Ravenswatch Interview: Future Updates Will Bring More To The Existing Chapters

Margaux: Hi! I’m Margaux Saly, Communications Director at Passtech Games. I’ve been working at the company for over 5 years, overseeing everything related to communication, community, and marketing for Passtech.

I’m working hand in hand with our publisher, Nacon, on communication plans, trailers, marketing asset creation, and community management.

Margaux: New Heroes will join the Ravenswatch in 2025 and hopefully beyond! We’re currently working on a new roster of characters, which will be available with free and paid DLCs. For now, we’ve announced that the next Heroes to join the Ravenswatch will be an inseparable duo that must be played in co-op! This will be our first free DLC.

As for new Chapters, we’d rather focus on adding new content to the existing three Chapters for now. We genuinely believe that replayability lies in the variety of events and activities that players encounter while roaming through Dark Hills, Storm Island, and Avalon. We’re not against adding new Chapters in the distant future, but we feel that there’s still so much that we can add to the game before even thinking about going that route.

Margaux: Our plan is a mix of both. We’re working on major new content updates that will be free and released periodically. These updates will add new activities, enemies, and more to the game to increase replayability and also bring a breath of fresh air to veteran players. We just launched the Nightmares Unleashed update on January 30th, which goes into this category.

We will also need to have paid DLCs to support the development costs of Ravenswatch. Those DLCs will be a mix of cosmetics, such as skins, as well as new Heroes that will join the Ravenswatch.

Margaux: We’ve got more ideas for new Modifiers and Challenges, for sure! It’s too early to tell, but having more fun and exotic ways of playing is something we’re interested in for the longevity of the game.

Margaux: We’re open to exploring even more folklore with new Heroes and themed quests. We dabbled a little bit in the Chinese and Syrian cultures with Sun Wukong and Aladdin, but we’re keen on adding more representations

Margaux: When we started the development of Ravenswatch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series consoles had not even been released yet. We knew by the time the game would reach version 1.0 that this newer generation would be the norm, but it was always the goal to make Ravenswatch as accessible as possible, even on older generations of consoles.

With our proprietary engine, it wasn’t difficult to work simultaneously on all versions of the game to ensure optimization of game performance. But this is inevitably a major undertaking, which usually takes place long after the game has been developed for PC.

Margaux: Ravenswatch was released on Nintendo Switch on January 23rd. Porting to the Nintendo Switch always brings its fair share of challenges, but nothing we can’t handle. We’ve been developing on the console since 2018, and we’re well aware of its capabilities. But each new game is more ambitious than the previous one, which means we need to make choices and a few sacrifices to gain a smooth and stable experience. What matters most in a game like Ravenswatch is the feeling of its combat, and that was our top priority for this port.

Margaux: It will probably be a little rocky at the beginning, I’m sure, but the goal is to always have PC and consoles in sync. With the crossplay feature incorporated into the game, we need to maintain the same level of content and quality on all platforms if we want to avoid creating a split in the community.

We are working closely with our producers and release managers to ensure that our updates and DLCs are released in sync.

Margaux: It’s true that Roguelike games are a competitive niche, but it’s growing bigger each year. With Ravenswatch, I think we had two different approaches compared to Curse of the Dead Gods, our previous game.

The first one is obviously the multiplayer aspect of the game. Even though Ravenswatch is not the first co-op roguelike, I think it brings freshness to the genre, especially with the wide variety of characters in the roster.

The second one is the freedom that is given to the player with our small open worlds (we like to call them ‘pocket open maps’). Players are quick to embrace this different way of exploring and playing, and many find elements of RPGs, MOBAs, and even hack-n-slash in it.

Margaux: The challenge is real, and there’s no guarantee of success, even for well-established game studios. At Passtech Games, we try our best to make our games a mark of visual, technical, and gameplay quality.

We’re also working closely with the players, and it’s something that is deeply appreciated by our community. We want to ensure that players have multiple ways to reach out and share their feedback about our games. I genuinely believe that one of the studio’s most valuable assets is the trust our community has in us. It comes with making games of good quality but also being transparent with them.

Margaux: That’s a tricky question! Retention is definitely something that we’re chasing after for Ravenswatch. Being a multiplayer game, I would say we have a good starting point, but we need to continuously add new content and shift the game’s meta to keep players on the edge of their seats.

Our strategy is to have a mix of content and balancing updates that appeal to both new and veteran players.

Margaux: We have no plans to expand the multiplayer capabilities in such ways. Ravenswatch will stay a 1-4 cooperative game. But we do have ideas to spice it up, for example, with our next Hero DLC, which will bring a dynamic pair that must be played in co-op.

Margaux: I think I’m good, thanks for the interview!