Castlevania spiritual successor Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night delayed into 2018

While Konami figures out how else to butcher its Castlevania series, yet another famed developer it booted from its studios continues to do fine work with the genre he helped create. Koji Igarashi, design lead on Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night – a spiritual successor to Symphony of the Night – has his team hard at work on their successful Kickstarter project. Progress has shown some good results, but Igarashi sadly thinks he needs more time.

In a new update to backers and interested parties, Igarashi explained how the timeline for a 2017 release was not going to afford him the time he and his team needed to get the game up to the quality standard he expects. As a result, Bloodstained is now only slated for release in the first half of 2018, as Igarashi looks for more developers to introduce to the project.

“I’ve decided to add a new development team to the main production and improve our approach, so that we can keep the game fully on track for how I envision it”

The full update can be found below:

Delays for Kickstarted games like this aren’t uncommon, primarily because development on them is in incredible early stages when they’re forcibly revealed. So the timeframe between the campaign and its now 2018 release date isn’t that peculiar, despite the fact that Igarashi has shown off the game at the likes of E3 and Gamescom for a while now.

All fans really can hope for is that this doesn’t end up being a similar situation to Mighty No. 9 – where a great looking spiritual successor had its quality eroded away as the years went by. There’s no indication of that happening just yet, but it’s something to keep in mind as we wait almost two more years for release. If you’re still unsure about what the game looks like, Kinda Funny’s Colin Moriarty (who himself is a massive Castlevania fan) got the chance to play a few months ago.

Last Updated: September 9, 2016