After legendary game designer Koji Igarashi left Konami in 2014, many wondered what the man behind most of their favorite Castlevania games would do next. Soon after his departure, Igarashi founded the company ArtPlay and revealed a Kickstarter campaign for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, a spiritual successor to his style of Castlevania games. That project was an instant success and Bloodstained launched in 2019 to rave reviews. The team at ArtPlay has also released two more games in the Bloodstained franchise that flashback to the earliest days of the Castlevania franchise. However, the team hasn’t released a new game since 2020. Recently, Igarashi and Bloodstained designer Shutaro Iida released a new video to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night‘s launch and announced that the team is taking the “necessary moves” to reveal its next game “in the near future.”
Of course, we’ve known that something was coming from Igarashi and his team since 2021. Publisher 505 Games’ parent company Digital Bros. shared that a “second version is in development” for the fan-favorite Metroidvania. Since then, the team has been relatively quiet about the project. However, last month the team at ArtPlay released the final piece of planned DLC for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, which means they can funnel most of their developmental resources over to the next project.ย
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The new video doesn’t share much more than what we already know. Toward the end of the seven-minute presentation, Igarashi said, “In regards to our new title, we are already making our necessary moves. We look forward to sharing more things with you in the future.”
The first part of that statement is likely referring to the team moving resources off of Ritual of the Night after dropping the final bit of content last month. The second sentence is much more interesting. With how successful the first game was, ArtPlay probably won’t do another Kickstarter, but will probably look to an event to make the announcement and drum up hype. It’s possible Igarashi and his team will have something ready for Bloodstained 2 by this year’s Tokyo Game Show in September, which would make a great stage to showcase the sequel. Otherwise, fans might be waiting until The Game Awards in December or later depending on how big of a splash ArtPlay wants to make with the reveal.
For now, there’s plenty of content to dive into if you haven’t already played Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. The game is currently available on PlayStation 4, Switch, mobile, Xbox One, and PC platforms.
