Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Coming to Nintendo Switch

Published: March 10, 2017 6:00 PM /

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Bloodstained Ritual of the Night Nintendo Switch Mock Up

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will be heading to the Nintendo Switch as reported by Nintendo Everything. The game's logo was included in a series of images showing future content coming to the game in a Nintendo News post deployed to consoles in Europe.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is described by the developers as an "Igavania", which is defined as "A gothic, exploration-focused action platformer, designed by one of the godfathers of the genre!" In essence, they've made a portmanteau of Koji Igarashi's name and the gaming genre term "Metroidvania" which describes games similar to Metroid or Castlevania. A Metroidvania typically features side-scrolling gameplay where players explore a non-linear game world and acquire items to access new areas.

Koji Igarashi has a pedigree for designing these types of games - he was the Assistant Director, Programmer, and Scenario Writer for the Metroidvania classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (working under the pen name of Kouji IGA). He has since had a hand in over a dozen successive Castlevania games as Producer and occasionally chipping in as a Scenario Writer. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night purports to be a revival of this particular genre of game from one of the people who was heavily involved with them. Players will be able to explore a gothic-themed castle using side-scrolling platforming, RPG elements, and a crafting system.

The game is the product of a highly successful Kickstarter campaign, earning over 11 times of its requested $500,000 funding goal. Every single listed Stretch Goal on the campaign page was unlocked with nearly $46,000 to spare.

As far as the status of the Wii U version of the game, the last we've heard about it was an interview that Koji Igarashi had with IGN where he stated that the development team wasn't certain how they would be handling the Wii U port considering that the game is slated to release sometime in 2018:

“Yeah, it's a very complicated problem,” Iga said. “The reality is this: As timelines move on, certain pieces of hardware become irrelevant. Sometimes new pieces of hardware come out that make you think about what is the right strategy. And as a creator, usually you want to make stuff for the new hardware. That's the reality.”

“However, this was a game that was backed by people, and we made promises to listen to them. They're the people that gave us life so to speak. Any sort of change that we do or are considering that goes outside the scope of the promises we've made must be done with lots of explanation, must be done with lots of care, and must be done with lots of back and forth with them to see what options we have. We must listen to them at the end of the day, and we have made promises.”

“Unfortunately, some of those don't make as much sense anymore as they did before, and that's also reality. So you're in a very difficult position, and at the end of the day, if you're going to go in one certain direction, you want to make sure that you have support from them,” he explained.

“But so far we've, I think, been incredibly transparent through all the things that have happened with our backers, and they have been very supportive. So I'm hoping that if there is going to be a difficult decision some day, and we don't know, that we're able to have that conversation. If they say they don't get it, well that's where we're at. And if they say they do get it, well then, we'll be able to do things that are maybe more interesting. We'll see.

As far as the Kickstarter page for the game is concerned, the game is slated to come out for Steam & GOG.com on PC, Mac, & Linux, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, the PlayStation Vita, the Wii U, and now the Nintendo Switch. We've reached out to the development team for comment.

What do you think of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night coming to the Nintendo Switch? If you backed the game for the Wii U version, do you think it's still worthwhile for the dev team to spend the time creating it considering that the Switch has already launched and will be at least a year old when the game comes out? Let us know in the comments below!

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A photograph of TechRaptor Senior Writer Robert N. Adams.
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One of my earliest memories is playing Super Mario Bros. on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I've had a controller in my hand since I was 4 and I… More about Robert N

More Info About This Game
Learn more about Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Developer
Artplay
Publisher
505 Games
Release Date
December 31, 1969 (Calendar)
Genre
Metroidvania