Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 15/Feb 04:20

VORON: Raven’s Story – Review

It’s easy to miss hidden gems in the rush of how many games come out each week. That’s why it can be worthwhile to look back on titles that are a few months old. VORON: Raven’s Story is the debut game of indie developer Mark Games, and while it released back in November of last year, we’re happy we gave it a chance, and that means we’re also happy to share our thoughts so others might discover this game. Spread your wings because this adventure is worth the steep learning curve. Story Taking inspiration from Norse mythology, VORON: Raven’s Story has you play as a raven with the peculiar ability to speak to lost souls. After you learn the basics of flying around and taking care of yourself, your family sets off towards the land of the gods. But disaster strikes on the way, separating you from your family in this magical realm. The trouble you get into seems a bit bigger than what a single bird should reasonably be able to solve, as we soon hear about a looming apocalypse and the end of the world. Thankfully, some of the nicer gods will help you in your plight of turning things right again and saving your family. The story was a little cliché, but we appreciated the mythological touch and the game’s care to teach more obscure facts about something we feel has been milked a lot in fictional media before. Graphics VORON has exactly the sort of graphical style that appeals to many (including us). The game is colorful and crisp, with a pretty unique art style that blends realism with a more cartoony look in a way that’s really nice to look at. Color is also often used as a guide in helping you figure out where to go, with your cawing even lighting up interactable items. Despite the relatively short run time of the game, the various areas you explore have an open-world feel to them because of how they’re designed, with enough variety and distinction between the levels to keep things fresh. Sound The music in VORON is also very nice. We enjoyed having some peaceful background tunes to fly around to, though there was somewhat of a repetition going on with the tracks. We also should note that the game has no voice acting, and the sound effects were fine, with the exception of the wind. Whenever you take off and beat your wings, the wind starts rushing by really loudly as if you’re flying very fast, even if you’re really only flying three feet, and it tends to kill the atmosphere a little. Gameplay VORON: Raven’s Story is an adventure game with major puzzle elements where you gather up souls to progress to the next area. The game starts simple by putting you with your family on an island and allowing you some time to get used to the mechanics. Flying in this game could be described with the often-used sentence ‘easy to learn, hard to master’, which is also how the developers describe their own control scheme. It takes a bit of effort to really learn how to give yourself direction while in the air, how to dive quickly or gain height, and how to land without flying beak-first into a tree. However, even if you do that, you can’t die in the game, so that’s nice. Once your raven can fly and you’ve headed into the land of the gods, things get trickier. You are confronted with stamina, meaning you can only fly so far before either needing to land or fly through a white orb to recharge. Other abilities are added to your repertoire later on, allowing for tricks in mid-air. Puzzles are simple but fun, often requiring you to find the best path to fly without losing your stamina, further complemented by basic mechanics such as holding down buttons, moving weights, and such. The main goal is to collect souls scattered across the maps, either through puzzle solving, or sometimes the soul might want a specific item. You only need a specific amount of souls to open a portal through the next area; however, the game is good at encouraging exploration, for example, by scattering around tablets that allow you to learn the language of the gods, dangling additional lore in front of you if you go through the trouble of finding them all. For the completionists reading, VORON takes about ten hours, though there are multiple endings influenced by your choices throughout the game. Conclusion VORON: Raven’s Story is a good first game for a new developer, maybe a little rough around the edges in terms of sound design and controls, but overall an enjoyable experience. We thought the story and graphics made the game stand apart from its peers, and flying around while solving little puzzles gave us a good time, with the game not overstaying its welcome.