Long in development Kickstarter Metroidvania Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night has hit another snag. After canceling the game’s Wii U and PlayStation Vita ports this past August, the development team has ceased work on the Bloodstained Mac and Linux versions. Announced in an update to their backers, studio co-founder Koji Igarashi offered backers of both platforms the ability to email to specify a replacement picked from the remaining platforms. Published by 505 Games, the title is still seeing release on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch sometime in 2019.
If you still own a device capable of playing Bloodstained, it looks as though development is coming together. The rest of the update details happenings at the studio, including some of the first contributions from WayForward since the studio joined the team last month. Specifically, WarForward gets the credit for new assets and lighting placements throughout what’s already in place.
Igarashi also shared some photos of developers hard at work and concept art for the Forneus. This demonic fish will no doubt come into play in an aquatic stage, although Igarashi stated that he’d also be delicious to eat at a cookout.
While Bloodstained missed its original 2018 window, a flood of other Metroidvanias did see release throughout the year. Even moving past the excellent “roguevania” Dead Cells, we’ve seen the likes of Guacamelee 2, The Messenger, Iconoclasts, La-Mulana 2, Chasm, and Yoku’s Island Express. That’s a lot of Metroidvania, and looking at this large set of data makes it seem like the genre is changing.
Games that specifically call back to the category’s origins like Chasm seem to underperform. On the flip side, games like Dead Cells that bring something new to the table end up flourishing. It’s been a long time since the days of the original PlayStation and only time will tell if the original creator of Castlevania can bring something significantly interesting to the genre.
