Ravenlok Review (XSX) – Easy, Fun, Perfect For Kids

Ravenlok is the latest entry in Cococumber’s Voxel Trilogy, a Zelda-inspired take on Alice in Wonderland with colourful characters and places to explore. This begs to ask does that translate to a wonderful game? Let’s find out!

Game Name: Ravenlok
Platform(s): Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S (Reviewed), PC
Publisher(s): Cococucumber
Developer(s): Cococucumber
Release Date: May 4th, 2023

An Adventure Awaits!

Ravenlok essentially tells its version of Alice in Wonderland and wears that influence right on its nose, which I’m all here for. It makes Ravenlok both familiar and unique with wonderful characters like Finn the white rabbit, the Tweedle twins, and more… even Bob the Frog makes a cameo! I did love this familiarity, but I was left somewhat wondering what if this had full IP integration with Alice in Wonderland, it would help take things to another level.

Fun But Easy

Speaking of levels, the game comprises different areas, some of which you have to solve puzzles to unlock. The core of the gameplay throughout these levels is where the Zelda influence shows its head. Hacking and Slashing your way through enemies, while solving puzzles and finding specific items to advance the through the world and story. The puzzles found throughout the game are fine, never overly complex, and more often than not just a tool to break up combat, but finding items can sometimes take a while as there is always one that is well hidden.

Combat starts off simply with an attack and block button; X and Y, respectively, on the Xbox controller. As you progress through the game, you’ll unlock special attacks which can be performed with LB, RB, LT, or RT, the fourth special attack, in particular, is overpowered. While the bosses that you’ll encounter are all well-designed, they feel unique and different. Unfortunately, the game’s combat is just too easy to really take advantage of these encounters, and I never felt challenged outside of learning an attack pattern. For most of the game, all I had to do was spam the standard attack and use the special attacks to spice things up.

Having said that, one thing could make things unreasonably challenging at times, the Camera! My main criticism is this semi-fixed camera which could lead to me getting stuck on things that weren’t in my view. I would much rather have had a fully free camera that I was able to move at any time.

I did enjoy the somewhat Soulslike-inspired progression, collecting feathers from enemies to level up for stronger attacks, etc. Ultimately, the progression felt somewhat unnecessary as the game’s combat was too easy to really need a leveling system.

BEAUTIFUL!

Being part of the Voxel trilogy, of course, Ravenlok’s visuals are created using Voxel Art, and if you don’t know what that is, think along the lines of Minecraft…cubes. Seeing an Alice in Wonderland-style world realised with this art direction was just beautiful, from enemy designs to the tea party and everything in between. I was constantly stopping to take screenshots. I think I have more than seventy just from this 5-6 hour game; it’s stunning.

The audio is intriguing since there is no voice acting, so the audio is made up of score and attack sound effects. The score was delightful, helping to make each area feel unique and sometimes changing the feeling of an area as you’d progress the story and return to somewhere you had been before. The additional sound effects were as expected and sort of melted into the background after a while, which in this case, isn’t bad since the score is great!

Technical Performance

I had absolutely no tech issues of any kind while playing on Xbox Series X, which is nice to say, given that the platform has seen a number of games released for it as of late that you can’t say the same thing. The game loaded quickly; there weren’t any bugs or glitches whatsoever. It was a great experience on that front.

Summary

Ravenlok is a delight to explore. This interesting take on a familiar story thanks to a top-notch presentation and a simple but fun gameplay loop. It’s the perfect game for young children and well worth trying out on GamePass. I enjoyed every second of it, I just wish it was more difficult to keep me even more engaged.

Review Disclosure Statement: A copy of Ravenlok was provided to us for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.