Review

Ravenswatch review

Stylish rogue-like with cool characters and amazing art style

When you have absolutely no energy or time to play something big and beautiful, what comes to the rescue? Thaaat’s right! Something small and repetitive! For me, today that’s Ravenswatch — a fun and pretty damn stylish isometric roguelike from the small French studio Passtech Games.

The concept is pretty simple and familiar if you’ve played modern games in the genre:

• start a run
• hit some POIs, fight mobs, level up
• fight a boss
  • win — move on to the next level
  • lose — back to the menu

During a run, you slaughter mobs and explore the map, earning XP along the way. Every time you level up, you get fully healed and pick a talent. A talent is a passive that noticeably buffs or outright changes one of your abilities. At level 5 you get your ult, and at level 10, a powerful passive.

There’s straightforward meta-progression between runs: the more you play a character, the more passive talents you unlock to choose from during a run. Eventually, you unlock a second ultimate, extra skins, bits of lore, and so on.

What I REALLY loved about Ravenswatch is the character design. We get all sorts of characters from fairy tales and folklore (and some slightly less traditional sources). The base game gives us:

• Scarlet — Little Red Riding Hood
• The Pied Piper — the Pied Piper of Hamelin, who plays his little pipe and has rats following him around
• Beowulf — Beowulf
• The Snow Queen — the Snow Queen
• Aladdin — Aladdin
• Mélusine — a mermaid
• Geppetto — Geppetto, Pinocchio’s old man
• Sun Wukong — the Monkey King, aka “Vukong” in Russian (though the pedant in me is screaming “It’s Ukun”!!!)
• Carmilla — Carmilla, the famous vampire lady

There are also a couple of character DLCs:

• Romeo — uh… Romeo
• Juliet — Juliet
• Merlin — Merlin

And every character is so damn well done! Each has their own unique mechanics, skills, and abilities. Little Red stabs the undead with her little knives during the day, then turns into a massive wolf with a whole different set of abilities at night. Aladdin can make different wishes and fly around on his little carpet. Geppetto carves living puppets on the go, and they fight for him. Wukong switches between Yin and Yang stances. Romeo and Juliet’s abilities and ultimates interact with each other and work a little differently when both characters are on the map together, and so on.

The graphics and art style deserve a special mention. Cartoonishly dark, smooth, easy on the eyes… Just gorgeous! And the music? The overall style? Even the main menu!

So yeah — a really fun game, especially in co-op. I’ve played solo, as a duo, and in a group of three. And the most boring option is, of course, solo runs😅

In ~15 hours, I’ve unlocked every character, made it through all 3 levels and killed all 3 bosses several times. Leveled up some characters, and I keep catching myself wanting more!

Definitely recommend checking it out. Here’s the link, and it’s currently 50% off, too!

Hugs to you all!❤️

IndieActionRoguelikeCoop