NEED TO KNOW
What’s it? A hack n’ slash action-adventure impressed by Alice In Wonderland.
Launch date Might 4, 2023
Count on to pay $25/£19.79
Developer Cococucumber
Writer Cococucumber
Reviewed on Home windows 11, Nvidia 2080 Ti, Intel i9-9900k @ 4.9ghz, 32GB RAM
Steam Deck Unsupported
Hyperlink Official website (opens in new tab)
Not less than aesthetically, Ravenlok makes an important first impression with a superbly lit farmstead backdrop, populated by detailed (however nonetheless pleasantly chunky) voxel individuals. A woman sits within the shade of a tree, enjoying along with her canine. It asks you for the woman’s title, and what accent her trustworthy pooch will likely be sporting. After which the fetch quests begin, and can proceed till the second the credit roll.
It looks like an unlucky assertion of intent that regardless of being a hack n’ slash motion sport, Ravenlok begins its ersatz Alice In Wonderland journey with legwork, bouncing between two small (however superbly detailed) scenes, speaking with simply two unmoving NPCs (the younger heroine’s mother and father) and accumulating a collection of things for them when – and solely when – requested. The objects stay stubbornly glued to the bottom till such time as your quest log calls for they be taken; a rule that continues to be frustratingly in impact by means of the complete sport.
It’s not lengthy earlier than the fetch-questing leads the woman (minus her canine, which is rarely seen or talked about once more) into Dunia, a magical realm of classily-dressed rabbits, Tweedles (of each dum and dee varieties), and a villainous queen with a military of surly enjoying playing cards. Regardless of some oddly-named bespoke creatures, and the heroine being often called ‘Ravenlok’ on account of her black hair, it’s a well-known, cozy Wonderland with a number of playful twists, equivalent to many of the rabbits having 4 arms and the Purple Queen additionally being the Caterpillar for causes unexplained.
Acquainted as its inspirations are, it’s an absolute deal with to see. Ravenlok is a pseudo-retro aesthetic triumph. Each surroundings is full of element rendered in unfiltered textures, packed stuffed with voxelized ornament and lit impeccably. It runs silky clean, and I didn’t encounter any technical points in any respect, however that’s maybe due to Ravenlok’s restricted ambition. These picture-perfect scenes are all the simpler to understand as they’re all the time considered from the right angle, partly as a result of you may solely pivot the digicam a number of levels in every course. It provides these fanciful environments the texture of a toy diorama or maybe a voxelized stage play. It looks like a world meant to be noticed and appreciated from a distance, not performed with.
Till round half an hour in, Ravenlok is nothing however fetching objects for stationary characters, together with having to rustle up your sword and defend. By the point the sport introduces fight (after one more fetch quest to find a sword and defend), I couldn’t assist however really feel the sport creaking a bit. Then the fight tutorial begins, fading to black to relocate the participant to a flatter, extra open, much less detailed model of the realm designed totally for preventing. This trick is barely typically used, with among the explorable areas having enemies to whack, but it surely occurs usually sufficient to really feel Cococumber by no means fairly found out the way to make the motion mesh with the low-key exploration. It additionally doesn’t assist that the fight is nearly upsettingly one-note.
Snicker-snack
Easy, one-note fight isn’t inherently a foul factor, as long as that one word is a pleasing one. Mashing my approach by means of a Dynasty Warriors sport or perhaps a LEGO Star Wars right here and there could be a pleasure, and I’m an enormous fan of the Ys collection. Sadly, the word I heard most by means of Ravenlok’s whole size is a pointy, synthetic impression noise used for each potential fight interplay. From breaking pottery to chopping plant monsters and even shattering the arbitrary crystal MacGuffins on the finish of every world, every part makes the identical tinny, barely distorted ‘tink’ sound that drowns out the music and most larger thought, and there’s nothing rather more to do. There’s no bounce button, no combos, only a ‘swing sword’ button.
Regrettably, nearly all of Ravenlok’s fight entails little greater than going through an enemy and quickly mashing the assault button to stunlock them into oblivion. Generally hitting a dozen occasions or extra per foe, that’s a variety of the identical word, and punctuated with little or no else. There’s a block button that appeared of little or no use, and a dodge button for evading telegraphed boss assaults, however towards rank-and-file monsters there’s nothing deeper to do than mash ‘assault’ as quick as you may. As soon as enemies get too spongy, make a fast journey again to the one NPC that may convert your accrued expertise into mounted stat will increase and repeat.
Even the sport’s 4 unlockable particular assaults (two melee, two projectiles, sure to the 4 shoulder buttons on most gamepads) do little or no to boost the recipe. Working on cooldowns, they merely speed up the method of sweeping up the swarms of normal enemies, and additional trivialize boss battles with their beneficiant invincibility frames. The boss fights themselves are comparatively fascinating (no less than in comparison with the rank-and-file monsters), with clean animations and well-telegraphed assaults, however the digicam being mounted signifies that it’s all too straightforward to get misplaced behind or below bigger monsters, lowering fight as soon as extra to simply random flailing till you relocate your personal character.
Alice In Chains
So many of those mechanical shortcomings might be excused if the gorgeous backdrops and artistic creature designs had been used to inform an thrilling story, however sadly the plot feels as threadbare because the preventing. Every newly launched character stands of their designated location, and both explains why they want Ravenlok’s assist or menaces her briefly till a struggle breaks out. There’s no room for characters to develop, and dialogue – totally voiceless and dealt with by means of speech bubbles above characters’ heads – usually occurs with each individuals standing aspect by aspect and going through the digicam, giving it a hole pantomime really feel.
There is no such thing as a drama, no escalation, and no depth.
There is no such thing as a drama, no escalation, and no depth. Ravenlok herself is a void of a personality, cheerfully taking up each request, and whereas there’s the occasional trace at darker issues being afoot in Wonderland Dunia, they’re left unexplored and swiftly brushed below the rug. I want to attribute the sinister undercurrent of glossing over these moments to authorial intent, however the vacuousness of the script (with Ravenlok declaring all of the bizarre creatures her family and friends, regardless of solely exchanging a number of strains of dialogue with every) implies that there’s simply nothing of substance right here. Even for a child’s sport, it rings hole, and some alternative grammatical errors and lacking phrases within the script intensify the beginner vibes.
I want my complaints may finish right here, however in all probability probably the most jarring a part of the complete Ravenlok expertise is how disjointed every part feels. Every new surroundings is gorgeous, however they’re usually linked in probably the most tenuous of the way. Every of the three worlds is accessed by means of a teleport or NPC taking you there, which simply fades to black and cuts all of a sudden to the brand new location. I may have accepted unusual and surreal dreamlike hyperlinks between areas, however Ravenlok simply jump-cuts from one display screen to the subsequent. Jarringly, some boss fights additionally happen in a wholly totally different area to the place the place the enemy was encountered, solely to chop again to ‘actuality’ with the boss laying defeated.
Ravenlok’s restricted content material, already thinly-spread, feels prefer it’s stretched to breaking level in its remaining hour. The late-game Clock Tower space is launched as a boss rush of types, requiring you to say three cash from three flooring to progress. The primary two flooring have fights, however the third simply has an NPC casually hand you the third coin. In the exact same room, it’s essential to insert them right into a machine to proceed, solely to don’t have anything occur. Seems that it’s good to speak to one more character in the identical room to open the exit door for you. Any sense of escalation or drama is totally undermined, souring even the spectacular surroundings and boss designs of the realm.
A Good-looking Pig
This arbitrary padding continues by means of the endgame, together with one room the place to succeed in a change that’s too excessive up, it’s good to pull a lever actually two steps away that lowers it. There’s so little to do in every surroundings that including one further button immediate to the scene continues to be doubling the quantity of interplay.
The ultimate stretch – the assault on the Queen’s fortress – is the place it looks like Ravenlok’s gameplay price range fully ran out. As all the time, the environments are immaculate, however the complete remaining zone is simply 5 rooms. An entry courtyard, a corridor, two aspect rooms and the ultimate boss chamber, throughout which era the sport tries to introduce a (mercifully quick and simple) stealth phase and 5 new enemy sorts. So little room is afforded to this content material that there’s no room to spawn the entire new enemy sorts without delay. So as to struggle all of them (which is critical to progress), I needed to press switches to alter which sorts would seem within the two aspect rooms.
It pains me to be as harsh on Ravenlok as I’ve, as clearly this can be a sport made with ardour and clear creative intent. However throughout its 5-6 hour runtime, I by no means shook the sense that that is an surroundings artwork showcase (and a lovely, polished one at that) with the naked minimal of gameplay layered on high. It’s kid-friendly, each in tone and issue, however pales compared to different video games aimed on the youthful crowd. Just like the very most interesting porcelain tea units, it’s greatest left on the shelf to be admired, moderately than introduced out to entertain on the celebration.
