Ravenlok’s wonderful ’80s inspirations and voxel evolution
July 13, 2022The next voxel masterpiece from the team behind Echo Generation pulls from a slew of inspirations, not just Alice in Wonderland.
“I have been revisiting a lot of the classics – Labyrinth, The Neverending Story and The Chronicles of Narnia,” Ravenlok game director Vanessa Chia told Epic Games Store in a recent interview. “The works of Studio Ghibli are a wonderful source of inspiration, especially My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service and Spirited Away. These stories tug at the heartstrings and bring you on an unforgettable adventure, which we hope to capture in Ravenlok.”
Ravenlok, which was announced during the Xbox and Bethesda Showcase this summer, is the third and final game in Cococucumber’s Voxel Trilogy. Its trailer, which shows a girl falling through a mirror into a fantasy world packed with outlandish characters including a rabbit and queen decked out in red, drew some comparisons to both Alice in Wonderland and American McGee’s own, darker take on Lewis Carroll’s work.
“Alice in Wonderland is often the first thing people think about when they see Ravenlok, and is of course one of our inspirations,” Chia said. “It’s impossible to outmatch the Disney animation, or Tim Burton’s films, so from the start we wanted to make it clear that ours is its own thing. In terms of the structure, we’re sticking to the formula of ‘Girl falls into a magical world and goes on a journey to discover who she is’ but using it as a way to tell a story that is meaningful to us.
“An inspiration for me is exploring the idea of identity, in particular Asian identity. It is not explicit that Kira is Asian, but reimagining a story about how a girl with this background who goes through this journey into a magical world adds another layer. Why can’t an Asian girl be a hero in this topsy-turvy world?”
To read the rest of this story, which first ran on July 13, 2022, visit the Epic Games Store.
