Ravenswatch – Preview

Roguelike and Roguelite games have always been popular, but the genre saw a massive boom in popularity thanks to titles such as The Binding of Isaac. The high-stakes fast-paced gameplay proved to be perfect for those looking to play games in short bursts, as well as those who would go on to continue to tackle the challenges of said games for hours on end. For today’s preview, we’ll be looking at Ravenswatch, an upcoming Roguelite title developed by Passtech Games and published by Nacon. The game had been on our radar for quite some time, as the main characters all come from legendary tales, such as Beowulf and Aladdin.

Even though Ravenswatch incorporates characters from different legendary tales, it sadly doesn’t come with any story value whatsoever. You are basically thrown into the game, and you are informed a great evil will awake in a few days’ time. After this, you’re either fending for yourself, or you’re battling the nasty monsters around you with a group of friends. It is basically your goal to kill as many monsters in a few days as possible in order to gain experience, upgrades, and so on. If you dawdle too much, you’ll be fairly underpowered when you are summoned to battle the big bad monster. The game is played from an isometric point of view, and is somewhat reminiscent of a Diablo game, albeit in a Roguelite format.

As a whole, the game looks quite pretty. The characters all look unique, and there is enough enemy variety in the first chapter (the only chapter currently available). The game has a more comic book-like appearance, somewhat reminiscent of Battle Chasers: Nightwar. We do hope the upcoming chapters present us with more enemy types and more unique locations, however. We can imagine if the enemy variety is not increased over the course of the next chapters that the game may become a dull experience.

Truth be told, we very much enjoyed the overall gameplay loop. Some characters handle a bit better than others, but as a whole, you’ll certainly find a character you’ll enjoy playing with. The controls are very responsive, and you’ll quickly get the hang of the different characters. We do have to mention that the Snow Queen felt a bit clumsy to work with, and she felt more useful for actual multiplayer sessions, whereas the other characters still managed quite well in a single-player setting. Each of these characters has its own skill set, which often consists of both offensive and defensive skills. Beowulf, for example, is also a lot sturdier than the Pied Piper, who is more effective at fighting from a further range.

There is actually not that much more to tell, as the current Early Access version only has one chapter available which you can beat within the course of half an hour. Of course, there are different characters to try out and different difficulty settings, but we can’t help but wonder if the full game will also have a problem with its overall content. We read that the full game will have four chapters to play through, but this would still mean that Ravenswatch would be a very short game.

Conclusion

We thoroughly enjoyed trying out the different playable characters in the Early Access version of Ravenswatch. The game’s concept is interesting and the overall gameplay loop is entertaining, and this title does have a lot of potential. Sadly, we only got to see a tiny glimpse of what this game could become, as the current content on offer is quite slim. If you’re looking for a Roguelite game that feels a bit like a Diablo game, then we suggest keeping track of this one, but as it stands now, you’re barely getting any content for its fairly high price tag. Don’t get us wrong, the game is already a lot of fun, but we are missing some content for us to keep coming back to it.

Ibuki

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Aspiring ninja.

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