"Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night"/505 Games
"Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night" is the spiritual successor to the PlayStation classic "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night," and shares the same artist.
- "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night" is the latest game from former "Castlevania" producer Koji Igarashi.
- In 2015, more than 60,000 fans pledged a total of $5.5 million to fund the game's creation via Kickstarter.
- "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night" is a spiritual successor to Igarashi's most-celebrated game, "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night," with all the flourishes of a modern classic.
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There are few video games that are as influential as "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night." Released for the PlayStation in 1997, the game was a masterpiece - a fully orchestrated, vampire-hunting adventure with pinpoint controls and a haunting atmosphere that inspired countless copycats and defined a new genre of video games dubbed "Metroidvania."
Koji Igarashi was one of the lead programmers and writers for "Symphony of the Night" and produced more than a dozen "Castlevania" games for Konami between 2000 and 2010. However, when Konami shifted toward developing shorter mobile games instead of traditional console titles, Igarashi decided to leave the company and the "Castlevania" franchise behind.
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In 2015, Igarashi asked fans to help fund a spiritual successor to "Castlevania;" that game was "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night." More than 60,000 backers pledged a total of more than $5.5 million to the "Bloodstained" Kickstarter project, more than 10 times Igarashi's original goal of $500,000.
"Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night" Kickstarter
This concept art of "Bloodstained" helped convince fans to pledge millions on Kickstarter.
The additional pledges were used to fund additional features and content for "Bloodstained," like extra bosses, a second playable character, and a cooperative mode. The funds even helped Igarashi produce a second retro-style prequel game called "Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon." While the game had initially been scheduled for a March 2017 release, it was delayed for more than two years so the development team could deliver on all of the promised features.
Now, four years after the Kickstarter was first funded, "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night" has arrived - and it's everything fans were waiting for.