Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was one of Kickstarter’s bigger success stories in that it was actually a good game. But it still hit some snags, mainly in some of its Kickstarter goals. Aside from the Switch version taking months to get up to speed, Artplay has had some issues hitting some of its many stretch goals. The Bloodstained roguelike mode was one of those goals and has been canceled. However, it is being replaced with a Randomizer mode.
Jason “Question” Ryan, 505 Games community manager, broke the news on the game’s Kickstarter page. The roguelike mode was the $5 million goal — the second to last one — and, according to Ryan, just isn’t possible, given the kind of game it is.
“Unfortunately, the code that was created early in the game’s development is not currently compatible with this type of gameplay (especially a procedurally generated castle),” he said. “Due to this, we regret to announce that we will not be developing Roguelike as part of the project’s planned stretch goals.”
Randomizer mode, which is coming at some unknown date, is Artplay’s attempt at making it up to disappointed spelunkers. Players can choose how random the game is and share their specific mode with their friends via a “seed.” There are some safeguards though, as the game won’t screw you over and hide essential items in places you can’t reach.
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While the Randomizer mode is something, it is likely going to make some angry, especially when considering the other middling parts of the post. The promised Boss Revenge mode — the final Kickstarter stretch goal — isn’t coming in the next update with Zangetsu like Artplay had previously said. Instead, it is coming in the second update from now, which is the one after the Randomizer patch.
However, now that the Switch version is at parity with the other systems, Artplay claims that future updates will be “easier to manage.” This likely means that there won’t be huge gulfs between patches now. But this doesn’t mean the team is done optimizing the Switch port, as it admits it still has some work to do on that front.
Some people still are quite angry about the state of the Kickstarter, as evidenced by a recent thread on Reddit. The team has been mum on co-op — another stretch goal — while others expressed discontent at the pacing of these updates and dropped platforms like the Vita and Wii U. While those are worth considering, it is also worth noticing that Shovel Knight took around six years to complete its Kickstarter goals and also dropped some support for a couple of its platforms, too.
