Ravenlok is an action-adventure game where you voyage through a mysterious Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-esque world to defeat an evil queen. While the game certainly succeeds on the atmosphere front through its soundtrack and visuals, the gameplay does not match that same standard, featuring simplistic combat and a deluge of fetch quests, interspersed with some occasionally clever puzzles.

You play as a young woman named Ravenlok (or something else if you choose to rename her and make the game’s title no longer make sense) whose family has moved to an isolated farmhouse. After helping her parents with chores, Ravenlok discovers a mysterious old mirror in the barn, which transports her to a strange new world, filled with talking animals, witches, and monsters. As part of the game’s frequent nods to the works and style of Lewis Carroll, Ravenlok takes this development in her stride and rarely comments on the oddness of the events around her outside of a general desire to fulfil an ancient prophecy and defeat the evil queen who is oppressing the populace so that she can return home.

Ravenlok isn’t the most expressive or interesting of protagonists, however, the weirdness of the NPCs that she comes across makes the experience memorable. From hedgehog shopkeepers to mantis mad scientists to the requisite Mad Hatter, there are plenty of quirky and funny individuals to encounter during your journey. The whole world is enveloped in this odd sense of otherworldliness, emphasised by the differences in character designs between the rounded, naturalistically-proportioned Ravenlok and the 3D pixel art aesthetic which characterise the denizens that Ravenlok encounters.

The quests in between the combat felt equally lacking in complexity, at least for the most part. So many of them were a variation on “find X number of items” dotted around the area, whether it be pieces of cinder or tea cups. The game can also often be frustratingly vague in its instructions, like how to find a missing spare elevator lever. In this instance, one doesn’t need to go to the engine room that you had previously visited; instead, it is found somewhere completely different in a very unintuitive area you wouldn’t think to check.

It also helps that the world Ravenlok explores is gorgeous to behold. There is plenty of beautiful scenery to be found, from the mysterious and vibrant Mushroom Forest to the way the afternoon light shines on the shattered mirrors that litter the High Garden. The jaunty orchestral soundtrack also landed the whimsical tone the game was going for and perfectly characterised the quirky, yet surreal, atmosphere.