Review - Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
“ Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night ” is a Metroidvania (or “Igavania”) released on the all major platforms in 2019. As a spiritual successor to Castlevania games produced by Koji Igarashi, Bloodstained originated as a Kickstarter project when IGA (as he prefers to be called) parted ways with Konami in 2014. The intellectual property of Castlevania stayed with Konami, but nothing was stopping IGA from creating a new IP in the same style of side-scrolling exploration platformer with gothic styling. Nothing, that is, except funding. The Kickstarter was WILDLY successful, meeting 11x the original goal of $500,000 with over $5.5 million. I didn’t personally back it , but I was very tuned into it as a long-time Castlevania fan. I wanted the project to succeed, but I didn’t have any console to play it on and I previously didn’t have much faith in Kickstarter after the OUYA fiasco . Instead, I just watched from afar. When “ Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon ” was released after meeting the