Full Disclosure: I have financially backed Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night on Kickstarter.
Castlevania series producer Koji Igarashi has been toiling away over his first post-Konami project – Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. While we unfortunately didn’t have the chance to meet him at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo, the creator did talk up the game, as well as his transition from Konami.
“With Castlevania, I’d been working on a long-running franchise where fans knew more about the games than I did,” Igarashi said to Kotaku when talking about the pressure of Kickstarter, as well as transitioning from his job at Konami.
“With Bloodstained, the pressure that we feel isn’t much different. There’s still hardcore fans who know more that we do. That’s a good kind of pressure, not bad, and something that we always feel and have gotten used to. One thing that was challenging was creating material to show to backers for a new title. What we’re used to, especially in the Japanese industry, is sharing promotional material around three months before the release date to create hype. There isn’t always much hype after that. It can feel like you’ll run out of material to show people, and that’s been a challenge with Bloodstained.”
Igarashi also talked up how Bloodstained is different from his work on the iconic Castlevania series. “Well, the core concept of Bloodstained is having that same gameplay experience as games from the past,” he said. “The story and the characters and plot are quite different, but what we really did want to capture was having the same experience from the past and being able to play it now.”
Finally, Igarashi was also questioned regarding competition, specifically in regards to NieR creator Taro Yoko saying he wanted “less competition” from other developers.
“I feel the opposite and want more people to make games. I want more and more games and to keep working. I want to go back to the time of the SNES, when so many developers were creating new types of games,” Igarashi said.
“I really loved the chaotic feeling during that time when everyone was creating games. Right now there’s a lot of AAA titles, but it seems like the indie games are where the passion is, and I’d like to see more of that.”
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is on track for a release sometime next year, across PC, Mac, Linux, PlayStation 4, PS Vita, Xbox One, and the Nintendo Switch.
