Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a Unique yet Familiar Castlevania Experience.
Certain games are comparable staples in video gaming. If you tell someone a game is like Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, or Call of Duty, you get a pretty clear picture of just what that means. The name you will most often hear as a defining benchmark for gritty, compelling, side-scrolling platformers is Castlevania, and as soon as that name is heard you know you are in for a treat. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night takes several cues from the Castlevania series, and at first glance, it may even seem like another iteration in the Belmont families misadventures – which shouldn’t come as a surprise as the game is developed by Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi. We got a chance to go hands-on and preview the game at E3, and it’s definitely something you’ll want to check out if your ears pricked up at the sound of ‘Castlevania’.
Bloodstained follows the story of Miriam, an orphan girl who has been afflicted by an alchemists curse that is slowly turning her skin to crystal. To survive, Miriam must explore the castle and locate the summoner controlling the demons that surround her, as he has somehow survived the same affliction. Gameplay for Bloodstained is purposefully designed to be a similar to Castlevania as possible, with even the name ‘Ritual of the Night’ being incredibly similar to Castlevania’s ‘Symphony of the Night’.
After seeing the success of Might No.9’s Kickstarter campaign, Igashi was hopeful for the prospect of his own spin-off title and was inspired to create Bloodstained. With a Kickstarter goal of $500,000 and an aggressive marketing campaign, Igashi raised $5.5 million for the project, which is expected to launch in Q1 of 2018 on PC, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One.
