IGAVANIA Kickstarter! Bloodstained: Ritual of the night

Incredible. There is 8 hours left, this is going to hit 5 Million.
A procedural dungeon is being added, like that rogue castle game, or like the chalice dungeons in Bloodborne. Something I've never seen in Castlevania. If everything comes out like planned, this will be the greatest non-Castlevania, Castlevania game.
Hell make Nosferatu the final boss and we've come full circle.
 
Holy shit, what the fuck is boss revenge mode. That sounds awesome!
 
Well here we are, at 5.32 million showing on Kickstarter (plus PayPal which I hear are at least $200,000), so its a good chance we'll get the 5.5 million final stretch goal!

As of the time of my posting, there are 108 minutes left! Anyone who hasn't yet pledged, now is the time to do so - we unlocked a ton of stretch goals and we're getting all kinds of great extras including a free prequel title, dual audio (JP vocals!), online and local co-op, Linux/Win/Mac PC support on Steam and GOG, as well as console copies.. To put it succinctly, if you pay at least $28 you get a digital copy of the game. If you pay $60, you get a digital or physical copy of the game, and you get Special Edition in-game content and extras.

Edit: about Boss Revenge mode (5.5M unlock) -

You have been so overzealous in your pursuit of stretch goals that you're now poised to take revenge... on our dauntless heroes. At $5.5 million you have the opportunity to unlock Boss Revenge Mode:

  • Control several different bosses
  • Utilize their special attacks to wreak havok
  • Explore a new BOSS REVENGE area
  • Turn the tables and defeat “Hero” Bosses in your pursuit of humanity's destruction
"


There are also unlocking the special "Pure" costume for Miriam if we get all 60 achievements during crowdfunding (this isn't just about money spent, but people doing neat little things like drawing comics, cosplaying etc..). Info about it here - https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/1262173 - We need a few more Twitter Follows, Retweets and Youtube Views to unlock the Pure costume! Edit: I'm being told a couple of Gebel Cosplayers came out and unlocked our 60th achievement. Hope this is accurate!
 
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Nice. IGA better not fuck this up! Though, I do think higher of IGA, I don't know about his actually talent/ideas as it's kind of hit or miss, but from everything I've seen of him... his interest, excitement, love for it seems genuine.
 
Happily waiting for my physical copy now. :)
I'm most excited about the procedural dungeon, endless castlevania like never before, and that boss revenge mode sounds really fun. Crazy how these stretch goals just assured this to be the greatest metroidvania IGA has ever tackled, I just hope the final battle is a surprise. I still think the combo final battle with Dracula and Death in Portrait of Ruin is the best finality they've come up with. So intense and unexpected. Yuzo Koshiros music there just put the cherry on top. Definitely the highlight of that game.
 
I should mention that those backers who picked up the special edition and above (ie $60) were granted access to the latest Backer Beta Demo via Steam; the very same playable demo shown at E3!

I've spent a little time with it myself and I can see a LOT of promise. It feels way more fleshed out than the older backer beta demo and has a lot of improvements, along with a much larger swathe of the game and its systems included. There are some issues of concern and I hope they will be able to be ironed out by launch. I'll have to play a bit more before I can really give it a full review but I have high hopes!


Edit: Anyone have any questions? Let me know what you wish to hear about and I'll see what I can do!
 
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I'm kind of regretting not jumping in for the Kickstarter. I'm easing into the business model more these days, though. If Iga wants to crowd fund something else in the future I'll definitely jump in.
 
Bloodstained is my first and only Kickstarter. I'm just hoping all systems will get the game at the same time on release day.
 
I played the original Castlevania it took me a really long time to finish it the hardest level for me was level 2 withe floating medusa heads.
I just couldn't get smart to it as a kid the Grim Reaper Boss was my favorite though and the Frankestein Boss was also good because he had his pita buddy try and help and kill me.
 


Boss is at 1:06 just a numb nut that you want to get pass fast as possible before Igor got to you.
 
M76 said:
Nah, I'll wait till it's free.
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Right, because we wouldn't want to support devs that actually deliver what people ask for right? People have been clamoring for a 2D Castlevania game for years now. Now an original dev brings it to us, and nobody wants to pay for it?

I'd definitely prefer it was quality 2D pixel art over 3D objects presented in 2D, but the game-play looks just about spot on for a 2D Vania. (not the BS ones we've gotten lately on the 3DS for example)
 
J3RK said:
Right, because we wouldn't want to support devs that actually deliver what people ask for right? People have been clamoring for a 2D Castlevania game for years now. Now an original dev brings it to us, and nobody wants to pay for it?

I'd definitely prefer it was quality 2D pixel art over 3D objects presented in 2D, but the game-play looks just about spot on for a 2D Vania. (not the BS ones we've gotten lately on the 3DS for example)
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Well that was a joke.

In reality I'm not interested in this game even for free :p
 
M76 said:
Well that was a joke.

In reality I'm not interested in this game even for free :p
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Joke.

O <---My head. :D

Carry on.

I'm a CVania junky, and will take any I can get my hands on, provided it's either the early styles, or later 2D styles ala Chi no Rondo, Symphony of the Night, or the GBA/DS styles. I'm not really into the 3DS one, the Shadows ones, or other 3D(ish) ones.

I've been really enjoying a lot of the indie games in similar styles though lately, so I'm not totally hurting for this sort of thing. I am pretty excited for this one though despite the visual style. I think it looks good, I just would have preferred pixel-art.
 
The release date has now been delayed to 2019. I'm starting to smell a turd...
 
KamelRed said:
The release date has now been delayed to 2019. I'm starting to smell a turd...
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The beta is okay. The movement is the oddest part. However, I will say it does feature animation cancel when using the dodge button. Which, puts it higher on the list of "movement" than something like Chasm. It doesn't play as well as something like Dead Cells though. Which, once you play that, most games feel dated.

Even if this game comes out merely mediocre...it'll still be better than Mighty Number 9. Also, it was worth solely for the 8 bit mini game that came out a few months ago. Which, is amazing and totally worth sinking some time into.
 
lets not forget that development of a crowdfunded title will nearly by nature, take longer. Most "true" crowdfunded titles have to go through the creation of a studio to actually produce the game, as opposed to simply going right into production - all the hiring, setup, administration etc. Furthermore, crowdfunded titles often have a rather flexible set of requirements and tend to have higher aspirations compared to most conventional titles. Backers of crowdfunded titles, myself included, back because the developer is doing something beyond what most conventional publishers/devs would allow, so they are often shooting for a much higher target. In fact, many titles go through many iterations of stretch goals and in general the populace (myself included) would rather wait longer for a better game than have something mediocre/conventional - they don't have some publisher saying "Nope, cut these features or that detail, its not worth it to us"; this can be a double edged sword, but frankly I've seen it go right (or evidence of being on the right path if not yet completed) more often than going wrong.

Check out the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Kickstarter page - it has TONS of features and stretch goals, going way beyond previous Castlevanias in depth by the time all of them were implemented; hell, one of them is a "mini-game" - the now released and awesome retro-platformer Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon ! Now consider that, thanks to the crowdfunding ethos of openness, all of the process is done pretty much within public view. It isn't about only showing off an occasional progress video of pre-rendered garbage during E3 or PAX, but frequent blogposts of things that conventional titles would never expose to the public, for better or worse. All this together and I see how they're taking their time, but I think it will be to the betterment of the game. There was a backer beta before this that had many issues in how it played all of which were improved significantly based on that feedback in the most recent beta; hopefully the same will continue. I'm willing to give them the time to get it right.
 
twonunpackmule said:
The beta is okay. The movement is the oddest part. However, I will say it does feature animation cancel when using the dodge button. Which, puts it higher on the list of "movement" than something like Chasm. It doesn't play as well as something like Dead Cells though. Which, once you play that, most games feel dated.

Even if this game comes out merely mediocre...it'll still be better than Mighty Number 9. Also, it was worth solely for the 8 bit mini game that came out a few months ago. Which, is amazing and totally worth sinking some time into.
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To me the graphics in the betas felt soul-less and the shard attacks feel generic and clumsy compared to other IGAvania game mechanics. The only good points I found was the music and decent controls. The plot isn't important so I won't judge the game on what they revealed so far but the fact that they let that horrible cutscene lip sync ship with the beta just shows how little they actually care about the overall quality.

I don't think the full game will be held in a positive light; if it ever sees the light of day.
 
The Mac and Linux versions have been canceled. If you backed these versions you can switch to another, but they're not offering refunds.
Code: 
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/2368304
 
Oh its angry letter time. Time to send this throughout the Linux and Mac community and beyond . Totally unacceptable to drop it like a rock without any more information. I would have been more understanding if it was "Listen guys we need to launch on Windows first and make sure that works, but then we'll port. We won't have parity releases but we haven't forgotten you", but this? This should not be tolerated. Quite frankly, this project - one I was happy to back - is one of the most successful gaming crowdfunding campaigns of the non MMO type - a percentage of that, myself included, based on the info that Linux would be included. Every single stretch goal was crushed!

They don't get to cut PC OSes (which are very different from console platforms for a number of reasons) this long into development under some "hurr durr middleware and online play" nonsense. I'd like to exactly the issues they ran into, as I am sure that there are alternatives.. I've seen this before in the past and frankly there's probably a way to keep Linux and OSX support. If its something about money or time/money at this point, sorry... not acceptable; especially with a long running Kickstarter project you need to provide what your successful campaign promised, lest the bad PR rightfully rain down. Its one thing to take more time or provide MORE than what was asked at the cost of additional time,. but its something else entirely to cut OS support and other features, when you start to panic!

Linux and OSX backers came to support this ultra-successful Kickstarter and frankly the honorable thing to do is to provide what was promised - even if takes more time, even if someone decides its not "cost effective" at the 11th hour etc. Crowdfunding for good and for ill is supposed t be different from just pre-ordering a game, or operating like the rest of the industry. There are some risks (ie maybe it won't be as good as you thought yet they did their best, maybe it takes longer than planned etc) but them turning their backs on unlocked stretch goals much less core features like OS support, when it was already "paid for" by backers years ago...this deserves a vehement response.
 
RanceJustice said:
Oh its angry letter time. Time to send this throughout the Linux and Mac community and beyond . Totally unacceptable to drop it like a rock without any more information. I would have been more understanding if it was "Listen guys we need to launch on Windows first and make sure that works, but then we'll port. We won't have parity releases but we haven't forgotten you", but this? This should not be tolerated. Quite frankly, this project - one I was happy to back - is one of the most successful gaming crowdfunding campaigns of the non MMO type - a percentage of that, myself included, based on the info that Linux would be included. Every single stretch goal was crushed!

They don't get to cut PC OSes (which are very different from console platforms for a number of reasons) this long into development under some "hurr durr middleware and online play" nonsense. I'd like to exactly the issues they ran into, as I am sure that there are alternatives.. I've seen this before in the past and frankly there's probably a way to keep Linux and OSX support. If its something about money or time/money at this point, sorry... not acceptable; especially with a long running Kickstarter project you need to provide what your successful campaign promised, lest the bad PR rightfully rain down. Its one thing to take more time or provide MORE than what was asked at the cost of additional time,. but its something else entirely to cut OS support and other features, when you start to panic!

Linux and OSX backers came to support this ultra-successful Kickstarter and frankly the honorable thing to do is to provide what was promised - even if takes more time, even if someone decides its not "cost effective" at the 11th hour etc. Crowdfunding for good and for ill is supposed t be different from just pre-ordering a game, or operating like the rest of the industry. There are some risks (ie maybe it won't be as good as you thought yet they did their best, maybe it takes longer than planned etc) but them turning their backs on unlocked stretch goals much less core features like OS support, when it was already "paid for" by backers years ago...this deserves a vehement response.
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For Linux users, at least, if the game is releasing on Steam you may still be able to play it through Steam Play with Proton. But as time goes on I am more and more content that I did not end up backing this project.
 
RanceJustice said:
Oh its angry letter time. Time to send this throughout the Linux and Mac community and beyond . Totally unacceptable to drop it like a rock without any more information. I would have been more understanding if it was "Listen guys we need to launch on Windows first and make sure that works, but then we'll port. We won't have parity releases but we haven't forgotten you", but this? This should not be tolerated. Quite frankly, this project - one I was happy to back - is one of the most successful gaming crowdfunding campaigns of the non MMO type - a percentage of that, myself included, based on the info that Linux would be included. Every single stretch goal was crushed!

They don't get to cut PC OSes (which are very different from console platforms for a number of reasons) this long into development under some "hurr durr middleware and online play" nonsense. I'd like to exactly the issues they ran into, as I am sure that there are alternatives.. I've seen this before in the past and frankly there's probably a way to keep Linux and OSX support. If its something about money or time/money at this point, sorry... not acceptable; especially with a long running Kickstarter project you need to provide what your successful campaign promised, lest the bad PR rightfully rain down. Its one thing to take more time or provide MORE than what was asked at the cost of additional time,. but its something else entirely to cut OS support and other features, when you start to panic!

Linux and OSX backers came to support this ultra-successful Kickstarter and frankly the honorable thing to do is to provide what was promised - even if takes more time, even if someone decides its not "cost effective" at the 11th hour etc. Crowdfunding for good and for ill is supposed t be different from just pre-ordering a game, or operating like the rest of the industry. There are some risks (ie maybe it won't be as good as you thought yet they did their best, maybe it takes longer than planned etc) but them turning their backs on unlocked stretch goals much less core features like OS support, when it was already "paid for" by backers years ago...this deserves a vehement response.
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I agree. I'd be running it on Windows, but agree completely with the sentiment. Once those features are "unlocked" that means the devs should be "locked". I've seen other devs spend their own money to make things like this right. I don't necessarily think that's the way with everything, but it shows what can be done under pressure. It's not like this is an unseasoned developer either. This is someone who's created one of the most successful game series in game history. Time to step up a bit I think.

I'm not a fan of cut features in general, but sometimes I get why minor features are changed, cut, etc. In this case though, it's not art assets that need to be created, levels to be designed, stories to be written. It's a fucking re-compile.
 
Armenius said:
For Linux users, at least, if the game is releasing on Steam you may still be able to play it through Steam Play with Proton. But as time goes on I am more and more content that I did not end up backing this project.
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Oh this is true, and I'm very glad to Valve for the development of Proton (open source and amazingly developed even though it doesn't instantly print money!), but this is a "principle of the thing" issue at this point, as native Linux support was part of their core featureset from the launch of the campaign. There are so many other ways they could have handled this with transparent Kickstarter style development. More info on the issues (ie for instance, if they can't get cross-play working on GOG copies and Steam copies for whatever reason, they could have polled the users to ask if it was okay to go forward supporting either single-platform multiplayer, or dropping multiplayer from GOG because Steam works just fine on Linux etc), more chances to make things right than a simple "Its gone and by the way, no refunds". There are already calls to report to Kickstarter for violations of protocol, not offering a refund ; refunds are absolutely the minimum they can do, especially when I see crowdfunding devs of hardware and software products alike offer full refunds to those who wish just for a product being late, much less a major change.

J3RK said:
I agree. I'd be running it on Windows, but agree completely with the sentiment. Once those features are "unlocked" that means the devs should be "locked". I've seen other devs spend their own money to make things like this right. I don't necessarily think that's the way with everything, but it shows what can be done under pressure. It's not like this is an unseasoned developer either. This is someone who's created one of the most successful game series in game history. Time to step up a bit I think.

I'm not a fan of cut features in general, but sometimes I get why minor features are changed, cut, etc. In this case though, it's not art assets that need to be created, levels to be designed, stories to be written. It's a fucking re-compile.
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Thank you! I urge backers, those potentially interested, and others alike to all support a PR blitz against all involved in this decision. As I said before I think this is an issue of principle on a very visible crowdfunded title and even those who aren't Linux/Mac users should stand up in solidarity. Bloodstained is one of the landmark non-MMO crowdfunded titles to date, made by a veteran developer/studio, overran every single stretch goal and literally raising millions. Thus, its time that we call the banners so to speak and take a stand not just for Linux support (though this is important in and of itself for a number of reasons), but to call bullshit on bad policies and failure to keep promises. I see some (even in the Linux community) who are saying "This is why not to crowdfund etc) and just taking it as if one should expect disappointment etc... but backers, communities such as Linux, games media, and the industry as a whole shouldn't just resign themselves as if this is what to expect from crowdfunding! Crowdfunding is and should be different from standard game development and does have risks (ie delays etc) , but this should not be one of them!

I'll do what I can to contribute to a push for more information alongside a reversal of this policy. Others who wish to get involved and/or spread the word would be welcome!
 
I took this game off my Wishlist which was on the list for over a year just sick of waiting around for a game that might come out in 2019.
 
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Ritual of the Night gets a release... window. Summer 2019. No mention if that is summer for the northern or southern hemisphere :cry:.

 
I'm guessing that release window is pretty solid, because it was mentioned in the Nintendo Direct the other day for the Switch. (which is probably what I'll play it on at this point) I doubt N would have said anything without some kind of info to back it up. (you never know though... :D )
 
Watched that earlier today. Looking very nice! I still prefer quality 2D to 2.5D, but this looks really nice now. I like the humor as well. :D (of this video)
 
I'm still quite frustrated and bitter about the Mac/Linux thing to the point it colors my impression of the game, but putting that aside I'm glad to see the kind of progress depicted in the video. Their humorous take on response to the alpha is nice, but I hope they realize that the faith in their improvements (and some may say, cockiness of the video) may bite them in the ass if the game doesn't deliver at or above expectations. I am hoping for the best, but with their funding and pedigree I admit I have lofty expectations ; There has been a lot of development in the "Metroidvania" sphere since Iga's last titles, so I hope they looked into highly lauded entries indie and major publisher alike; There is stiff competition but especially given all the stretch goals and content with luck they will elevate the "igavania" genre.

Of course, all of this optimism is muted due to their (mis)handling of Linux, but hopefully after launch there will be time to revisit the issue and get proper ports of of Ritual of the Night (and Curse of the Moon) as intended.
 
J3RK said:
Watched that earlier today. Looking very nice! I still prefer quality 2D to 2.5D, but this looks really nice now. I like the humor as well. :D (of this video)
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Hand drawn high def 2d would have been epic. Sadly my interest is dying for this game which is a bummer. At this point I am expecting highest quality best made vania game yet, just not seeing it.
 
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