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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night bails on $5m Kickstarter stretch goal pledge

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night bails on $5m Kickstarter stretch goal pledge

The promised roguelike mode for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is not going to be coming out. 

In an update on the project's Kickstarter page, Jason Quest, senior community manager at publisher 505 Games apologised, saying that this sort of content wasn't possible with the game's current code. It was promised as a stretch goal for Bloodstained reaching $5m in funding.

A new mode called Randomizer is apparently taking its place and will be launching in the near future. This changes up Bloodstained's story mode with players choosing to randomise up to eight different parameters forb a playthrough.

The game was announced in 2015 by Castlevania vet Koji Igarashi, with a Kickstarter campaign that raised $5.5m from 64,867 backers. The initial goal was $500,000, with Bloodstained hitting $1m in 24 hours.

The title was set to launch in 2017, but missed this release date before eventually coming out in June 2019.

"One of the promised stretch goals for the game was Roguelike. 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). Due to this, we regret to announce that we will not be developing Roguelike as part of the project's planned stretch goals," the update read. 

"We know this is a mode that many of you were eagerly anticipating and we apologize that we will not be able to make it happen as planned.

"We don’t want to leave a hole in the roster, so we have developed a new game mode called “Randomizer” to take its place. Randomizer will launch with Zangetsu and be available for free."


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.