Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night exists because Konami stopped making the game its fans wanted, so the man who used to make it went and made it himself. Koji Igarashi, the former Castlevania producer, co-founded ArtPlay and took the idea to Kickstarter in 2015. Backers put up more than $5.5 million, eleven times the goal, and the result arrived in June 2019 from publisher 505 Games.
Trailer, via Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement.
Miriam and the Castle
You play Miriam, an orphan carrying an alchemist’s curse that is slowly turning her skin into crystal. A demon-filled castle has been summoned in England, and the only way to stop the curse is to fight through it and find the summoner, Gebel, a man who has carried the same curse far longer than she has.
That premise is a straight line, and it should be. The story in a game like this is an excuse to open the next door.
The Loop
Ritual of the Night is a side-scrolling action RPG, and the loop is the reason people funded it. Explore, find a shard, gain a power, reach a room you could not reach before. Miriam collects, crafts and unlocks weapons, equipment and loot from the minions and bosses she kills, and the castle keeps revealing rooms as her abilities grow. Anyone who played Symphony of the Night knows this rhythm by heart. Igarashi knows it better than anyone alive, and the game is generous with it.
Spiritual Successor Is the Right Phrase
The game is not shy about what it is. Critics called it a worthy successor to the Castlevania games that inspired it, and that is exactly the right level of praise. It does not reinvent the form. It restores it. The horror and fantasy trappings, the gothic castle, the crafting and the huge bestiary all serve a design that was already proven.
Platforms and Support
It launched on PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One and Switch in June 2019, then reached Amazon Luna in October 2020, Android and iOS in December 2020 and Stadia in July 2021. Most of the Kickstarter stretch goals were delivered as free content updates, with a few extra items sold as paid downloads. A retro-styled companion game, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, developed by Inti Creates, came out of one of those stretch goals.
Where It Falls Short
The limitation is the flip side of the faithfulness. If you did not love the formula already, Ritual of the Night will not convert you, and its visual presentation is functional rather than beautiful. The crafting and loot systems also pile up more stuff than the game ever asks you to use. There is a version of this design that is leaner, and it is the one from 1997.
The Verdict
Critics scored it 8.2 out of 10, and that is the right number. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a promise kept. It proved there was an audience for this kind of game, it delivered what it sold, and it kept adding to it for free. That is rarer than it should be.
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