Former Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi released revealed a Kickstarter campaign for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, an action platformer with RPG elements inspired by classic ‘Igavania’ titles such as Symphony of the Night.
Now, people LOVE these games, so it’s no surprise to see Bloodstained absolutely wreck its campaign goal after only a few days; it’s currently sitting pretty on a total of $1,276,391, from a $500,000 goal, with 31 days still to go.
Described on its campaign page as an ”exploration-focused, side-scrolling platformer featuring RPG and crafting elements”, Bloodstained casts players as an orphan named Miriam, who’s been scarred by an alchemist’s curse that is slowly turning her body to crystal. Her old friend Gebel has the same disease, and has taken the inadvisable step of holing himself up in a demon-filled castle, where he’s now plotting the downfall of mankind. Your job is to stop him, and you’ll do so by exploring the castle and its grounds in retro 2.5D, bonking monsters on the head and gathering materials to craft new weapons and items.
”IGA (that’s Igarashi’s nickname) decided to go with 2.5D for this project for both financial and artistic reasons,” explains a post on the campaign page. ”All decisions in game development involve trade-offs, and for Bloodstained a 2.5D world built on Unreal Engine 4 was the right choice to balance development time, graphical fidelity, budget, and scope. At the same time, IGA is very excited about exploring the paths a 2.5D style opens up within the classic Igavania formula. As he begins a new chapter of his career as a developer, he’s looking forward to trying things that will enhance, rather than detract from, that core gameplay.”
Igarashi is heading studio Inti Creates in development of the game, a team made up from several industry veterans. As you’ve probably guessed already, the campaign includes a number of stretch goals, all of which have already been unlocked. It turns out people really missed Castlevania. Veteran voice actor and original Solid Snake David Hayter is now on board, and backers have also unlocked a second playable character, cheat codes, local co-op and more.
The team behind Bloodstained has yet to respond to the project’s impressive success, but given the length of time left to go, I’d expect them to come up with some more stretch goals. The game’s still in the conceptual phase right now, so there’s no release schedule planned just yet.
