Nine years ago, Metroidvania legend Koji Igarashi brought Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night to Kickstarter, where it soon became the most-funded video game in the history of the platform - only to be dethroned by Shenmue 3 a few months later. Now, in 2024, Bloodstained's developers are finally about to fulfill the campaign's final remaining stretch goal.
Bloodstained blasted by its initial $500,000 Kickstarter goal back in 2015, and the devs put up many - arguably too many - stretch goals in order to incentivize further funding. The game ended up raising $5,545,991, unlocking nearly two dozen stretch goals. A handful of those were adjusted and one - a PlayStation Vita port - was canceled altogether, but over the course of the past decade the devs have been slowly delivering on almost every single one of those extra features.
The $3.25 million goal was "asynchronous online multiplayer," the nature of which was never really fully explained. Presumably, it would've been some sort of Dark Souls-style system where you can leave messages or see the ghosts of other players. It was the final remaining stretch goal, and it has been replaced by full-on co-op and versus multiplayer offerings.
Update 1.5, launching May 16 on Switch and May 9 on all other platforms, is set to be "the final update to the game," as the devs explain in the announcement. The update will bring Chaos Mode, where you run through randomized rooms fighting against enemies either in solo or co-op. Then there's Versus Mode, where you fight a bunch of monsters, earn souls from defeating them, and spend those souls to upgrade your abilities and debuff an opponent who's also trying to survive the onslaught.
Bloodstained launched in 2019 to solid reviews, proving to be a great follow-up to the non-linear Castlevania that Igarashi helmed in the past. Now that the old Kickstarter goals are fulfilled, it looks like the devs can finally turn to the full sequel that's in development.
There's a reason we count Bloodstained among the best Metroidvania games.
