Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

***Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night*** is a 2.5D action-adventure, role-playing platform game created by Koji Igarashi, developed by ArtPlay and DICO (and formerly Inti Creates) and published by 505 Games. The game is a spiritual successor to Konami's *Castlevania* series. It was revealed on May 11, 2015 and funded the same day via Kickstarter. The planned release date for the game was March 2017, but was first delayed to the first half of 2018 due to increased complexity in achieving various stretch goals, and later delayed to 2019.

The game was developed for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. The Wii U port was also embedded in the stretch goals, which the project managed to reach as of May 30, 2015 and June 5, 2015, respectively. The Wii U port was canceled, however, and replaced with a Nintendo Switch port. Backers who picked the Wii U version were automatically switched to the Switch version, but were allowed to re-pick if desired. Additionally, backers who didn't want to pick any version altogether after the news, became eligible for refund.

It was later revealed in the forums that Inti Creates was no longer involved in the development of the game since the end of E3 2016 and had since shifted work on to the prequel game *Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon*; this left ArtPlay as the main developer and DICO as a third-party developer.

On December 27, 2018, Koji Igarashi announced that the Mac and Linux ports of the game had been canceled due to complications with supporting the middleware, as well as online feature support.

On May 2, 2019, the release dates for the game had finally been announced by Roberto Piraino, 505 Games Brand Manager. The port for the Nintendo Switch was released on June 25, 2019, a week later after the other platforms.

An iOS and Android port of the game published by NetEase Games was released on December 3, 2020. This version includes onscreen buttons to play the game via the devices' touchscreens.

## Setting

The setting of *Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night* is England around the late 1700s, about two decades into the Industrial Revolution. A group of alchemists, fearing its waning relevancy as science captures the 18th century setting, try to warn against the world losing faith. The alchemists then decide to summon demons to earth. Miriam, an orphan, is infused with magical crystals that attract these demons. However, Miriam falls into a comatose state, rendering her unable to be used as the sacrifice. However, using Gebel, the Alchemists are successful in summoning the demons. Having miraculously survived the ritual, Gebel decides to take revenge. Using his powers to summon demons, he destroys the Alchemist’s Guild. After 10 years, Miriam awakens, while at the same time a demonic castle emerges from the remains of the Alchemist Guild.

## Plot

*"The Industrial Revolution ushered in a new era
that threatened to transform the values of men.
No longer would spirituality be their compass.
But not all welcomed the change."*
*In 1783, just as the fires of the Laki Eruption
had plunged all of Europe
into an ashen darkness…*

*a horde of demons spilled from the shadows
and fell upon city after English city.
It was a message.*

*The Alchemy Guild, fearing the rise of
industrialism and abandonment
by their wealthy patrons, had done
the unthinkable to defend their existence.*

*Through recondite arts, the Alchemists
had created Shardbinders:
humans transplanted with crystal
that attuned them to demonic power.
They sacrificed the Shardbinders,
and in doing so threw
the gates of the world open to demonkind.*

*Countless innocents died.
And though the Church succeeded in vanquishing the hellsent,
a steep price had already
been paid and collected.*

*As for the Shardbinders, they were presumed
to have all died in the sacrificial rite.
However, two survived:
Gebel, a boy for whom, by some miracle,
the rite did not prove fatal,
and Miriam, a girl who was spared the rite
altogether on account of the strange slumber
that took her just before it could begin.*

*Ten years have passed,
and mankind too soon forgets tragedy.*

*The demons have returned,
presaged by a great castle.
And on this very hour, Miriam awakens.
Upon learning Gebel is the architect of
this new, bloodstained ritual,
Miriam and the Alchemist Johannes
set forth for the accursed castle.*

*Their galleon cuts through the water,
lancing toward the inevitable...*

You are Miriam, an orphan scarred by an alchemist curse which slowly crystallizes your skin. You must battle your way through a demon-filled castle summoned by Gebel, your old friend whose body has become more crystal than flesh.

## Characters

 **Gebel** | Original host for the magi-crystal curse that summons demons to the planet. Gebel (JEE-bill) was the only one to survive its effects at such a high level. He destroyed the guild that created him, but in doing so realized he was no longer human and had no place on Earth. This in turn, lead him to summon the demon castle from hell to appear on the planet.

It is said that his real purpose in summoning the castle was to give Miriam a place of her own, but as his Magi-crystal disease progressed, he soon forgot his own reasoning. The more he surrounded himself with hell-spawn, the quicker the magi-crystals engulfed his body. He continues to plot the downfall of man and how to best convince (or use) Miriam to achieve his dark ambition.

## Gameplay

The game will follow the "Igavania" model of game design, "A Gothic, exploration-focused action platformer", the setting being Gebel's castle which will house a variety of locations. Teleporters can be found around the castle that will allow the player to travel quickly in order to keep backtracking to a minimum. The game has been stated to contain of RPG elements in the same vain as previous Igavanias. By defeating enemies and completing quests, Miriam will gain powers enabled by the crystals on her body.

In addition, enemies in *Bloodstained* will drop which will play a role in the game's crafting system. IGA has said his current idea is that there will be five different kinds of drops, corresponding to different parts of an enemy, the heads, arms and so on and that even single monsters will have multiple drops. Of those drops, some of them will have magical abilities and they sparkle to show their rarity. Normal crafting materials will be used on quests or for weapons and armor, but the sparkling rares, if you level them, will become crystals. Those crystals will link with the magi-crystals on Miriam’s body and allow her to use special abilities/skills.

Another idea IGA has mentioned is for the drops to give different stat sub-effects: for example, an enemy head drop will raise magic power or a drop from an enemy leg/foot will raise movement speed. By using the different drop materials and the different stat sub-effects, the player will be able to customize Miriam to his or her liking.

The game will be presented in a 2.5D style and is built on Unreal Engine 4.

## Development

### Creation

*Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night* is Koji Igarashi's newest "metroidvania" following the release *Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia* in 2008. It is his first project after having left Konami in March 2014 where he served as producer of the *Castlevania* series from 1997 to 2010 until the series was rebooted by Spanish developer MercurySteam in the form of *Castlevania: Lords of Shadow*. Following this departure he stated: "I've decided to break out on my own to have the freedom to make the kind of games I really want to make — the same kind I think fans of my past games want as well."

The project initially struggled with finding an interested publisher. First, there was interest in acquiring the game's funding through traditional business model. IGA hired Ben Judd, Executive Director of Business Development at DDM, as his agent and spent nine months meeting with publishers to pitch *Bloodstained*. However, for a variety of different reasons, all of them decided to pass on funding the game. In an interview with USgamer Igarashi said: "We had a great pitch and we took it around to pretty every single publisher. And while it's not cheap because it's an original title and you have to make assets from the ground up, it still wasn't something that was extremely expensive. Still, there were no publishers that were willing to take a chance on it. [...] there seemed to be a huge disconnect between what publishers are looking for and what fans want."

Because IGA was involved, it reduced the risk of the project according to Judd, but a lot of Japanese publishers were hesitant because their American and European subsidiaries had different views on successful the project would be in their respective territories; *Castlevania* being a franchise that historically resonated more with American audiences rather than European ones. "So, unless Europe and America agree on a concept together, then it doesn’t move forward.", said Judd. Western publishers believed the Japanese aesthetics would not appeal to the market while mid-tier with ties to Konami who didn't wish to go against the company. As a result, IGA decided to take a day job at the Japanese branch of Chinese mobile game studio Artplay. But he struck an agreement with ArtPlay that would allow him to pursue console game opportunities on the side, so Judd could continue looking for financing to make the game.

Eventually, some investment to support the project was found. Whether the investment came from a publisher or not hasn't been shared. However, proof that it would be something people wanted was still required. After becoming aware of Keiji Inafune's success with *Mighty Number 9* on Kickstarter, a spiritual successor to Capcom's *Mega Man*, IGA decided to turn to crowd funding as well and a Kickstarter campaign was launched on May 11th, 2015. The base goal was to accumulate $500,000 which would cover the remaining 90% of development costs. When deciding to do a Kickstarter, IGA and his team made some estimates of how much funding we might be able to raise, the lowest estimate being $800,000. However, this amount was already accumulated after a single day. Prior to the Kickstarter, the project was teased with a website featuring a character resembling IGA dressed as Dracula asking to choose between "sword or whip". The *Castlevania Dungeon* and *Anti-Chapel* forums also featured a mysterious message on their boards, saying: "Soon, I will return.", featuring a sprite of sword on the former and one of a whip on the latter.

Inti Creates, who assisted with developing *Mighty Number 9*, *Azure Striker Gunvolt* and *Mega Man 9* and *10*, was involved with the production of the game until 505 Games took its place later on. Artist Ayami Kojima was initially unable to join the project due to being occupied with other work, however during the Twitch live stream she sent an email to IGA and his peers, asking if she somehow could become involved. The reason she gave in the email for wanting join was that she was impressed with how quickly the campaign was being funded.

In March 2020 a backer update announced the planned "Roguelike" mode had been scrapped due to the existing work proving impossible to integrate into the game in its current state. Instead, a slightly more limited "Randomizer" mode was announced wherein eight different parameters can be customized to alter the player's gameplay experience, but the map will not be procedurally generated. It was further announced the planned Zangetsu mode would be delivered at the same time as Randomizer mode, and that Boss Revenge mode will follow in a subsequent content update.

### Story and world

To increase the sense of realism, IGA wanted the setting *Ritual of the Night* to be an actual period in history. An important theme for the game to him was a stronger connection between the world of fantasy and the world of reality. He decided the story's location to be England as it seemed like the kind of place where a demon summoning might have actually happened. He also did research into English history to see if there had ever been such an event. During this search he read about the Laki volcano eruption in Iceland from the 18th century, which killed one third of the country's population, as well as 23,000 people in England who died as a result of inhaling sulfur dioxide. In addition, due to a thick haze that had spread to Europe, it was said the day was as dark as night and the sun appeared blood red. For the game's story, IGA imagined this event to have been murderous rampage by something inhuman and that the eruption of the volcano was actually a cover-up story.

For the overall atmosphere, it was decided to use the 72 demons from the *Lesser Key of Solomon* as a base. Earlier in development, it was planned that the player would visit different countries around the world, but this idea was scrapped because according to IGA, depicting the native monsters from each country’s myths would have been too much variety and it also wouldn’t have given the right diversity of enemies needed to make the stage design interesting. For this reason, the demons from the above-mentioned grimoire were added. However, for the sake of variety, the enemy repertoire will not just consists of these demons, bur also other characters from Gothic horror as well.

### Development update

On June 8, a video featuring early gameplay footage was released. The video showed Miriam's basic attacks and some of her movement animations as she fights against floating star-shaped enemies.

Within the video itself, IGA talks about some of the design styles and the basic direction has has for the gameplay, explaining that he enjoys when programmers have input into the art direction for the game, as feels it adds visual content to the game's look.

At the end of the update, he explains that he was surprised the game's "punch" was as good as it was and felt that the impact of playing through the art he'd seen previously was a good experience. With this in mind he is sure that he'll be able to move forward in development, making an amazing game.

On its 72th update (August 20, 2018) on the *Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night* kickstarter page, it was announced that the game's launching would be pushed back to 2019 for development and quality reasons. It was also announced that the game would no longer be released on the PlayStation Vita due to Sony's plans to discontinue the system.

On its 84th update (May 23, 2019), 505 Games announced that a DLC for the game called, "Iga’s Back Pack," will launch on June 18th for the Xbox One, Steam, and PS4 while on June 25, it will launch on the Switch. The DLC, which will cost $9.99, will allow the game's player to fight a monstrous caricature of Igarashi himself and receive a Swordwhip as a reward for his defeat.

### Console exclusive content

The Nintendo Switch version was handled by Armature Studios and contains the following exclusive content:

* Will have Pro Controller support.
* Players will have the ability to draw/annotate/make-notes on the map.
* Players can use Handheld Mode for off-screen play.
* Players Mii's will appear in-game to some extent. How exactly is currently unknown.

The game had been in development for the Wii U; however, with the announcement of the Nintendo Switch, the Wii U was abandoned in favor of the newer hardware the Switch had to offer. While in development for the Wii U, Armature Studios had been attempting to use the Unreal Engine 4 in the Wii U port of the game, in order to have the Wii U version play just as smoothly as the other versions of the game.

At Gamescom 2015, IGA announced that the Xbox One and Windows 10 versions of *Bloodstained* would support cross-platform multiplayer, letting owners of both platforms play together.

## Reception

User-generated reviews on Steam were mostly positive. Most praised the nostalgia that the game had to offer due to memories from playing *Castlevania* titles such as *Symphony of the Night* and *Order of Ecclesia*. Others congratulated Igarashi for the successful development of a Metroidvania title without the *Castlevania* IP and claimed that the wait was indeed worth it. *Ritual of the Night*, however, was not without its criticism upon launch. Kotaku writer, Joshua Rivera, states that the game's storyline and mechanics are too familiar to fans of the Metroidvania genre. For example, he writes, "loads of games have done what *Castlevania* did well. *Hollow Knight* isn't that far in the rearview. *Timespinners* came out this month. *The Messenger* comes to mind. And those are just the recent standouts." Rivera does, however, praise the shinier aesthetics that separates it from *Symphony of the Night*.

On Metacritic, *Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night* receives a metascore of 83/100 on both PC and PS4, 84/100 on Xbox One, and 74/100 on Nintendo Switch.

### Criticism

According to Polygon, the premium DLC for *Bloodstained*, "IGA's Back Pack", drew heavy criticism from several fans because they were initially promised that the content would be exclusive to backers. While 505 Games acknowledged about DLC discussion is a sensitive topic, Robert Angel-Corlux had this to say; "Making this content available to everyone wasn’t just about making money. I mean obviously that’s a part of it, but the chief things I was considering was making sure everyone had a safe and legitimate way to get the full game experience no matter when they find out about *Bloodstained*, whether that’s 5 months ago or 5 years from now, and that we were being respectful of the price backers originally paid (hence the DLC pricing)." On a related note, a year prior to the *Ritual of the Night'*s release, 30,000 backers took a survey regarding how they felt about DLC and according to the results, they were fine with selling it provided that it would be sold "at a price that would respect the purchase the backers originally made." Furthermore, the 85th update on the Kickstarter page for *Bloodstained* stressed that while non-backers would pay $9.99 for the "IGA's Back Pack", those that backed the game in advance will receive it at no charge.

### Sales

On June 10th, 2020, *Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night* had sold a million copies worldwide, and the official Twitter account posted art to celebrate the occasion. As of September 6th, 2023, the game has sold two million copies worldwide, and celebratory art was shared during that announcement.

## Sequel

On June 3, 2021, after about a month of speculation due to the release of a quarter financial report from Digital Bros., *Bloodstained'*s official Twitter page has confirmed that a sequel to *Ritual of the Night* is in the works. The game's storyline is currently unknown and whether any main characters such as Miriam, Zangetsu, etc. will return remains to be determined. Koji Igarashi announced that, for now, the remaining DLC for *Ritual of the Night* is ArtPlay's top priority.

## Gallery

*Main article: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night/Gallery*
## Videos

*Main article: Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night/Videos*
## Trivia

* As of June 11, 2015, *Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night* is confirmed to be the most funded game on Kickstarter. As of the Kickstarter's end on June 12, 2015, it had raised $5,545,991.00.
* Those who wished to back the game's development despite the Kickstarter's conclusion, could do so through their PayPal/Slacker Backer option. Players who helped fund the game this way could still qualify for the $28 ~ $500 rewards. As the game reached the final stages of development, this option became unavailable to new backers.

## Related products

* *Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon* - Alternate universe to this game.
* *Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - The Definitive Soundtrack*

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Bloodstained Kickstarter page
2. ↑ Development Update #43
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Development Update #14
4. ↑ Development Update #18
5. ↑ Development Update #50
6. ↑ Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Official Forum
7. ↑ Ask IGA #2
8. ↑ Castlevania's IGA back with 'dream game' Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Destructoid
9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 9.4 9.5 Bloodstained – Developer Interview with Koji Igarashi originally featured in game\*spark
10. ↑ IGA on His Castlevania Spiritual Successor, Konami, More - Kinda Funny Gamescast Special
11. ↑ Koji Igarashi Leaves Konami, Polygon
12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Former Castlevania Producer Announces Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, IGN
13. ↑ Interview with IGA, US Gamer
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Koji Igarashi Day in the Life, Polygon
15. ↑ Castlevania's Koji Igarashi returns with new game, Gamasutra
16. ↑ Castlevania Dungeon
17. ↑ Chapel of Resonance
18. ↑ Koji Igarashi Episode 3 - The Ess Gee Bee
19. ↑ Publishing Update: Game Mode Details, Content Cadence, and More at Kickstarter | Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (March 2, 2020).
20. ↑ Update 72 from the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night kickstarter page.
21. ↑ Nintendo Everything
22. ↑ Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will feature cross-play between Xbox One and Windows 10 at Windows Central.
23. ↑ Metascore for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on PC*Metacritic*, Retrieved February 26, 2020
24. ↑ Metascore for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on PS4*Metacritic*, Retrieved February 26, 2020
25. ↑ Metascore for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Xbox One*Metacritic*, Retrieved February 26, 2020
26. ↑ Metascore for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Switch*Metacritic*, Retrieved February 26, 2020
27. ↑ @SwordOrWhip at Twitter (June 10, 2020).
28. ↑ Upcoming Content Preview and Special Announcement
29. ↑ Gamer Assault Weekly

## External links

* *Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night* at Wikipedia
* Development Update #76
* Official Boxart Designed By Mana Ikeda
* Bloodstained Ritual of the Night PC Beta Demo Full Playthrough All Secrets and Full Map 720p
* Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Release Date Announce
* Development Update #83
* Development Update #84
* Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Reviews on Steam]
* Bloodstained Is Goth Fun In An All-Too-Familiar Package
* Bloodstained premium DLC plans announced, angering some fans
* Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night Is Coming To Mobile
* Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is getting a sequel