Having become pretty tired of endlessly playing new farming sims and needing to compare so many of them in a less-than-favorable light to Stardew Valley, it’s always nice to see a developer bring something new to the table. While the storyline in Ritual of Raven would tell you that magic is what is thrown into the mix, as a programmer by trade I’d say instead that it’s just some old-fashioned coding that helps to differentiate this from the rest of the pack. The thing is, to this point while I’ve played quite a number of indie titles that have tried to implement some form of programming into them, the majority of them have done so pretty poorly. Appropriately enough, I’d say the very repetitive nature of your typical farming sim activities are what may make this a perfect choice to be paired with some coding concepts.

Sucked in through a portal, you’ll be introduced to this new world that runs on magic, though for the most part in this case it’s a convenient tool to make it so you’re unable to perform many farming tasks yourself… because that would ruin the magic. Instead, you’ll need to use tarot cards (action commands) to give a series of instructions to a construct (robot) to perform these tasks for you, and once you’ve accumulated enough cards you can accomplish some pretty ambitious things as well. In order to get those cards you’ll typically need to solve some sort of puzzle, which usually has a programming edge to it. By applying a new concept and combining your cards with the right instructions, you’ll then unlock your new card and gain the ability to do something new, creating a steady stream of new ideas to learn and apply, which is satisfying.

Of course, it isn’t all about farming and coding, you’ll also get to know the odd assortment of characters around town, helping them out and getting help in return along your journey. The further you go there are an increasing number of variables you’ll need to control in order to grow and harvest specific crops you’ll need, so expect to absorb quite a bit of information as well. I will say that I ran into periodic performance hiccups of some kind, which were typically innocuous enough, but I also couldn’t really tell why they popped up. Not a dealbreaker, but absolutely something a bit more odd to be aware of. Still, if you’ve been feeling like the farming sim subgenre has been stagnating, with everyone focused too often on making poor facsimiles of Stardew and its ilk, this is absolutely a breath of fresh air.