Bloodstained, a return to Castlevania's of old.

What started as a mysterious site called SwordOrWhip.com has turned into a kickstarter for a new Koji Igarashi's( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koji_Igarashi ) return to IGAvania style games(since Konami still owns the brand Castlevania). What has resulted from this is a kickstarter for the game Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night


But best to let the man explain himself.


You can find the kickstarter here, I can tell you I'm already backing it for a good amount(enough to get me that artbook and other nifty goodies).
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/description
It's already funded but their are always rewards and stretch goals. Be sure to check the Updates section for official artwork, backgrounds, fan artwork, and Podcast that explain more about the game, characters, and other little tidbits from Iga himself. If you don't have any money, you can still support the project with all the fanevents they have like drawings(the current one is for possible monsters in the castle), Vines, comics, selfies in front of castles, following the various media sites tied to Bloodstain(youtube, tumblr, twitter, etc) and other fun things like cosplays.

Bloodstained takes place in a early industrial age setting, where alchemist, in a bid to prove their alchemy is better than science, take orphaned children and implant alchemic crystals into them to summon a threat that will show need of their power. However, this of course backfires, when one of their subjects, Gebel(voiced by David Hayter, the voice of Snake from MGS1-4), rebels and kills all of them with the demons he is able to control. Unfortunately for him and any other child afflicted with the curse, they draw demons to them and the cure will eventually consume them, turning them into a crystal demon as well(from what I've gathered).

That's where our lovely heroine Miriam comes in, a strong and astute girl also inflicted with the curse who went into a coma 10 years ago. It is now her charge to defeat her former friend Gebel in a demon filled castle that Gebel, in his deteriorating sanity, made for Miriam. She's not alone though, with the help of the last alchemist who refused to go along with the others and friend to both Miriam and Gebel, Johannes, she will be able to craft material and powers from the monsters the young demon slayer has defeated while Johannes does his best to stop Miriam's crystal curse(in the form of a stained glass rose on her upper chest) from spreading.





There's a good chance we'll get some sexy monstergirls as well. The first boss shown is actually a monstergirl, Gremori


But yeah, knowing how Iga loves to to indulge in a Bad End, there's also a good chance we'll see a corrupted by the curse Miriam. Plus, Castlevania(or rather Igavania type games) is just a really fun series to play.

It will be released on the PS4, Xbox One, Steam, and the Wii U once that stretch goal gets met.

Okay, with that out of the way, a new Ask Iga has just been released on youtube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOU-IZLwstnFKxX3m3_P4fQ
If you want to send your question to him, go to twitter and tweet at @swordorwhip with the hashtag #askiga, and hopefully your question will be picked, just remember to be polite and not super pervy with your questions or anything(a little is alright though ).

Also, just because I like this piece so much, here's Jadenkaiba's Miriam piece he submitted.
http://fav.me/d8u49wq

Another update, Wii U version is confirmed thanks to paypal support
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/1248002

Next tiers combines some stuff from other multiplayer games I like, not true multiplayer, passive, go and give it a read.

Also, there's a Vita tier now, cools.

New update, kickass art of Miriam using some special abilities, one looks like Alucard's Summon Souls attack(homing attacks) , another is a better version of the Ouija Table(instead of needing a chair to sit in, you summon one and charge your MP). Voltic Chains sounds like it would be fun to tie up monstergirls in. Lasty is... Oh I can't spoil it, GO, WITNESS THE GLORY YOURSELF
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/1249275

Also, we got enough achievements so that the 8bit remix tracks are unlocked for all backers, and we get to vote on familiars, so go cast your vote~!

Asynchronous Online Multiplayer released, Orchestrated Tracks revealed, and some more details about Miriam are revealed. What would those be?

EC
Before

After

"When the crystals overtake Miriam, she glows red and her magic powers spike to dangerously high levels. The crystallization on her back grows to maximum size and radiates a cross, at which point the curse becomes unstoppable. Could Miriam end up suffering the same fate as Gebel?"

Her jeweled skin looks wonderful, like a fullbody tattoo almost.

To be honest, I don't like the appearance of the crystalization of her body. Otherwise, her design is great, it's just that one factor.

However, I would definitely be interested to see if the curse factor is developed into a multiple path endings, somewhat like the corruption factor of a game I played once called NSphere (before anyone asks, it's not seductive, it involves getting raped as well as doing some raping).

Also: Oh god, ORIGINAL Alucard voice confirmed (as opposed to Yuri Lowenthal)? I guess he'll be the male support character?

DoubleEdged wrote:To be honest, I don't like the appearance of the crystalization of her body. Otherwise, her design is great, it's just that one factor.

However, I would definitely be interested to see if the curse factor is developed into a multiple path endings, somewhat like the corruption factor of a game I played once called NSphere (before anyone asks, it's not seductive, it involves getting raped as well as doing some raping).

Also: Oh god, ORIGINAL Alucard voice confirmed (as opposed to Yuri Lowenthal)? I guess he'll be the male support character?

They said he'd be a voice somewhere in the castle, so my guess is some strange merchant or a neutral fiend.

It will be interesting to see the direction they take it in, at the very least it will be something like Soma's bad ends, so that's still something.

2 updates, couldn't write about the other one yesterday since I didn't have enough time.

The last week is upon us

And with that we get another Ask Iga vid

Talk about transformations comes up, he says they're pretty expensive but after they meet the reward tiers he would love to fit them in because they are one of his favorite things, so something like a Valkyrie transformation sounds possible... But when I look at Miriam...  I want to see a Medusa form.  For some reason that is the most prominent in my head.
"Next week's Ask IGA is, conveniently enough, about Endings!! Tweet your questions with the #AskIGA hashtag, and he'll answer some for the next episode. It's going to go live on Wednesday, so be sure to get your questions in before Sunday."

tweets:

I kinda wanted to ask about monster transformation endings, but that might be too much.

We also see Iga in a Mega64 vid, which is great~


We also have a Playism podcast that I'm going to start listening to right after I finish this post.

Next update, haven't seen this one yet.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/1254965
Vita funded, yay~
And what's this, more stretch goals revealed~ For the final week I assume. O-oh...  Oh that's...
*starts heavy breathing again*

Between this and Mighty Number 9 Konami and Capcom (And others) should realize that the love for the old series is not dead. The fans will support them. It sucks that we end up with very similar knockoffs instead of new entries to the long runny series but as long as the games are good that is what matters to me.

Look at this Konami, Bloodstained made 3.5 million out of a 500k goal with six days to do. That means them made seven times as much as their initial goal. So yeah people want more Castlevania.

I don't expect big companies to care about fans but well they should as those are the people that will buy their games.

creativerealms wrote:Between this and Mighty Number 9 Konami and Capcom (And others) should realize that the love for the old series is not dead. The fans will support them. It sucks that we end up with very similar knockoffs instead of new entries to the long runny series but as long as the games are good that is what matters to me.

Look at this Konami, Bloodstained made 3.5 million out of a 500k goal with six days to do. That means them made seven times as much as their initial goal. So yeah people want more Castlevania.

I don't expect big companies to care about fans but well they should as those are the people that will buy their games.

I forgot to post this didn't I...
http://www.p4rgaming.com/konami-ceo-apologizes-i-only-learned-about-video-games-after-becoming-ceo/
Basically it explains what's going on with Kojima and Konami's new CEO, what happened to P.T., and how basically it's pretty much "f video games" over there...

I certainly hope the game goes through much better production than Mighty No. 9. I'll get it if it gets good reception during production, but no pledges from me. I'm curious as to what is meant by asynchronous multiplayer. The artwork is definitely top-notch, as we continue to see more (minus my crystallization complaint, but that's minor). The real deal will come when they can show gameplay and stage design. Just beware that this certainly does not become another case of Broken Age.

DoubleEdged wrote:I certainly hope the game goes through much better production than Mighty No. 9. I'll get it if it gets good reception during production, but no pledges from me. I'm curious as to what is meant by asynchronous multiplayer. The artwork is definitely top-notch, as we continue to see more (minus my crystallization complaint, but that's minor). The real deal will come when they can show gameplay and stage design. Just beware that this certainly does not become another case of Broken Age.

True true, I have high hopes for it, but every new stretch goal makes me go "Is that really enough money?", but the fact that Iga is at the helm gives me hope. He said a few things that make me feel like he understands the gravity of this and he and his team will be working towards some two year deadline. The fact that Inti Creates is there also gave me pause at first, but they had successful games before M#9(Mega Man 9&10, Zero series, & ZX/Advent, as well as helping out with Shantae), and hopefully they learned from Mighty Number 9, so my worries are alleviated a little. But I was in at day 1 because Castlevania is a series near and dear to my heart, I'm a "love freak" for this game, it's heroine, and all I've seen so far, basically a very polite zealot for it. I know I can't change anyone's mind, I just want to spread the word and allow people to decide. I know this is a risk, but then again, so did they when they first proposed this idea, so I'm putting my money and love behind them. However I'm not blind, and am quite positive some things will go wrong because kickstarting a game isn't a exact science it seems and law of averages says that something bad must happen. I'm aware that it could be delayed for a year or two, or that things won't work out on some end, hell, I'm aware that all my money will go down the drain if this project Titanics, but I knew that going in. I got a job now so I can finally splurge some cash so come hell or highwater I'll be with this to the end.[/ramble]

As for Asynchronous Online Multiplayer, there's this

"Borrow" a friend's character stats for a certain amount of time (your friend will get a bonus)
Ghost Data (See friend's saved character movements while fighting a boss)
Friend's playthroughs affect your game in some way (e.g. a gravestone and an offering might mark the spot where your friend died)
Plus another surprise that we'll unveil soon...

So basically something like the Souls games with just the ghost and blood stains... Bloodstained... huh... curious coincidence...

I did not know MN9 wasn't looking too hot.

creativerealms wrote:I did not know MN9 wasn't looking too hot.

Well, it's less of it not looking hot and more of what happened after the kickstarter. To my knowledge it suffered from some community issues with the forum head and continued to ask for more donations after the kickstarter to put additional stuff in like licensing a character from Getter Robo that probably delayed it. It's nothing that I would qualify with "doing poorly", just stuff that went beyond the project kept getting added on and the community manager was a bit of a shit and was hired due to nepotism.

But yeah, all the stuff is here http://www.siliconera.com/?s=mighty+

A lot of it is opinionated things, but it's not just the process, it's the final product.

Dash to Win.
Stage design is crap.
Well known voice actors, yet they sound like crap! (How often do you ever hear me complain about English voice actors?) [It means the direction was probably crap]

But yeah, the community team was a major reason why people weren't wanting to donate to Bloodstained, BECAUSE it was the same as MN9, and I don't want to delve too much into why that is awful, because it can get pretty heavily political.

VERY BASIC look at how the game will run.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU-NF6SJxps

So her movement speed won't be all that fast, but it usually isn't in Castlevania anyways, until you get some sort of speed boots. It's mostly just showing her walking around a basic hallway with windows (oh god, just that one room looks so much better artistically than anything I saw in MN9 previews), and perhaps this game's version of Medusa Heads (fragile floaty things that spawn indefinitely).

It's not a bad look, but it's only the foundation at this point. Now they have to make a whole game out of it, and make it more interesting than that.

Also, what is with Igarashi and his aura trail fetish?

I checked the site after playing Disgaea all night, mmmmm~ Yeah, it's very close to their, the walk has that Igavania pace, just needs to hone in on the style. Hehehehe, I just loved that part when they were going "So what is Miriam iconic pose going to be" and Iga replies exuberantly "I have no clue!", ah, it just makes me feel good.

But yeah, orchestra music reached, won't be for everything, but those key parts that need it, which is nice.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/1256684

Also, Amano. 4k looks doable, maybe that 3rd playable character that is probably not Johannes("could be someone you haven't seen yet").

Two updates and something coming tonight with the (almost) guaranteed third character.  On that note, I really hope they are female, like some badass older whip user, gunner, or spell caster, but I have a feeling that it's a like a 90% chance it's going to be male...  Or a monster like the Old Axe Armor in Portrait( http://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/293869?tags=old_axe_armor ), I'd be most happy  too if it was something like that =)

Anyway, onto the updates.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/1258115
So the sword won the Sword or Whip contest in the end( http://swordorwhip.com/ ). Clan Katana to be precise.  So what does that mean?  The ultimate weapon for the game is going to be a katana, nifty.


As a team whip user(Clan Bullwhip!) I am a little upset because whip was leading for a while, until the kickstarter was actually revealed.  But hey, as long as there's a whip I'll be happy.

Next up, the secret backer exclusive boss has been revealed, and it is no other than Iga himself. I'm kinda shocked since Iga is such a humble guy, but apparently the team and some of the fans were really hoping for it, and I don't blame them with him having that Count Dracula sprite.  I wonder if we'll see that or his hat wearing vampire hunter self.  Either could make for a great fight.


Also, NEW, GAME, PLUS, +!  The gift that keeps on giving =)

Next update
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/1259255
Technical stuff about getting the Unreal 4 engine to work on Vita and Wii U, there will be a ending stream, New Game Plus info, and info on the mutliplayer which sounds a lot like Harmony of Despair =)

Also a later announcement tonight about the 5m announcement that is going to be a bonus mode of some sort that will "make this game even bigger than it was before"

Lastly,

50 hours left

47 Hours
Well, I took so long writing up some of my ideas that the update came.

5m stretch goal revealed. Roguelike dungeon(oh my goddess it's Binding of Isaac with Igavania!).

That’s right: Procedurally generated dungeons. In this mode you’ll face a new castle every time, braving its treacherous (and massive) halls for loot, glory, and the simple, satisfying feeling of going where no Miriam has gone before.

However, that's not the kicker...

Once you’ve explored its passages and defeated its boss, you’ll get a code that will enable you to share your randomly generated dungeon with a friend. (If you find a particularly hard one, you can even share it with an enemy! IGA isn’t picky.)

"Dood, I just fought the hardest castle"
"No way bro, I just had one that kicked my ass, but I won."
"Okay, let's see!" *shares*

Sword whip revealed

Ask Iga #5!

Done, with a total of $5,545,991

Updates that I will go into detail later
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/1260550

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/1262600

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/1262173