I’d describe Graven as an inconsistent hybrid of retro-FPS, platforming and puzzle-centric adventure, and quest-driven RPG with hubs, dungeons, and light progression systems. It’s an incredibly methodical experience and, as someone who appreciates player-driven pacing, a degree of resource management, and games that reward caution and planning, Graven scratched just enough itches to keep me pushing forward despite its flaws.
The problem is if you stop and consider each element in isolation, they can feel underdeveloped or unpolished, while the increasingly prevalent combat is never particularly fun. It often felt like I was trying to exploit game systems to progress, which gives it an immersive sim vibe I appreciated at first. However, the longer I played, the harder it was to ignore weird design choices, the lack of simple quality-of-life features, constant jank, and potentially quest-breaking bugs.
I want to start with the positives though, as Graven has some great ideas. It has immersive environments, intriguing premise, a thick and oppressive atmosphere, and visuals that aim to look retro – think late ‘90s 3D first person games – but still with modern flourishes. Its grim world feels expansive and threatening (even if it’s packed with invisible walls), while the mix of creepy ambience and an excellent soundtrack set the tone.
You play as a disgraced priest of the “Orthogonal Order”, exiled and marked for death, after slaying a fellow priest about to sacrifice his adopted daughter. He awakens from a vision still alive, on a boat heading into the town of Cruxfirth deep in a foetid swamp. With staff in hand, he sets out to discover the archives of his order, the source of a plague afflicting the region, and hopefully clues as to the fate of his daughter.
It’s a brisk opening that leaves the player with as many questions as the priest, and no obvious path forward other than blind exploration. If the Orthogonal Order is a force of good, why did they condone his defence of another? Why is a formerly prosperous empire falling to ruin so swiftly? Why can he wield demonic-looking tomes with hymnal powers?
Aside from the narrated cutscenes between acts – most of which just explain how he gets from place to place – the storytelling is limited to expanding journal entries, discarded notes, and hints of environmental storytelling that often correlate to events described in said notes. I’d have loved some in-game commentary or voiced NPCs, rather than successive journal entry notifications, but it was enough narrative context to keep me going.
The initial sense of exploration when encountering a new region is also a treat – well, when all works as intended. The in-game map was purged for this release version, but Graven is more linear than it seems and getting truly lost is usually the result of missing a key or switch. There’s an immersive sim element to how you can stack boxes, discover secret passages, or take risky jumps to bypass a few barriers but, inevitably, you’ll need a new ability or key object to unlock a new region and push the narrative forward. To keep things fresh, that often requires solving a puzzle first – some intuitive, others less so – and you’ll unlock shortcuts back to the central hub as you go.
Sometimes you’ll just need to burn down an obstruction, destroy magical totems, or find an upgrade to pass through barriers. You’ll search for gears, switch handles, and components to activate devices, while other times you’ll use lightning to activate mechanisms or ice to slow them down. Tougher examples include solving a sliding-tile puzzle by interpreting cryptic notes, rotating hedge pieces in a maze to create a clear path through, and spotting far too many hidden switches in the gloom.
If nothing else, Graven makes exploring its world interesting and thrilling – especially when you factor in a checkpoint save, respawn system, and gold penalty that make venturing into a new area almost as terrifying as in a ‘Souls-like. Every location is more massive or complex than it first appears; you can often see distant locations, shortcut paths, or secrets long before you reach them; and looking back from whence you came gives an impressive sense of scale mixed with the anxiety of having to push out even further with depleted health, mana, and ammunition. It’s one of these games in which you can double your playtime if you enjoy thorough exploration.
It helps that direct combat feels awkward and risky – but also tactical and rewarding if you take the time to observe, plan, and prepare before charging in. Even if you’ve found every upgrade shrine, the priest remains much weaker than many foes, while his staff hits with the force of a feather pillow – even after discovering several upgrades stones. As such, you’re encouraged to keep your distance and use ranged or magical abilities in tandem with environmental hazards.
Shields can be burned away with a flame spell, enemies can be slowed with a frost spell, stunned briefly with lightning, or mass-electrocuted in water, while the strategic use of explosive crates and barrels can save you a lot of effort. As there’s no easy way to recover health, mana, or ammunition, intense battles are interspersed with bouts of barrels and crate-smashing, hoovering up classic pick-ups and hoping to find some secreted away armour or stashes of gold to upgrade weapons and spells in the hub towns.
It felt tough but fair given how Graven handles difficulty by changing up the number of foes you’ll face and their composition. Every enemy or boss is just as deadly on any difficulty – always keeping the stakes high – but there’ll be less of them and fewer tougher variants as you explore, making it easier to fight scrappily and still restock on ammunition and healing items between battles. That said, enemies are not particularly smart and don’t possess complex move-sets, but they can overwhelm you with sheer numbers and their dogged determination to pursue across the map.
On the whole, Graven does a decent job balancing exploration with puzzling and combat, especially in the lengthy opening act that was refined through early-access. The problem is a steady stream of major and minor issues that wear down any good will.
For early-access supporters who have been waiting for Acts 2 and 3, there’s a notable drop in complexity and quality compared to the first act. I still enjoyed the change in scenery from gloomy swamp, to snow-swept mountains and gothic castles, and sand-swept ravines with Middle Eastern-inspired architecture – but these acts have more of a hub-and-spoke structure with less prominent landmarks. There’s a less cohesive feel to the world and progression is affected. Key items, puzzle progress, unlocked paths, and completed set-pieces are preserved when you load back into the game, but it becomes preferable to simply quit and load back into the hub with less smart shortcuts. As you might expect, getting back on track if you need to take a break mid-quest also means a lengthy and boring trek in these later acts.
Equally problematic is how resource management and tactical combat become less significant as you upgrade several ranged weapons and ammunition drops become more abundant. By the mid-point of the second act, on the default Ordained difficulty, I could drop most enemies before they go close, chain-lightning the few that did, finish them off and still find abundant ammunition to restock a half dozen ranged weapons after each battle. Outside of boss encounters – which lock you into a small arena and play out like a clunky traditional FPS – combat begins to feel like an afterthought and it’s not helped by how little audiovisual impact most weapons and spells have on targets.
These were issues I could look past, but a steady stream of minor frustrations interspersed with major bugs I could not. A simple example is not being able to consume potions from within the inventory, or how weapons take up multiple quick-bar slots limiting your load-out; a entirely meaningly design when swapping them out in the inventory pauses the game. Another issue is how vague many journal entries are – doubly problematic without a map – or how illogical and arbitrary key hunts can feel. I once had to battle for an hour through mountain ramparts, solve several puzzles using a new ice spell, only to discover a rusty key that opened a toilet under a manor, which got me the part needed to power a door lock. Yes, Graven is emulating classic FPS that were often key hunts, but this feels at odds with more modern world-building.
There are bigger technical issues though. I’ve had enemies respawn on top of me while puzzle-solving. I’ve had to save, quit, and reload into the hub after getting stuck in multiple locations. I’ve had crouch-jumping mess with the character’s hit-box and make subsequent platforming sections impossible (until again saving, quiting, and reloading). I’ve had to abandon several secondary quests after key items simply disappeared from my inventory or when placed down in the environment. Most annoyingly, I had to load into a zone beneath the Act 3 hub, then kill myself to respawn in the city after magical barriers failed to disappear when completing a quest.
It puts Graven in an uncomfortable place right now on PC. There are structural issues in the later acts that will never change; there are missing quality-of-life features and balancing issues you’d expect to be resolved after years in early-access; and there are innumerable technical bugs both big and small that are slowly being patched post-launch. Despite those flaws, I still enjoyed the tense exploration in atmospheric environments with puzzle solving and secret hunting. With solid gamepad support, I’m looking forward to playing through the console version when it comes out – if only to benefit from a few more patches and a suspend-feature that’ll make it easier to take a breather mid-quest without messing up scripting or having to slog back from the hub every time I reload.
The Graven 1.0 release was played on PC. It’s also coming to Xbox One/Series S|X, PS4/5, and Nintendo Switch at a later date.
