Kickstarting Bloodstained
Praise Dracula you weak and miserable piles of secrets! Iga’s coming home! The former Konami producer has graced us shallow mortals with a promise of a new game! Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night!
For those of you who don’t know, another Japanese video game developer has joined the ranks of Kickstarter after being silently retired by their company after years of dedicated service. This time it’s Koji Igarashi producer of the hit Castlevania series and among one of my favourite producers.
Igarashi is the mind best associated with the game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night the game that is known for taking the Castlevania franchise from a 2D side scrolling platformer to the second most well-known franchise for Metroidvania (platformer exploration) games.
If Igarashi has a reputation it’s for two key things: One; he’s constantly refining and improving his games and he’s known for not settling and retrying until he attains the version he wants. Two; he’s a fanboy’s dream when it comes to writing canon for a game’s lore. This is a man who unified the Castlevania timeline in a way you wish the Zelda timeline was unified.
As of right now, every outlet is trying to get their hands on Igarashi for answers about Bloodstained. Destructoid managed to get this gameplay simulation video from him:
And Polygon spent a day with him making the trailer for the Bloodstained Kickstarter but you won’t learn much about the game there.
Most of the information every news outlet has comes from the Bloodstained Kickstarter page. There’s the single still image of the mockup of in game combat (posted below for your benefit) and the early plot revealing a female protagonist named Miriam who can craft weapons from various items she acquires along her journey.
Stricken with a terrible curse (Not everyone will get that but the right people will) Miriam must defeat the antagonist Gebel as she shares the same curse that has turned him into the monster he is currently.
I don’t go into too much detail about the plot of Bloodstained because Igarashi is just as likely to throw a twist in the plot as he is to revise it. To say the least, this is an attempt to create a Castlevania story without calling it Castlevania and everyone involved and reporting this story (including Igarashi himself) have admitted as much.
The project is currently receiving support from former Konami staff who’ve worked with Igarashi on previous Castlevania projects as well as being developed by Inti Creates, the same team bringing us Mighty No. 9 this coming September. As of this writing the project has received over triple its base funding goal and will likely hit an even two million within the next twenty-four hours.
For now, the rest of us have a choice as we do with every Kickstarter: Do we back it, or wait?
