• Price: $19.99 USD (currently on sale for $17.99 until August 14th)
• Developer: Spellgarden Games
• Publisher: Team17
• Release Date: August 7, 2025

A review code was kindly provided by Team17 on behalf of Spellgarden Games. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

From the developer behind Sticky Business, Ritual of Raven is a cozy witchy farming sim with a twist: you don’t perform the farming tasks yourself! Instead, you’ll enchant “Arcana Constructs” using cards and commands (in a form of pseudo-programming) to do the work for you!

The game definitely caught my attention with such a creative idea. They started things off on a positive note with a few accessibility options and character customization. You can customize the following aspects of your character’s appearance: skin color, hat, hair style & color, and some basic clothes. Choose a name, pronouns, and a voice, and then it’s time to get started!

You begin the game by getting sucked into a portal and transported from your world to one full of magic. Right away you run into a woman named Sage, who informs you that the portals between worlds have become unstable. She needs your help to stabilize them not only to get yourself home, but also to find her familiar.

So Sage takes you as her apprentice, but shortly after helping you set up the ritual for summoning your familiar (Raven the raven) she disappears. Thankfully, you now have a Book of Shadows that tells you which ingredients you’ll need for rituals, as well as their locations and the conditions required for them to grow.

The farming mechanics are quite interesting on multiple levels. As it’s said that harvesting your ingredients by hand drains their magic, you’ll have to unlock the many Arcana Constructs around the village and make them plant, water, and harvest your ingredients for you.

You start with a few basic Command Cards, and can acquire more by purchasing them from one of the villagers. (I like that we only have to buy each card type once.) Every part of a plant can be used in some way, and you can order a Construct to do something like only harvesting it if it’s in the desired state.

The phases of the moon are another important factor to consider when harvesting ingredients. Some plants change forms under certain moon phases, so if you need to use those special versions you’ll have to go to the Moon Shrine and change the phase of the moon.

You have to manually activate the enchantment you’ve “programmed” into each Construct until you unlock Seals, which allow you to schedule automatic actions for a Construct to complete at the same time every day, or under a specific phase of the moon. There are also convenient field signs that allow Constructs to focus all their efforts on specific fields instead of requiring you to move them around manually.

I really liked the ideas behind the Arcana Construct farming system, although I never figured out how to program my Constructs so that everything was as automated as possible for constantly planting, watering, and harvesting plants. Things got a bit too complicated for me when considering how to manage each part of the plant and the moon phases.

I stopped using the Seals because when I needed leaves from a plant my constructs often got them to the full flower stage automatically before I could do anything. I probably could have used more hand-holding for more complex automation tasks.

It may have been nice to be able to create preset Command Card combinations so that we wouldn’t have to manually input each card one at a time when changing the current commands. One of my biggest complaints was that there wasn’t a confirmation system for clearing away Command Cards; all too often I would find myself accidentally deleting all of my commands. 😭

Don’t get me wrong – I enjoyed the system overall, but my brain just doesn’t seem to work in a way that allowed me to use it to its full potential. I just could not figure out some of the harder optional(?) Arcana Puzzles, and wish there was a hint system.

In contrast with the farming commands though, the crystal harvesting was a breeze. Your Constructs will harvest them in their base form, and then you can have them fuse the crystals into progressively larger pieces. I believe the crystal fusion came first, and then we get into plant fusion!

Sometimes the plant fusion could get a little overwhelming when you have a bunch of active quests that require them, but ultimately it’s quite cool. Plants need to be fully grown before you can fuse them together and turn them into seeds for a new hybrid. A few plants are fusions based on other plants that required fusion! 😮 I did wish that the seed shop would start selling fused seeds once we’d created some ourselves.

Both the main story quests and character quests require you to combine all of these mechanics to get the items you need, but fortunately there aren’t any time limits. The townspeople are a fun bunch who have their own unique struggles, which you can help them overcome through their quest lines.

Each character has 3 specific gifts that you must give them in order. These gifts are depicted in a shadow format, so you can only see their outline and guess which item they need. Usually it’s pretty easy to figure it out, although some of the paper and book items gave me some trouble.

Everyone has 3 character quests that correspond with the 3 gifts. You can obtain these gifts by fishing in portals (a cute claw machine-style mini game) or through other quests.

The town and its surrounding areas are quite colorful, and you can further enhance the environment with decorations, which can also be enchanted. You can place them outdoors, or inside of your house, which you can expand at least 3 times!

I still didn’t have that many decor options by the end of the game, and I wasn’t sure how to get more; much of the shop’s stock remained in shadowy form and was never revealed for some reason. I still enjoyed decorating with the decor I earned from donating items to the museums or from completing quests, though.

While I could have used more guidance here and there, there’s still a lot to like about Ritual of Raven. The ending was somewhat anticlimactic for me, but overall the writing was fun and clever. Raven the raven was my favorite character, as they made me laugh a lot.

The character designs are adorable, and the soundtrack is nice and soothing. I didn’t notice any performance issues playing for ~30 hours to reach the credits. There’s a lot to do in this game, and you can get to know a late arrival to the town (and tie up any loose ends) after the credits. If you enjoy farming sims with an interesting twist, Ritual of Raven may be a game for you! 🐦‍⬛