Update: The Kickstarter for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night reached full funding about two hours after its launch. It’s currently at over 8,300 backers and $618,000 in pledges with 32 days to go.
Igarashi sure knows how to create a Kickstarter pitch video.
Koji Igarashi, one of the creators of Konami’s classic Castlevania action platformers, goes out on his own with the launch of a Kickstarter campaign for his own game in the same vein, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Should the wacky campaign (Igarashi himself explodes into a swarm of bats in the pitch video) reach its $500,000 goal, this game will be released for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. Igarashi left Japanese developer Konami early last year to create his own studio after nearly a decade there, marking yet another famed Japanese developer to leave a large publisher to seek out crowdfunding.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will be developed by Inti Creates, the studio headed up by former Capcom producer Keiji Inafune (Mega Man), and developer of Kickstarter darling Mighty No. 9, which saw nearly $4 million in backing pledges. It seems that Igarashi, best known for PlayStation title Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, aims to match Inafune’s work with a spiritual spinoff of his own based on a famed franchise. He notes in his pitch video that publishers told him that “gamers no longer care for this style of game” before throwing a wine glass on the ground.
Just like Castlevania, Bloodstained will be a challenging action platformer with a dark setting and role-playing elements. Igarashi says that he hopes to create a new game”built on some of the “classic gaming principles” his works are known for. Even Castlevania series composer Michiru Yamane will be brought onboard to create the musical score for Bloodstained.
The Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Kickstarter is live as of this morning, with backer pledge numbers rapidly increasing.