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[nenjin]

This one nearly slipped under my radar.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night

Bloodstained Ritual of the Night is a new metroid-vania game being created by Koji Igarashi, part of the brain trust behind Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.



After being told by multiple publishers (including Konami who has been giving us the "reimagined" Castlevania games for a couple years now) that no one wanted a 2d platformer, he decided to stop asking publishers to help him make the game and went to Kickstarter. In his words, he's not yet done exploring the genre of Gothic Horror platformers that Castlevania started and was tired of waiting for a publisher with the balls (or at least, the common sense) to let him do it.



He has secured additional funding from another as-yet unnamed source, and the Kickstarter is there to demonstrate that there's is interest and money in pursuing his goals.

With 58 hours left to go and almost at $4 million in funding, this is now a sure bet for getting made.

It will be what you'd expect a real revival of Castlevania to be: leveling, looting, crafting, hidden bosses, big castle, secret rooms....plus co-op play, several different difficulty and gameplay modes, a lot of returning Castlevania veterans doing everything from art to music to voice overs.

That said, there's a couple things I'm not exactly wild about. While the backgrounds look thematic and gorgeous, the character designs are.....really animu. An entire level of over designing above Castlevania. The main character looks like she just woke up from an eternity of living in a tattoo parlor, and the supporting characters have their own really overdesigned bits, and the really obvious anime tropes. (Gotta have that guy with white hair, gotta have that nerdy normal looking guy with glasses.) Symphony of the Night had its own Japanese look and styling, but it seems pretty tightly constructed next to this. Note: the people doing the art and graphics and programming is not made up of original team members of the Castlevania games. They're taking a more supporting role.

But that's not enough to stop me from backing. I've been waiting for something like this to get made for literally a decade+ now.

$28 gets you your guaranteed digital copy, and the sky is the limit from there. Glancing over the backer rewards, there is a distinct lack of in-game rewards at most levels beyond the initial one, which is good. If you're into swag though, it's got you covered, if you're willing to drop over $500 on this.

Anyways, if you want in on the Kickstarter campaign, get while the gettin' is good.

[Frumple]

Man, those images. Know it's not screenshots or in-game or anything, but by the gods that is japanese doujin game style right there. For better or for worse.

That said, definitely color me interested... a few years from now, after it releases and goes on sale. Providing it's decent. Do love me some castlevania, especially the newer stuff with all those yummy RPG mechanics.

Though... with it being built ground up with PC in mind, does that mean modding? Because that could be pretty awesome.

[nenjin]

Dunno. The page says zero about modding, and the fact it's cross-platform would suggest no.

Also to note....there are like 4 to 6 studios working on different parts of this game.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This isn't a cozy little 1 dev house production. It looks more like these people were contracted to help support all aspects of the game. So, in reality, all of the veteran designers and developers and basically project leads, managers and consultants. The actual work of the art, the animation, production....will be done by these various other teams. It tends to give a false impression of the talent working on the game. I think that's basically what you can chalk the character designs up to.

Outsourcing the effort in design isn't new to Kickstarter....seems like that's how most smaller studios can even reach their goals these days. Hopefully the final product doesn't end up feeling it's stitched together from 6 different company's work...but I guess that's up to Igarashi to figure out.

Inti Creates, the dev studio doing the bulk of the work, also has partial credit for Mighty No. 9.

I went in for $60.

[scrdest]

I am physically unable to treat the title here seriously.

[nenjin]

Don't look at me, they're calling it Igavania.

[Hawkfrost]

Dunno. The page says zero about modding, and the fact it's cross-platform would suggest no.

Also to note....there are like 4 to 6 studios working on different parts of this game.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This isn't a cozy little 1 dev house production. It looks more like these people were contracted to help support all aspects of the game. So, in reality, all of the veteran designers and developers and basically project leads, managers and consultants. The actual work of the art, the animation, production....will be done by these various other teams. It tends to give a false impression of the talent working on the game. I think that's basically what you can chalk the character designs up to.

Outsourcing the effort in design isn't new to Kickstarter....seems like that's how most smaller studios can even reach their goals these days. Hopefully the final product doesn't end up feeling it's stitched together from 6 different company's work...but I guess that's up to Igarashi to figure out.

Inti Creates, the dev studio doing the bulk of the work, also has partial credit for Mighty No. 9.

I went in for $60.

Most of those studios are not related to development, no?

Fangamer is a merchandise site who are going to be helping make the backer rewards and Fangamer Design did the art stuff for the Kickstarter campaign, 2 Player Productions are a video production company that made the Kickstarter trailer, DMM seems like they are going to be handling hiring people, Rocketsound are doing the English dub and Armature are handling porting the game to WiiU and Vita.


I'm fine with the designs, but I'll agree it would have been nicer if it had been more Symphony of the Night/Order of Ecclesia style gothic.

I tossed in $110.

[nenjin]

This picked up about ~400k since yesterday. If it hits 5 million they will do a "procedural dungeon mode." While that sounds totally rad, a) it's a lot of money to make in 24 hours and b) sounds like the kind of thing that would be quite hard to add for a game not originally designing itself as a procedural experience.

And lol, not sure what happened but the pledged amount just plummeted 4.5 million dollars.

[nenjin]

$70k to go to $5 million. Looks like we'll be getting a procedural mode. I imagine it's already made $5 million between Kickstarter and Paypal at this point.

[Ozyton]

This isn't entirely on-topic, but as someone who's only played one castlevania game (I believe it was on gameboy advance? I don't even remember much about it), which games in the series are the best? On the highly unlikely circumstance where I find myself with time to play through some games I haven't gotten to yet it would be nice to try out some of the Castlevania ones.

[Neonivek]

This isn't entirely on-topic, but as someone who's only played one castlevania game (I believe it was on gameboy advance? I don't even remember much about it), which games in the series are the best? On the highly unlikely circumstance where I find myself with time to play through some games I haven't gotten to yet it would be nice to try out some of the Castlevania ones.

It is kind of hard to say because to me the series kind of splits into two equally fun diverging paths.

One is VERY RPG and has merit. While the other is very action platform.

[nenjin]

This isn't entirely on-topic, but as someone who's only played one castlevania game (I believe it was on gameboy advance? I don't even remember much about it), which games in the series are the best? On the highly unlikely circumstance where I find myself with time to play through some games I haven't gotten to yet it would be nice to try out some of the Castlevania ones.

It is kind of hard to say because to me the series kind of splits into two equally fun diverging paths.

One is VERY RPG and has merit. While the other is very action platform.

Pretty much this.

Pre Symphony of the Night, Castlevania was all about action-platforming without RPG elements. Beating the game with a high score, or just seeing the end is the goal. This covers most Castlevania games from Nintendo, to Gameboy, to Sega to the N64.

Starting with Symphony of the Night on the PSX, the series takes a more Action RPG (although still 2d side scrolling) approach. Levels aren't something you do once and then progress past, you're revisiting constantly as you explore different paths through the castle. The whole castle map is open and replayable. (Basically, think Super Metroid Style. It's where the "metroid-vania" label started.) After Symphony of the Night there's a string of Nintendo DS games and such that are a continuation of the same design, on a smaller scale.

Then you get into the next-gen Castlevania games, which are your bog-standard 3rd person action fighting games with some RPGness thrown in there, some exploration, but the major focus is on the combat system, the set pieces and the cinematics. This describes every Castlevania from Lament of Innocence to Curse of Darkness, all the way through to the last couple major Castlevania games (Lords of Shadow 1 & 2.) Pre-PC Castlevania games (so Lament of Innocence and Curse of Darkness) understand that players liked RPG features and each have their own quirks (In Curse of Darkness, you basically get demons to follow you around and level up them into several different evolutions), but the level designs fall really, really flat. Amazing how a 2d game with non-interactive backgrounds still manages to feel more fleshed out than 3d game spaces.

In PC-era Castlevania games, the level designs are a little better but there's none of the fun, quirky, enduring RPG stuff to it.

For me, Symphony of the Night era Castlevania games are the best. They're the best blend of flavor, music and design and playability. They're almost sandbox RPGs loaded with tons of equipment, secrets, enemies, bosses and secret endings. They've got that charming 90s JRPG aesthetic. They're games you can live 100 hours in easily.The older (NES to Sega) era Castlevania games have flavor and pretty rad music, but they're still basic, almost arcade-y games as befitting the time they were made. You're there to whip some dudes and get through a level, not live in the game. The newer Castlevania games, while they look good, the flavor feels like it's being borrowed, the themes retreaded and reimagined, the drama taking itself a little too seriously. (Basically castlevania trying to be adult versus previous game's almost....comical levels of drama.) Replace the charming 90s JRPG aesthetic with next-gen hotness. And like Nintendo-Sega era Castlevania games, going through the game is mostly a one-shot experience. There might be some oblgiatory retreading after you get X upgrade that lets you use Y path finally, a couple secrets to find, maybe New Game+....otherwise the games are a straight shot from start to finish.

In the end the Castlevania games are mostly about flavor to me. The music, the area designs, the boss monsters....Symphony of the Night does all those things well, and then drops an eminently enjoyable gamespace and systems on top of it. All the other Castlevania games, of any era, do not manage to hit all the notes like it does in my opinion. Symphony of the Night is also the only Castlevania game that, I dunno...actually felt like you were in a castle. Each area more or less logically connects to the next, an idea taken from the earliest Castlevania games and exquisitely executed in SotN. As time has gone on in the series, that seems to have gotten less and less important, to the point half of "Lords of Shadow" doesn't even take place in the Castle itself.

Put another way, Symphony of the Night's level design is rad the way Dark Soul's level design is....and the Castlevania games following after have weaker level design, the same way Dark Souls 2's level design isn't as a good as Dark Souls 1.

Also, Bloodstained just hit $5 million.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Also, i'll throw in that the first Lords of Shadow is a damn good game.

EDIT: Also I hope that these art mockups are not representative of the final style, as it looks nothing like how a 'vania game should. It's much too happy-go-lucky kawaii-desu.

[nenjin]

Think you may just have to deal with that, it seems to be the style they're going for. As one friend put it "their entire art team is a bunch of weeaboos." Although I'm sure the "Happy Go Lucky" look is going to get cut with a lot of "blood and demons" to balance it out, eventually. Symphony of the Night did its own amount of juxtaposing those two values as well.

Re: Lords of Shadow. It wasn't terrible, but I did not like it. If you've played Devil May Cry, God of War, or any of the other half a dozen 3rd person action fighting games.....Lords of Shadow is a johnny come lately to the party. Sure the visuals are ok, but the levels are nothing to write home about. The story is....like I said, an attempt at a more mature storyline, but it didn't do anything for me. (Every Castlevania game adds something to the lore, but this seemed like more bombastic ideas than actually good ones.) The boss fights are good, but that's because their focus was "BIG BOSS ENCOUNTERS" and "SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS." I also deeply resented the tacked on "Look you use your whip for platforming!" bits that are isolated jump puzzles used once or twice in the game. I couldn't even make myself finish the game.

I admit, a lot of that comes down to taste. There was just very little that made Lords of Shadow standout versus the dozens of games it was very obviously trying to emulate, in an effort to make Castlevania relevant to a new generation. I honestly find the PS2 Castlevania games better executed and more fun to play than it. I've picked up and restarted them at least a couple times, versus my one half playthrough of LoS that I have no desire to complete.

And don't even get me started on Lords of Shadow 2.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

To be fair, i've never played DMC or God of War. I also enjoyed the story of LoS for the reason that, very randomly, I didn't get that the player was *spoilers* and also your wife's *spoilers*. That being said, the main bad guys were great. Level design was poor at times, i'll admit, but it gave me a great sense of adventure. Of course, I love SotN too. I also played the shit outta Harmony of Despair, which I also loved.

EDIT: that's still disappointing about the graphics... looks more like those shitty sidescrolling browser "MMOs" I played as a small child instead of catlevania.

EDITEDIT: LoS 2 was very disappointing. Which is doubly disappointing because it started off great. Though it had a couple of awesome moments.

[nenjin]

I didn't get that the player was *spoilers* and also your wife's *spoilers*.

That's when it started to grate on me. They essentially tell you that at the beginning of the game if you're paying attention. So it becomes this rather silly and confusing "trying to find my wife's...." except YOU IS, also TEH LORDS OF SHADOW.

It just seemed like a clusterfuck of ideas wrapped up in cutscenes designed to be "emotional." They were trying for a revenge/sob story and ended up with a muddled mess and a character with a stupid looking weapon. SotN doesn't even really have cutscenes. It just has character dialog, and tells the story that way. And I think it was more effective in its simplicity. (Seriously, SotN's intro is still a thing of legend.)

EDIT: that's still disappointing about the graphics... looks more like those shitty sidescrolling browser "MMOs" I played as a small child instead of catlevania.

Remember it's just a mock up. I'm going to wait to see something in motion before I come to a conclusion about it. I do think its very, very colorful compared to SotN's more muted palette choices. But I assume they sexed it up for the Kickstarter campaign. At least I like the general tone of the area look. It looks indulgently gothic in a way the last few Castlevania games have not.