Take a closer look at Ravenlok and you’ll see Lewis Carroll’s fingerprint embedded in each voxel. Alice’s two literary adventures in Wonderland (plus several other adaptations) clearly influenced developer Cococucumber, from the oversized teapot, off-brand Queen of Hearts, to the fish-out-of-water-into-the-fairy setting. Ravenlok shared more than superficial nods to that classic book, though. Yes, it’s beautiful and dreamy, but it’s also as disjointed and pointless as Alice’s growing brain — for better or worse.
Ravenlok is another gorgeous voxel adventure from Cococucumber, the delightfully named studio behind Echo Generation, only this time the turn-based combat is replaced by real-time hack-and-slash, and the retro 80s vibe is switched with a storybook world. The journey begins with your heroine chilling under a tree in the plain old world, then through a strange mirror and into the magical world of Dunia. A white rabbit quickly explains that she’s the humble Chosen One, the titular Ravenlock, and you’re soon sent on a mission to take on the evil queen plaguing the world.
What follows is an endless loop of MacGuffin after MacGuffin that runs so deep you almost forget why you fell down this rabbit hole. As you’re pushed through a series of recurring acquisition quests, the game’s quick run through of important events and quick abandonment of potentially interesting characters means everything feels paper thin. Even Ravenlok (the hero, not the game) feels useless because she never has enough time to meaningfully interact with the eccentric cast; most of her conversations are polite and frictionless, almost like she’s keeping us a certain same distance. The credits roll before you actually understand how the world works, or who these colorful characters are.
On the other hand, though, this fast pace gives Ravenlock a dreamlike quality. Since we never stay in one place for too long, games are free to continually inspire new environments, new ideas, and new situations. It hardly makes sense, but Wonderland has never been a sensible place to be, anyway. Everything lacks detail, but this allows Cococucumber to show you interesting sights without interruption.
I’ve already mentioned the beauty in the world, but it’s worth emphasizing. It’s a collision of expressive voxels, epic painterly skies, tons of lovely lighting, all rolled into one massive sensory overload. The game also loves smaller attractions, whether it’s the quirky character designs, the absolutely packing decorations, or even your character’s ability to dance at any given moment. Ravenlok’s audiovisual efforts do a lot of the heavy lifting to inject character into the game. Sure, every environment is filled with portraits of Alice, but there’s always something extra. Kind of abnormal.
Remember that mushroom from Alice? Well, Ravenlook has an entire forest full of glowing mushrooms – truly magical with magic mushrooms. How about a hedge maze from a Disney movie? Right here it is, and it’s beautiful, with a demonic, fang-like cave entrance next to it. In this way, Cococucumber inherits the deadpan ethos of the Echo Generation, where everything initially appears innocent, though it does have a twist on the inside – which might help keep everyone’s eyes actually deadpan, despite They laughed happily. Essentially, every new environment in Ravenlok makes you want to stop and stare, admiring the majestic vista or hidden little detail.
The mostly fixed camera angles make it difficult to frame the world in the most appealing way possible, and unfortunately, this is a major hindrance during combat. When fighting common enemies — through Ravenlok’s corridor-style levels — the camera is fine. It’s only going to be a problem on the boss battlegrounds when tall baddies run behind your line of sight. Instead of turning around and looking at them like you do in most action games, you could be putting yourself in danger by stepping back into uncharted territory.
Sadly, this is just one of the many frustrations of Ravenlok’s feather-light combat. You have a sword for standard attacks, a shield for reducing damage taken, bombs that pause the action when you choose them, and some fancy magic abilities that can shoot icy projectiles or cover the floor in flames. Despite these options, most one-on-one combat turns into a gripping feast. Ravenlock’s sword strikes don’t have lengthy animations, really: the faster you press the attack button, the faster she swings her sword. Since regular enemies are usually stunned when you hit them, you can basically bully them with a non-stop barrage of slashes, turning combat into busy work. Team encounters are no longer dynamic, as the same button mix is intact, but you have to dodge and switch targets to avoid damage, which just prolongs the same process.
The main problem is just the monotony that comes with it. Combat in Ravenlok is almost always one-sided rather than like a reactive dance–you’re learning how your enemies behave and responding to their movements accordingly.
Boss fights fare a bit better – when they’re in view – because they’re not as easily overthrown, and they have their own animation loops that you can learn, dodge, and counterattack. In that sense, boss battles feel old-school; almost as if they’re obstacle courses to fail and try again. Unfortunately, most of the time, combat has no learning curve, just some flashy effects. I think that’s what most of Ravenlok is about.
In addition to swinging swords, there are some neat puzzles here too. The best ones force you to pull out your inner detective hat, and sometimes even your real-life notebook, to investigate clues in the environment, such as looking for patterns in paintings to crack codes. These are very interesting because they encourage me to look more closely at this wonderful world and the little details that I might have missed. I wish the game was filled with more exploratory puzzles, as it plays to Ravenlok’s strengths and really immerses you in the magic.
Overall, my time at Ravenlok can be summed up pretty well by the original Alice in Wonderland book. It ends in a way that is relevant to this game: the King and Queen of Hearts use an illogical and barely readable poem as evidence to bring an innocent person to trial. After finding a new perspective on her journey, a braver, bolder, and actually bigger Alice defends the innocent, arguing that the evidence is meaningless. That was a debate following the book in the real world – is this psychedelic novel childish nonsense, or can it have something deeper?
This question has also been on the back of my mind throughout the course of this game, although the answer here may be the former. Ravenlok never sits back, never bothers to ask if the craziness makes any sense, never twists the language in an “increasingly curious” way. At the end of the day, my enduring memory of the game is a collection of vague visual snapshots that admittedly lasted me 8 hours. The fascination of watching and thinking about it is endless, though scratch beneath the surface and you won’t find much to grab hold of.
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