up, you’ll get to know Sage and the problems of Lynia, which involve the portal you stumbled out of being uncontrollable forces that spew out randomers from different worlds, without a way to take them back. During this chaos, Sage lost her familiar Flutterstoop, and she asks you to help her perform a ritual to get her back. In about the span of 5 minutes, Sage vanishes into a portal, and it’s up to you to find out how to fix them. What surprised me about Ritual of Raven was how narratively driven it was, constantly giving the player something to work towards in the form of quests. This may not be to everyone’s tastes, as it lacks a bit of freedom. This becomes apparent when you step into the local town and talk to its residents. This cast of characters is quickly lovable and quirky, all with friendship quests that you can get into if you’re interested—albeit some of them reward you with items that are needed in different main quests, so the game gently steers you towards getting to know its characters naturally. You’ll also meet more NPCs as you go through the main quest, fleshing out the story and world around you.

The locations and style of Ritual of Raven are stunning to look at, with a bright and vivid pixelated world full of character and detail. The world can be separated into 5 areas, all with their own aesthetic and  forageables to collect. You’ve got the small town, a crystal mine, and even a cloud realm. Each area is fairly contained, so don’t expect big areas, but they’re sized appropriately. You can easily zip around using the fast travel points as well. The world also includes different forageables that replenish every day or so, and you can use the portals as intergalactic fishing holes. Here, you’ll fish out random junk that you can add to the town’s museum. There’s no bug or fish catching here, but it felt like a bit of a break from the usual farming sim cycle. There aren't plenty of things to do in the overworld of Ritual of Raven, as it focuses much more on story and getting everything you need from your farm. This may not resonate with some players, as there is quite a lot of dialogue in this game. You’ll be constantly advancing the story and getting involved with the villagers, which is a bit of a contrast to the more hands-off approach you can take in other farming games like Stardew Valley.

I’ll do my best to describe the gameplay of Ritual of Raven, but even after 10+ hours I’m still stumbling and getting things wrong, as this is my first game using entirely automated systems. In this world, constructs that are based on Tarot cards will do everything for you. It’s up to you to go into their menus and set them instructions for the day. You do this by assigning action cards. Each action, like water, harvest, and plant, is an individual task that your construct can do. You’re eased into this system at the start of the game, as you only have a basic arsenal of action cards and a small plot of land, but as you progress, you’ll be able to expand your plot and find unique action cards. This can be in the form of field cards, which have constructs that do assigned actions in a segregated space, and a chest card, where after a harvest your construct will place harvestables in storage. It’s a lot, and to get the optimal setup, you’ll be doing a lot of trial and error. My word of advice is to keep it simple and ease yourself into complex cards like the loop action. All of this can undeniably be frustrating for some players, as it seems like you’re putting in a lot more work to assign simple tasks to your construct rather than just doing it yourself. I chose to see it as a learning curve and wholeheartedly dove into it, but I can see why some people wouldn’t like this in the long run.

Action and other various cards can be found in different ways, from purchasing them from the town’s villagers to unlocking them by finding abandoned constructs in the world. These act as small missions that break you into a new card. There’ll be three or four around each area, and they’ll require specific cards for you to complete their challenge. This helps in teaching the player how to control constructs and adds more to your arsenal so you can man more fields and harvest more gems. Harvesting gems is another activity you can get your constructs to do, so completing these missions and getting more helpers is pretty necessary to make your life easier.

As is with most farming sims, there is a level of customization you can engage with. You can buy items from the local furniture store and even unlock sets through missions. These items can be placed around your plot or inside your house - which can also be expanded with enough money. The variety of items on offer fit the whimsy vibe and you can make some beautiful farms using them, even including ponds and grass pieces that drop from harvesting grass, so you can go all out here. I felt the inside customization to be a bit lacking as you don't start off with much space at all, but there's freedom there to do whatever you want.

I found the overall story to be fun and charming as you locate the four wizards that caused the portals to go crazy. Instead of these characters being isolated geniuses you go searching for, they’ll have direct ties to the town and its villagers. There were some poignant moments in the story that made me care a lot about what was going on and there was even room for discussion in what you were doing, as some villagers opposed and supported the presence of the portals. It's all interesting but lighthearted stuff and despite the story being very prevalent in the game, I never got bored of it.