Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is a game with an extremely interesting history behind it. Back during the PS1 and PS2 era, one video game series known as Castlevania reigned supreme. Castlevania was an influential series for many reasons but, perhaps most importantly, it essentially helped to pilot and solidify the “Metroidvania” genre of games. Metroidvanias are known for being 2D side-scrollers taking place in an interconnected map that force players to explore in unconventional methods by sectioning off certain areas of the map until certain requirements elsewhere in the map have been met. Many gamers loved this style of game and couldn’t get enough of it, which was why when Koji Igarashi announced he would be leaving his team and the Castlevania series as a whole in the PS2 era, it left many fans in an unfortunate position.

Many developers in the early 2000s tried to replicate the Metroidvania formula, to varying levels of success. While many games were well-received, none could quite fill the void of the Koji Igarashi developed games. Because of this, it was incredibly exciting when Koji Igarashi announced back in 2016 that he would be hosting a Kickstarter campaign to accrue funds with the goal of making a brand new Castlevania game, directed by himself and worked on by a team of his colleagues. The stretch goal for the campaign was a massive 5,000,000 USD, but the extremely dedicated legacy he had built up managed to net the stretch goal in a relatively short period of time. The campaign managed to far exceed its goal, and because of this, many promises were made by Koji Igarashi on bonus features the team would devote themselves to adding into the game.

Yesterday comes an announcement from Koji Igarashi himself, stating that many of the bonus modes promised to be added to the game had been cancelled. The roguelite mode, which was the first promise of the campaign outside of the game’s release, is no longer being worked on and any development made on the mode has been completely and entirely scrapped. Obviously, many fans are none too pleased about this decision. There were plenty of fans who donated amounts in the 100s and even thousands to support the campaign, and with this news certainly comes a feeling of…uncertainty. “Feels like we’ve been lied to,” said one twitter account who had donated over 200 dollars towards the campaign. In all fairness, most of the donated funds did go directly towards the costs of the game itself, but that certainly doesn’t invalidate anyone for feeling disappointed or lied to by the lack of promised features.