One month?? Just one more month until the release of Ritual of Raven? That seems surreal! Honestly it feels as though we just announced this game last month and then showed it off at Gamescom for the first time. And now here we are: July 7th, 2025 - exactly one month before the full release (August 7th)! 😮
The last few weeks on our end have been spent bug hunting (and catching) 🐛🪲🐞 and with lots of playtesting, so that your experience will hopefully be a rather smooth one! So as we prepare to get our game ready to go, we haven’t really implemented any big changes we want to show you, but rather let’s take this time to look back. To reflect. To see where the idea initially started, how it transformed and how far we’ve come! Hopefully this is as fun for you to see as it was for us! 💜
🌱 Early Beginnings
We first started working on the idea of a witchy farming simulator with a twist back in June 2021. And our first goal was to get some funding so we could continue working on it and bring the project to life. And after a few quite nerve-wracking months, we did end up securing said funding - Project Ritual of Raven could continue! 🥳
Here’s a few early impressions of some concepts:
The first bits of programming we did… 😅
And some early key art! 🥰
🤖 Prototype
In January of 2022 we then decided to make it official and founded Spellgarden Games as you know it now! Meanwhile we were constantly working on a prototype for Ritual of Raven that we could then show publishers and colleagues to tweak and improve it. This phase went on until around June 2022, let’s look at a few impressions:
In our next step we started searching for a publisher for this project. This phase actually went on for a while and we even started working on our other game Sticky Business in the meantime. 😮🐸
And then in July of 2023 (two years ago now!) we signed with Team17 and from there on developed Ritual of Raven with monthly milestones. Which basically means we got together at the start to define what would be implemented in the game at the end of each month and then periodically checked in to at some point end up with a finished game in our hands. 🤩
During this time we actually made quite a few changes to the overall aesthetic, came up with tons of mock-up UIs and of course always worked on more content and mechanics for the game. Look at this old GIF we found:
And then at some point we ended up with the look and feel that you can now see in our game:
🎨 Concept vs. Final Art
The main aesthetic aside, let’s also dive into some more specific mechanics and how we came up with the idea for them! 💭
Before we truly commit to anything, we usually do little sketches, doodles & tests to try and visualize if a certain idea will work in the game, play well and look nice! And upon diving into our vault full of dev secrets, we found some of these to share with you! 🤫
🎣 Portal Fishing
Ritual of Raven of course has its very own fishing mechanic - portal fishing essentially. With this one there’s no complicated mini game but rather we wanted this to feel like one of those arcade claw machines where you can get plushies - but make it magical.
First up we started with some basic concepts on the portal and hook style:
Then we wanted to visualize this in the game and get a feel for how it plays and if it actually brings that fun twist to it, so we put in some placeholder graphics, had very limited animations and also no sound whatsoever:
And finally we ended up with this version of our magical arcade-like fishing mechanic:
⌛ Seals
In addition to the cards (which act as the direct tasks that will be carried out by the constructs), you can also apply so called seals. These will lead to the magic always being carried out at a specific point in time such as every morning, repeatedly or whenever someone comes close!
Once again before implementing these, we wanted to visualize where you would apply them and also what types of seals we would have alongside an idea of what the little icons could look like:
In this case we even went ahead and chopped up the concept art to use it in our game for a while - it definitely made us giggle every time… 😅
Until finally we of course replaced the seals with the pretty pixel version and finalized the UI for it as well:
💇 Character Customization
Everyone loves character customization, right? Getting to make just a few changes to make your character look more like yourself or the way you want just adds a little something to the overall feel! And so of course we also wanted to add that to Ritual of Raven. ✨
Once again it all sort of started with an initial sketch:
The first version we then built into the game was admittedly not the cutest, but simply meant to be very practical:
And after we had implemented a few more hairstyles and clothing options, we once again sat down to create some mock-ups and ended up with our final version:
🛋️ Interiors
Similarly, before fully implementing interiors with all their items and functions in the game, we first worked on some concepts: Putting together the basic layout, must have-items that fit their story and personality as well as a color scheme:
🤩 Before & After
And last but not least, why not go over a couple of fun before & after pictures! 🥳
The main menu of the game:
The sleep screen, when going to the next day:
And the map with placeholder houses and puzzle locations vs. the final map overview:
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And there we have it. A nice little trip down memory lane in preparation for the full release! 🥰
We hope you’re all excited and ready for August! For us it’s definitely getting more real by the minute and anticipation (as well as nervousness) is for sure rising!
We can’t wait for you to experience Ritual of Raven VERY soon!
-Spellgarden Games 🔮