Article can be found on the GamersFTW website released may 11th; http://www.gamersftw.co.uk/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night-a-new-kickstarter-project-from-legendary-castlevania-director-koji-igarashi/
Koji Igarashi, known for his work as a director of the Castlevania series including the seminal ‘Castlevania; Symphony of the Night’, today announces his new Kickstarter project: Bloodstained – Ritual of the Night.
The game self–describes itself under the coined genre IGAVANIA; a portmanteau of IGA, Koji’s nickname, and vania, from Castlevania, and is a game which is “A Gothic exploration-focused action platformer designed by one of the godfathers of the genre!”
After working on his last Castlevania game ‘Order of Ecclesia’ in 2008, Igarashi had begun withdrawing from the public eye, following a slow decline of output up to his last game ‘Leedmees’ in September 2011. This gave rise to speculation as to whether or not his prospects with game developer and publisher Konami, as well as his work on video games as a whole, were drawing to close.
It was then later announced that Igarashi had decided to leave Konami altogether on March 15th 2014, while mentioning an interest in creating his own game studio in passing.
After over a year of radio-silence from the developer, a teaser site ‘sword or whip‘ had surfaced at the start of this month, featuring an avatar of Igarashi resembling Dracula from the Castlevania series, making cryptic remarks and allusions to a new game.
It was only today at 11am PST that it was officially announced that Igarashi would be working on a new 2.5D action platformer, revisiting a genre he felt would still resonate with the current gaming crowd, “built on some of the classic gaming principles his works are known for”.
The game will be an exploration-focused side-scrolling platformer, which will not only include RPG elements but also crafting features, a co-op option and battle mode.
The Kickstarter itself also includes several stretch goals for backers, including a 2nd playable character, Nightmare difficulty mode and a goal to include voice acting from David Hayter, famous for his portrayal of Solid Snake from the Metal Gear Solid series.
Bloodstained – Ritual of the Night has currently close to 7000 backers and already reached the set $500,000 goal in just a few hours of the Kickstarter’s release.
Those interested in backing the project can visit the kickstarter page here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/description
Koji Igarashi is also currently running a stream on his sword or whip website, playing several 2D platformer titles, which you can visit here: http://swordorwhip.com/
(Source of the information on Bloodstained – Ritual of the Night was found via IGN)
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