I’d like to thank all of you who’ve took the time to play ‘Valravn’, it’s a little more artistic and I took some risks with the pacing, story-telling and scope. It’s a little story, a little game, with little consequence, but this is a really important character moment for Hakon, so important that I felt it needed it’s own game.

Generally, I find the Winter is a bewildering time of year- I get Christmas cards from people I haven’t spoken to in months, and too often, it’s filled with the stress of present (product) buying, with many stuck in the consumer trap of ‘if I don’t buy x something, they’ll think I don’t care!’ (and then buying something X didn’t want in the first place), it's tokenistic and sometimes, quite empty-feeling.

I also hear ‘Ahh, well, I bet we’re all excited for Christmas!’?... with the backdrop of the world as it is right now…I can understand that many want to cling to the perhaps artificial cheer that Christmas is expected to bring, that it’ll be a peaceful day that soothes all ills, but we know that isn’t true.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a Scrooge, I love the joys of Christmas, and I adore the spirit of hope it brings, this is not me derailing seasonal cheer. But Christmas isn’t a happy time for everyone, not every year. It can be very isolating and lonely for some, or suffocating for others.  I wanted to make a game that reflects that it’s okay to be pensive at Christmas… my other message was that bereavement can hit us particularly hard during the Festive period.

Hakon has not only lost someone who he is slowly realising was more than a friend but he’s also lost his connections with ‘modern society’, he can’t deal with all this sudden ‘seasonal cheer’ - it all feels like an uphill struggle, he’s stuck in the inertia of loss and needs some kind of catalyst. So he’s become a raven and tried to dissociate from it all,  he can’t feel like he’s part of a society that forces him to be happy when the person he loves has been stolen from him.

There are two endings…and I shan’t spoil too much, but one represents the hope, and the other represents the realities that some of us face. Whilst some have access to the right support and people, who will help them overcome the grief in a healthy way, others do not, and they start to think ‘better the devil you know…’.  

 Similarly, there are 2 songs I really wanted to introduce as inspiration for this game. 

One called ‘The Old Churchyard' (as performed by me on the game’s menu 😉) – is a tragically beautiful traditional folksong that I think is criminally underperformed. This version is spectacular. 

I think it’s important to recognise that death can often be overly romanticised in folk songs, and this is certainly one of those songs. For someone like Hakon, such songs may resonate with his state of mind at the beginning of the game…which is why he is there in the first place.

 The first time I heard the next song, ‘the Lily and the Rose’, I basically burst into tears. I had never heard this song before and as a frequent folk club attendee, I have a fairly good knowledge of them. The tenderness of the words and the choir in this performance is so emotionally provocative that I just had to get some of the ideas and concepts into this game. An absolute masterpiece.

So again, I’d like to thank anyone who has played this game. I hope you have a peaceful and restful Christmas if you can. For those who are struggling, remember, this time will pass and hope springs eternal.