VORON: Raven’s Story is a game, shockingly, all about birds. That means I, once again, get to spew random bird related anecdotes before getting into the actual review. Just scroll until you see the first header. Anyway, my actual favourite bird is the Pied Wagtail. Little bobbing fellas, that I used to see out of the window at my first job. I worked as a document scanner, so was just feeding papers into a machine from nine to five. They kept me sane.
If I had to pick a family of birds as a favourite, though, it would be corvidae. And I’m not just saying that to desperately bring it back around to VORON. They look cool, for one. Especially if you’re into goth chic. They’re also pretty smart, and can remember faces, which is cool and slightly unnerving. They also filter though mythology a lot, particularly Norse, and have a lot of dark omens about them. Crows aren’t called ‘Carrion Crows’ for nothing. VORON embraces a lot of this stuff, though it gets a bit too lost in it at times.
Raven Mad
I promise I’ll talk about the game now. VORON: Raven’s Story follows a family of ravens. You start off as a little chick, just barely able to walk, before learning to fly and growing into a fine adult. Once you’re all grown up, your family decides to fly to the World of the Gods. We’re in Norse mythology here, and Odin has a love for ravens. Unfortunately, the world serpent Jormungandr has other ideas, and blasts the family apart. Our little raven picks himself up, and learns to fly again with the help of a special feather. He sets off to locate his family’s souls, and make his way to the World of the Gods.
When playing as a bird, the first question is going to be: how are the flying controls? VORON does well in this aspect. We fly where the camera is pointing, so going up and down feels smooth. We can accelerate and decelerate easily and, crucially, we can hover for a little while, so it’s possible to actually see things. Simply gliding forward over the landscape feels great. Landing is a bit of a faff though, as sometimes our little bird will refuse to stop. Half the time, it was quicker just to smack into things, causing the raven to ragdoll to the ground. Not as majestic, but quite funny to watch.
On The Wing
VORON‘s main gameplay loop is split between flying around the overworld, and completing puzzle sections. The puzzles do well at wringing out the flying mechanics. They start off with simple switch puzzles, but later on we need to fly through gates and hit targets in time limits. The nice flying mechanics make them fun, but they’re a bit limited. The only brain-scratchers come at the very start, whereas the gate puzzles feel strangely easy. Flying is limited by a stamina bar, but we can extend this with some easy-to-find secrets, so the bottom drops out of things a bit.
The overworld suffers from a similar problem: a nice central idea that’s left unexplored. Essentially, to find our family, we need to collect and save lost souls. These take the form of side-quests, scattered around a series of small overworlds. They have a lot of potential. One has you following the soul of a man slowly remembering how he lost his family. That was quite heartfelt stuff. But the first island is the only one with multiple actual quests. The last one just has a bunch of blue people that you fly into to collect. There was a lot of potential to breathe life into the world, but it was sadly underutilised.
VORON – Gorgeous Yet Limited
Lastly, if the screenshots didn’t convey it, VORON is beautiful. Right after booting it up, you’re assaulted by a wave of bright colours. It’s almost too much. If you go and stick your beak right into the textures, you might notice some limitations (like grass that magically disappears), but when you’re in the air? It’s like flying through a painting. I love it. Each region is visually distinct too. Given that we spend a lot time flapping from place-to-place, beautiful scenery was a necessity.
There’s also this underlying current of Norse mythology that weaves everything together. It’s mostly told through text dumps, but we get to fight Jorgumandr at the end, which is nice. Still, it’s worth mentioning that VORON is rather short, clocking in at three hours. I enjoyed my time with it, though. The nice flying controls, and pleasant graphics and atmosphere kept me engaged. While I don’t think it pushes its world as far as it could have done, VORON is an experience that feels pleasant and heartfelt.
