Stardew Valley meets Baba Is You in this witchy, indie farming sim

Ever since ConcernedApe’s Stardew Valley burst onto the scene, cozy farming games are everywhere. There’s a specific kind of meditative joy to tending virtual crops that you just don’t feel in the real world, so of course, the genre is popular. It even has its own subgenres, and I’m particularly fond of magical farming games.

Even the magical contingent of farming cozy games is getting oversaturated nowadays, with games like Wylde Flowers, Fields of Mistria, and Disney Dreamlight Valley all competing for my attention. If you want to catch my eye in this sea of amazing titles, you have to do something different, and that’s where Ritual of Raven comes in.

Ritual of Raven is the latest game from Sticky Business creators, Spellgarden Games. It takes the genre conventions of magical farming games and says, “What if you could do all of this without getting your hands dirty?” Instead of spending hours of your day planting, watering, and harvesting crops, in this game, you take control of Arcana Constructs and program them to do your bidding. Not only is this a massive time saver, but it essentially teaches you the principles of coding via building blocks shaped like tarot cards.

When you first land in Ritual of Raven’s world, you’re a confused college student who’s fallen through a random portal. Very quickly, you become a witch’s apprentice and summon your own Raven familiar, only for your instructor to rush off to save her own companion and leave you to figure it out by yourself. I tend to find that when a lot of games like Stardew Valley excel at the farming and life simulation aspects, they can lack story direction, but Ritual of Raven seamlessly blends exploration and relationship-building with an overarching narrative about magic and what ‘home’ means.

The quirky cast of characters is immediately endearing, while still making you work to earn their approval. There’s plenty to do each day, with farming, foraging, portal fishing, and puzzle solving all taking up your time. Every time I pick up my Switch 2 and boot up the game, I find myself hooked for hours.

While the tarot card-based arcana programming takes some getting used to, it’s a brilliantly unique addition to the game, presenting a range of puzzles to solve while you figure out the best way to automate your farm and solve your neighbors’ problems. Raven’s moon magic is a great quality-of-life feature as well, which essentially removes the frustration of having to wait for a specific season to grow your desired crop. It’s just one of many small aspects of the game that make Ritual of Raven an approachable, relaxing farming game, compared to others on the market.

I love to see diversity in the games I play, so I was, of course, overjoyed to be able to select gender-neutral pronouns for my player character from the very beginning, and encounter other non-binary NPCs in the town, as well as a pair of sapphic woodland creatures. Considering the game takes place in a portal dumping ground of beings from various dimensions, it would be more strange if everyone were straight and cisgender.

Spellgarden Games excels at making beautiful indie titles with bright and memorable color palettes, and Ritual of Raven is no exception. You can see the artistic similarities between this game and Sticky Business immediately, but the games are completely different. This studio is definitely one to watch out for in the indie game scene.

Ritual of Raven is a fantastic new Switch game for fans of Stardew Valley, Baba Is You, and all things witchy, and I highly recommend it. It’s definitely found a place on my list of relaxing games to boot up when I need a break from reality.