Fans had been anticipating the release of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for a long time. As a crowdfunded throwback to the Koji Igarashi era of Castlevania games – which gave us some of the best games in the metroidvania genre to date – being developed by a team led by Igarashi himself, we were all obviously rooting for it to succeed.
And by and large, succeed it did. In spite of a troubled launch for the game’s Switch version, Bloodstained is a great metroidvania adventure that harkens back to games like Symphony of the Night quite successfully. And if producer Koji Igarashi has his way, this won’t be the last that we see of this IP either. With Ritual of the Night and 2018’s retro-inspired spinoff Curse of the Moon now out the game, Igarashi says he wants to keep investing in the IP even further.
While speaking with Game Informer (via Destructoid), Igarashi says that after having put in so much effort, time, and resources into establishing the Bloodstained IP, he sees Ritual of the Night as a first step for what he’s hoping will become a series in and of itself.
We certainly hope he makes good on that promise. In our review of Bloodstained, we called it “the HD Castlevania game we’ve all been waiting for for a decade”- so hopefully, we’ll see more similar (and even better) games soon. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is also available on Xbox Game Pass, if you want to give it a go.
