Ravenswatch's newest hero rides a bear into battle
Passtech Games has revealed Kintaro, a folklore hero who fights on foot or from the back of his bear Kuma, as Ravenswatch’s next playable character on 12 October.
Passtech Games has revealed the next hero joining Ravenswatch, and he comes with a bear. Kintaro, a fighter lifted from Japanese folklore, joins the co-op roguelike’s roster on 12 October, the studio said in a post on the game’s Steam page and a reveal teaser on its own YouTube channel, both published on 21 September. He is the game’s third Hero DLC, after Romeo & Juliet and January’s Merlin.
One hero, two bodies
Kintaro is not one character so much as a pair. Passtech describes him as "a child mounted on a bear who wields an axe with exceptional strength", and the two halves are meant to be played together: Kintaro fights from Kuma’s back for heavy charges and close-in melee, or on foot beside the animal with the axe, switching between the two stances as a fight develops.
"Play as the Golden boy Kintaro, a legendary hero straight from Japanese folklore," the studio writes on the DLC’s own page. "Switch between a classic playstyle and dual gameplay, controlling two characters at once."
What arrives with him
The Hero DLC is a paid one at $7.99 across all platforms, and the studio lists a fully voiced storyline and premium outfits in the pack. Everyone else gets the free half of the update: a Talents Rework for every hero in the game, plus quality-of-life tuning and balancing that ships alongside the character. Passtech flagged the rework in a community post on 3 September, when it told players the free update would arrive "alongside Ravenswatch’s next Hero DLC" and held a developer stream on 21 September to reveal the newcomer.
It is the shape the studio has used all year: May’s free Songs of Thieves update added a new enemy faction and fresh room types, while the Mercenaries Skin Pack that landed with it cost $3.99. Ravenswatch is also on its way to Nintendo Switch 2 this autumn, announced in May.
A game that keeps growing
The base game dates its full release to 26 September 2024: a roguelike action game from the Curse of the Dead Gods team in which folk-tale heroes race a clock through a corrupted world alone or in online co-op. Passtech and publisher Nacon have kept a steady cadence since, and March’s roadmap post promised "another round of updates and DLCs in 2026 and 2027".
Our opinion
Seven dollars and ninety-nine cents for a character is a reasonable ask in a game that has never charged for the parts that keep people playing. New enemy factions, new room types, reworked magical objects and now a rework of every hero’s talents have all arrived free. The more interesting bet is the design one. Ravenswatch’s heroes have always been a single body with a single rhythm, and building a character who is a boy and a bear with two separate fighting stances is the first time Passtech has asked players to hold two things in their head at once.
The obvious risk is balance. When the free half of an update is a talent rework and the paid half is a bear, players will want to know whether the bear hits harder. The teaser does not say, and the patch notes that matter arrive with the character on 12 October. For now the studio has earned some patience: it has iterated in public for a year and a half, and a roster that already runs from Aladdin to Sun Wukong can absorb one more folk hero with unusual plumbing.