Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Bloodstained takes place in 18th century England during the Industrial Revolution. Fearing the loss of their influence over their wealthy patrons, the Alchemy Guild researched methods to summon demons and created Shardbinders, humans forcibly fused with demonically charged crystals that attuned them to their powers. These Shardbinders were sacrificed by the Guild to summon demons from Hell in what was meant to be a scare tactic but instead brought uncontrollable destruction that wiped out the Guild and much of England until the Church was able to banish them. Of the sacrificed Shardbinders, only one named Gebel survived. Another Shardbinder, the main protagonist Miriam, is spared due to falling into an unnatural slumber before she can be sacrificed.^[1]

Ten years later in the game's present-day, Miriam has awakened from her slumber and has learned that Gebel has summoned the demons to destroy England as he seeks revenge on the surviving alchemists for what they did to him.^[2] Accompanied by Johannes, a former member of the Alchemy Guild, they sail across the ocean to Arvantville, a destroyed village on the outskirts of Gebel's castle, the Hellhold. They meet with Johannes's friend Dominique, an exorcist who helped Johannes care for Miriam during her slumber and has been sent by the Church to help them stop Gebel.^[3]

As Miriam begins her journey into the Hellhold, she confronts Alfred, a surviving member of the Alchemy Guild and the former mentor to Johannes. Alfred seeks to recover an ancient book used in the demon summoning by Gebel, the Liber Logaeth, and threatens to kill Miriam if she does not leave. As his former student, Johannes deeply distrusts Alfred's motives and fears he may be making another mistake, partially feeling responsible for the actions that Alfred and the other alchemists took in harming Gebel, Miriam, and the other Shardbinders.^[4] She also crosses paths multiple times with Zangetsu, a demon hunter from Japan who initially distrusts Miriam due to her Shardbinder powers having ties to demons, but over time begins to respect her strength. Zangetsu explains that he is seeking a demon named Gremory, who is continuously eluding him for fear of his power. He gives Miriam his katana thinking that Gremory will not expect her to be wielding it and drop her guard.

Miriam confronts Gebel in the Hellhold's throne room, and she attempts to reason with him by reminding him that during the trauma of her transformation into a Shardbinder, he was the one who taught her to never give up on her humanity. Though he briefly seems moved by her words, Gebel remains defiant and the two Shardbinders fight. Should Gebel be killed, he will thank Miriam for stopping him, but the game will immediately end as Miriam wonders if she made the right choice. Using Zangetsu's katana, Miriam instead exposes Gremory's hiding place in the throne room and she escapes. Freed from the demon's control, Gebel is only able to give Miriam his final apologies before the crystals in his body consume him completely. Alfred then arrives to steal the Liber Logaeth from them and flees.

Miriam chases Gremory and Alfred through a dimensional portal into another part of the castle. Inside, she finds Alfred mortally wounded and the Liber Logaeth gone. As he dies, he explains that he was trying to use the Liber Logaeth as part of a spell he had cast throughout the Hellhold to destroy it. He also reveals that he was the one who put Miriam in her slumber ten years ago to sabotage the Guild's summoning, knowing her power as a Shardbinder was so immense that it would have brought even worse destruction than what was summoned had she been sacrificed.

Reuniting with Zangetsu, Miriam tracks down Gremory. Zangetsu uses his power to bind the demon in place, but he is seemingly killed in the process and so Miriam defeats Gremory alone. She then locates the Liber Logaeth and the one who stole it: Dominique. Craving the power to defy and destroy God for letting everybody die during the demon summoning ten years ago, Dominique reveals that she has turned herself into a Shardbinder through extensive study of Miriam and Gebel and uses the Liber Logaeth to summon Bael, the king of demons. Miriam banishes Dominique and Bael, and Johannes uses the Liber Logaeth to complete Alfred's spell and destroy the Hellhold.

As peace returns to the land, Miriam mourns the sacrifices made for her victory and wonders if the world will ever truly be free of the demons. Johannes consoles Miriam by revealing that with the Liber Logaeth, he may have the means to permanently stop the crystals from consuming her body. Miriam and Johannes leave Arvantville while an unseen person's shadow steps into view, revealed to be Zangetsu, who survived the events of the story after managing to escape Hell. He retrieves his sword, Zangetsuto, after watching the pair walk away.

The game follows the Metroidvania-style gameplay of the post-Symphony of the Night games of the Castlevania series. As Miriam, the player explores a labyrinthine series of rooms presented as a platform game, fighting monsters and bosses and gaining keys or powers that let them explore previous areas that were previously impossible to reach. Miriam is able to use various weapons to perform melee or ranged attacks to defeat monsters, or special abilities granted by the shards she possesses from monsters to perform magical attacks. Miriam has both a health bar and a magic power bar. Health is lost to monster and environmental attacks, and should this drop to zero, the game is over, requiring the player to load the last save state. Health can be restored by using items or finding health drops from monsters or environmental pieces. Magic power is drained by using shard skills, and if out of mana, the player cannot use shard skills, but mana can be similarly regained as with health.

The player gains new weapons, armor and accessories throughout the game by defeating monsters and looting chests. This equipment provides various attributes to Miriam along with offensive and defensive bonuses. For weapons, this also set the type of attacks that the player can make. For example, short swords allow a variety of fast, close-ranged attacks, spears enable slow but long-reaching attacks, and guns allow for long-distance shots but with no melee possibilities. The equipment can be changed on the fly via menu screens. Shards are obtained by defeating monsters, and generally contain a power reflecting the essence of the monster it came from. The player can only equip a limited number of shards, but like equipment, shards can be swapped out on the fly.

Among the maze of rooms include save rooms, allowing the player to save their game and fully regenerate Miriam's health and magic power. Additionally, warp rooms allow the player to quick jump from one region of the map to another previously discovered warp room. Following the game's prelude, the player also gains access to a set of non-playable characters located at the start of the map that provide stores to buy and sell weapons, shards, ingredients and crafting services to make new weapons or upgrade shards. The game is presented in a 2.5D style, presenting the game in three-dimensional graphics but restricting movement to a 2D system. Igarashi stated the choice for 2.5D was to follow the style of previous Castlevania games, such as The Dracula X Chronicles and Mirror of Fate.^[2][5]

Discover more about Gameplay related topics

Metroidvania

Metroidvania

Metroidvania is a sub-genre of action-adventure games and/or platformers focused on guided non-linearity and utility-gated exploration and progression. The term is a portmanteau of the names of the video game series Metroid and Castlevania, based on the template from Metroid from 1986, Castlevania II from 1987, and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night from 1997. Since Symphony of the Night assistant director Koji Igarashi took more inspiration from The Legend of Zelda series, this gameplay formula of action-exploration is less commonly known as a Zeldavania or Zeldatroid.

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is an action role-playing game developed and published by Konami for the PlayStation and Sega Saturn. It was directed and produced by Toru Hagihara, with Koji Igarashi acting as assistant director. It is a direct sequel to Castlevania: Rondo of Blood, taking place four years later. It features Dracula's dhampir son Alucard as the protagonist, rising from his slumber to explore Dracula's castle which resurfaced after Richter Belmont vanished. Its design marks a break from previous entries in the series, re-introducing the exploration, nonlinear level design, and role-playing elements first experimented with in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest.

Platform game

Platform game

A platform game is a sub-genre of action video games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are characterized by levels that consist of uneven terrain and suspended platforms of varying height that require jumping and climbing to traverse. Other acrobatic maneuvers may factor into the gameplay, such as swinging from vines or grappling hooks, jumping off walls, air dashing, gliding through the air, being shot from cannons, or bouncing from springboards or trampolines. Games where jumping is automated completely, such as 3D games in The Legend of Zelda series, fall outside of the genre.

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow – Mirror of Fate is a Nintendo 3DS game in the Castlevania series. It was released in March 2013, and is a direct sequel to Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, which served as a reboot of the franchise.

Producer and scenario writer Koji Igarashi at the 2017 New York Comic Con

Bloodstained is a spiritual successor to the Castlevania series by Konami, of which Koji Igarashi had been the series producer from 2001 to 2010. In March 2014, Igarashi opted to leave Konami, stating concern for his continued employment and differences in the directions they wanted to take the company. Igarashi later stated "For the longest time, when I was working at Konami, I was protected by my company. They took care of me. Now I'm kind of anxious."^[6][7][8][9] Igarashi also stated that he had received a large number of requests from fans to continue to develop Castlevania games, giving him another reason to leave Konami and aim to start his own studio to develop these fan-requested games, including a Metroidvania-styled game with similar themes to Castlevania.^[7][9][10]

Prior to his departure, news of the success of the Kickstarter for Mighty No. 9, a Mega Man-inspired game produced by the former series producer and artist Keiji Inafune, had reached Japan, and inspired Igarashi that this could be a similar route to obtain funding for a new game.^[6] Following his departure, he began pitching for funding of a new game with the help of Digital Development Management's Ben Judd, who has also assisted with Mighty No. 9's funding.^[6] They approached more than twenty publishers with the pitch, but found that none of them were willing to help. According to Judd, while Igarashi's reputation reduced the risk involved with the title and the projected budget was modest, the publishers were skeptical. Japanese publishers wanted to make sure that the American and European markets would want the title, and Castlevania games historically were not as well received in European markets. Western publishers believed the Japanese origins of the games were too strange for them.^[6] After six months with no success, Igarashi opted to join mobile developer ArtPlay as a paying job, but worked with the company to assure that he would be free to continue to pursue this new game idea.^[6]

Kickstarter

Igarashi recognized the success of Mighty No. 9's Kickstarter, and began seeking how to accomplish the same for his vision. He and Judd were able to locate investors that would help contribute funds, but only if they could show there was a strong interest in the title. The two opted to use Kickstarter to demonstrate what they believed would be a popular title, seeking to gain $500,000 to secure funding that would cover the remaining 10% of development costs.^[11] The Kickstarter was launched on 11 May 2015.^[12] Promotion and handling of the social media for the Kickstarter campaign was handled by Fangamer.^[13] Prior to the Kickstarter, Igarashi teased the announcement through social media using the phrases "igavania" and "sword or whip", and on the day of the announcement, participated in live streaming event via Twitch playing several other Metroidvania titles with various gaming personalities and developers.^[14] 2 Player Productions helped with filming Igarashi's pitch for the Kickstarter at Castello di Amorosa in northern California a month prior to its announcement.^[6]

The game succeeded in its base goal within four hours of going live,^[15] and reached $1.5 million within the first day.^[16] Various stretch goals were introduced and met, including obtaining David Hayter as a voice actor for the game.^[5] Hayter had originally been slated for the role of Gebel, but ended up as Zangetsu for the final game.^[17] Additional stretch goals included hiring Robert Belgrade, the voice of Alucard in Symphony of the Night to have a voice role, and allowing artist Ayami Kojima to create the packaging artwork for physical copies.^[18] Other stretch goals included a retro-style companion game titled Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, support for local co-operative play, a boss rush mode, a "classic mode" which reworks some portions of the game's maps into strictly-linear levels akin to the original Castlevania games, and a roguelike dungeon mode where the player can challenge a procedurally-generated dungeon.^[19][20] In addition to monetary stretch goals, Igarashi offered additional bonuses for all backers based on the amount of social media content the Kickstarter generates, such as followers of the game on Twitter or Facebook or number of pieces of fan artwork submitted to its site.^[21] The Bloodstained Kickstarter was successfully funded with more than $5.5M in pledges,^[22] and as of June 2015^[update] the highest value video game Kickstarter project, exceeding the previous amount set by Torment: Tides of Numenera.^[23] However, about two months afterwards, the Kickstarter for Shenmue III broke Bloodstained's record, raising over $6.3 million in a similar period as Bloodstained.^[24]

Design

Igarashi and ArtPlay developed the game's narrative, design, and overseeing production, while they hired DICO as a third-party publisher around June 2016 to assist in developing the game's assets and level design. The game is published and marketed by 505 Games.^[25] Developer Inti Creates, whose name had been associated with Bloodstained earlier in the project, had been involved in developing a mini-game that was released alongside the main game.^[26] Bloodstained was developed for Unreal Engine 4.^[2][27] Near the end of 2018, Igarashi announced they had also brought on WayForward to help with some development, specifically in the area of polishing the title. Igarashi had been impressed by WayForward's skill in 2D platform games, such as their Shantae series, and was excited for them to be part of the project.^[28]

The game's name is based around the concept of a magi-crystal curse that inflicts the main characters: they grow across the person's body with the appearance of stained glass, and Igarashi felt that "Bloodstained" was a good play on words to reflect that.^[29] While the title is thematically based around the Gothic theme like Castlevania, Igarashi did not want to incorporate the public domain character of Dracula into it, feeling it would make the game too close to previous Castlevania titles and did not want to make his new game feel like a "half-baked copy".^[29] Igarashi opted to make the main playable character Miriam female based on recognizing current trends in video games in Western markets to present strong female lead characters that the broad range of intended players of either gender would enjoy playing, while avoiding the developmental encumbrances of creating two separate-gendered playable characters.^[30]

The game's music was written primarily by Michiru Yamane, a former Konami composer who worked on the music for several Castlevania games, along with the musical group Noisycroak and a single track by Ippo Yamada.^[21][31][32] Shutaro Iida, who worked on previous Castlevania games as a programmer, director and designer, returned to the game in the role of a planner.^[33]

Discover more about Development related topics

Castlevania

Castlevania

Castlevania, known in Japan as Akumajō Dracula, is a gothic horror action-adventure video game series and media franchise about Dracula, created and developed by Konami. It has been released on various platforms, from early systems to modern consoles, as well as handheld devices such as mobile phones. The franchise has expanded into several spin-off video games and other media, including comic books and an animated television series.

Koji Igarashi

Koji Igarashi

Koji Igarashi is a Japanese video game producer, programmer, writer, and creative director. Often credited as IGA, he began his career by joining Konami in 1990 as a programmer. Over the next ten years, he moved into a senior role within the company, working on Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as a programmer, writer, and assistant director. He later served as the lead producer on the Castlevania series, starting with Castlevania Chronicles in 1999 and ending with Castlevania: Harmony of Despair in 2011. During his time with Konami, he was also involved in other titles, such as Nano Breaker and Tokimeki Memorial. In 2014, Igarashi left Konami to later become the co-founder of Artplay who in June 2019 released Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, a spiritual successor to the Castlevania Series.

Kickstarter

Kickstarter

Kickstarter is an American public benefit corporation based in Brooklyn, New York, that maintains a global crowdfunding platform focused on creativity. The company's stated mission is to "help bring creative projects to life". As of February 2023, Kickstarter has received $7 billion in pledges from 21.7 million backers to fund 233,626 projects, such as films, music, stage shows, comics, journalism, video games, board games, technology, publishing, and food-related projects.

Keiji Inafune

Keiji Inafune

Keiji Inafune is a Japanese video game producer, illustrator and businessman. Starting his career at Capcom in the late 1980s, his job was as an artist and illustrator. The first two games he worked on were the original Street Fighter and Mega Man in 1987. He was then an illustrator and artist of the Mega Man series during the NES and Super NES era. For Mega Man X, he created and designed the character Zero.

Ben Judd

Ben Judd

Ben Judd is an American translator, producer, and agent. He is a former Capcom employee. Judd is an American and lives in Japan and became Capcom's first non-Japanese producer. Judd has had several voice acting cameos in his career, including the English voice of the character Phoenix Wright in the Ace Attorney series.

Fangamer

Fangamer

Fangamer is an American video game merchandising company and game publisher based in Tucson, Arizona. Fangamer was originally spun out from Starmen.net, an EarthBound online forum. It operates an online store that sells licensed indie game merchandise items such as hats, pins, vinyl records, t-shirts and other products. In recent years the company has also begun publishing physical editions of independent video games.

2 Player Productions

2 Player Productions

2 Player Productions, Limited is a video production company based in San Francisco, California. It was founded in 2005 by Paul Owens, Paul Levering, and Asif Siddiky. The company produces content relating to video game culture and the process of game production. They produced the documentary Reformat the Planet in 2008, and have since worked with mainstream companies including MTV and Spike.

Castello di Amorosa

Castello di Amorosa

Castello di Amorosa is a winery located near Calistoga, California. The winery opened to the public in April 2007, as the project of a fourth-generation vintner, Dario Sattui, who also owns and operates the V. Sattui Winery named after his great-grandfather, Vittorio Sattui, who originally established a winery in San Francisco in 1885 after emigrating from Italy to California.

David Hayter

David Hayter

David Hayter is a Canadian-American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer. He is well known as the English-language voice actor for Solid Snake and Naked Snake in the Metal Gear video game series. He wrote the film X-Men and co-wrote X2 and Watchmen, and was awarded the Saturn Award for Best Writing in 2000 for his work on X-Men. Hayter voices King Shark on The Flash.

Alucard (Castlevania)

Alucard (Castlevania)

Adrian Fahrenheit Țepeș , better known as Alucard , is a fictional character in Konami's Castlevania series of video games. His first appearance in the series was in the 1989 game Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, but he is best known for his role in the critically acclaimed Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, released in 1997. His design in Symphony of the Night was created by Ayami Kojima, marking her first contribution to the Castlevania franchise.

Ayami Kojima

Ayami Kojima

Ayami Kojima is a Japanese artist. She has often worked in video games as a character designer and is most known for her work on the Castlevania series of video games with Konami. She is self-taught and enjoys reading shōnen manga.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is a 2018 platform game developed and published by Inti Creates. It is a companion title to developer ArtPlay's 2019 game Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and was conceived to fulfill the promise for a retro-style accompaniment to Ritual of the Night after its Kickstarter campaign exceeded crowdfunding goals. Curse of the Moon follows Zangetsu, a cursed swordsman hunting down demons for revenge, as well as three other playable characters named Miriam, Alfred and Gebel. It features an 8-bit aesthetic and gameplay style similar to Castlevania games on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), particularly Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (1989).

At the end of the Kickstarter in June 2015, Bloodstained was planned for release in 2017 on Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation Vita and Wii U through the campaign's stretch goals. At this point in time, the Unreal Engine 4 was not yet ported to either the Vita or Wii U. Armature Studio was set to do these ports, with plans to release the code base for both the Wii U and Vita ports for free to any studio licensed to work on it once they had overcome the lack of Unreal on these platforms.^{[34][35][36][37]} During the game's development process, Nintendo discontinued the Wii U and released the Nintendo Switch in March 2017. Igarashi opted to transfer development from the Wii U to the Switch, offering backers who had selected the Wii U version a refund or a choice of the game on a different platform, with the Switch being the default option for backers who had previously chosen the Wii U. Igarashi had started the Kickstarter when the Wii U was the dominant Nintendo platform, but with the introduction of the Switch since that point, he found it difficult to support the Wii U, and called for the transition.^[38] The PlayStation Vita version of the game was cancelled in August 2018 due to Sony dropping support for the handheld; backers that desired the Vita release were given the option of selecting the game for a different platform for free or assorted refund options.^[39] In December 2018, the team announced that the planned macOS and Linux versions of the game had also been cancelled and would not be offering refunds, citing challenges of supporting middleware and online features.^[40][41]

Though Igarashi originally anticipated a 2017 release, he announced in September 2016 that he was bringing a second studio to help with the development of the game, and delayed the game.^[42] Igarashi stated the delay was primarily due to the added work to complete the campaign's stretch goals, a factor he could not consider during the Kickstarter period, and his commitment to making a high quality game, "better than a traditional Igavania game that I've made in the past" and not wanting to back down on quality just to make the original release date. The amount of work in man-hours, along with Inti Creates' inexperience with the Unreal engine to complete some of the concepts he wanted in the game, led Igarashi to bring in additional studios and push back the release date.^[43] Igarashi later revealed these studios as DICO, who have experience with localization and global development, and Monobit, for technical assistance with the game engine.^[44] With the delay in release, the development teams were able to include an improved visual style to the game, addressing early player concerns about the visuals shown in earlier stages of development.^[45]

A single-level demonstration of Bloodstained was made available to play for attendees of Electronic Entertainment Expo 2016, and was released to Kickstarter backers a week later.^[46][47] In July 2016, Igarashi announced that the game had entered full production.^[48] The game was playable again at EGX Rezzed 2019.^[49]

Bloodstained was released on 18 June 2019 for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One versions, and was released a week later on 25 June 2019 for the Nintendo Switch.^[45] Following the approach used by Shovel Knight, the game used a post-release content model so that they are able to bring additional content, such as the game modes from the additional Kickstarter stretch goals, over time to avoid release delays.^[50] On 10 May 2020, the first of these updates was released, adding Zangetsu as an unlockable character and a Randomizer Mode.^[51] This would be followed up by a second update on 3 July 2020 that added Boss Revenge and Chroma Wheel.^[52] As part of the Kickstarter's stretch goals, Inti Creates also developed a companion game, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, a NES-stylized platform game with Miriam and Gebel playable alongside the swordsman exorcist Zangetsu and the alchemist Alfred.^[53] It was released on Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo Switch on 24 May 2018.^[54] A sequel to Curse of the Moon was announced in June 2020.^[55] Mobile ports for iOS and Android devices, developed by NetEase and ArtPlay, were announced in October 2020.^[56] These ports were released on 3 December 2020.^[57] Versions for cloud-based streaming services were released for Amazon Luna and Google Stadia on 20 October 2020 and 6 July 2021, respectively.^[58][59]

Igarashi had stated that given the amount of time he has spent in developing the Bloodstained intellectual property, he sees the game as "a starting ground" for future Bloodstained games.^[60] A sequel was confirmed to be in early development in June 2021, with more development resources to be moved to the project after the completion of the additional content planned for Ritual of the Night.^[61]

Discover more about Release related topics

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for servers, and Windows IoT for embedded systems. Defunct Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile, and Windows Phone.

MacOS

MacOS

macOS is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and laptop computers it is the second most widely used desktop OS, after Microsoft Windows and ahead of ChromeOS.

Linux

Linux

Linux is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name "GNU/Linux" to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

PlayStation 4

PlayStation 4

The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in Europe, South America and Australia, and on February 22, 2014 in Japan. A console of the eighth generation, it competes with Microsoft's Xbox One and Nintendo's Wii U and Switch.

PlayStation Vita

PlayStation Vita

The PlayStation Vita is a handheld game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on December 17, 2011, and in North America, Europe, and other international territories beginning on February 22, 2012. The console is the successor to the PlayStation Portable, and a part of the PlayStation brand of gaming devices; as part of the eighth generation of video game consoles, it primarily competed with the Nintendo 3DS.

Armature Studio

Armature Studio

Armature Studio, LLC is an American video game development studio in Austin, Texas. The studio, founded by former Retro Studios directors Mark Pacini and Todd Keller in September 2008, developed Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate (2013) and ReCore (2016).

Nintendo Switch

Nintendo Switch

The Nintendo Switch is a hybrid video game console developed by Nintendo and released worldwide in most regions on March 3, 2017. The console itself is a tablet that can either be docked for use as a home console or used as a portable device, making it a hybrid console. Its wireless Joy-Con controllers, with standard buttons and directional analog sticks for user input, motion sensing, and tactile feedback, can attach to both sides of the console to support handheld-style play. They can also connect to a grip accessory to provide a traditional home console gamepad form, or be used individually in the hand like the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, supporting local multiplayer modes. The Nintendo Switch's software supports online gaming through Internet connectivity, as well as local wireless ad hoc connectivity with other consoles. Nintendo Switch games and software are available on both physical flash-based ROM cartridges and digital distribution via Nintendo eShop; the system has no region lockout. A handheld-focused revision of the system, called the Nintendo Switch Lite, was released on September 20, 2019. A revised higher-end version of the original system, featuring an OLED screen, was released on October 8, 2021.

Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight

Shovel Knight is a platform video game developed and published by Yacht Club Games. Development was crowdfunded and the game was released for Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, and Windows in June 2014. It was ported to OS X and Linux in September 2014, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, and Xbox One in April 2015, Amazon Fire TV in September 2015, and Nintendo Switch in March 2017. Shovel Knight is inspired by gameplay and graphics of platformer games developed for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is a 2018 platform game developed and published by Inti Creates. It is a companion title to developer ArtPlay's 2019 game Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and was conceived to fulfill the promise for a retro-style accompaniment to Ritual of the Night after its Kickstarter campaign exceeded crowdfunding goals. Curse of the Moon follows Zangetsu, a cursed swordsman hunting down demons for revenge, as well as three other playable characters named Miriam, Alfred and Gebel. It features an 8-bit aesthetic and gameplay style similar to Castlevania games on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), particularly Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse (1989).

Platform game

Platform game

A platform game is a sub-genre of action video games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are characterized by levels that consist of uneven terrain and suspended platforms of varying height that require jumping and climbing to traverse. Other acrobatic maneuvers may factor into the gameplay, such as swinging from vines or grappling hooks, jumping off walls, air dashing, gliding through the air, being shot from cannons, or bouncing from springboards or trampolines. Games where jumping is automated completely, such as 3D games in The Legend of Zelda series, fall outside of the genre.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 is a platform video game developed and published by Inti Creates. It was released for Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch on July 10, 2020. It is the third game in the Bloodstained series and a direct sequel to Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, itself a spin-off of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. The game's graphics and gameplay are done in an 8-bit retro style meant to mimic the early Castlevania games.

IOS

IOS

iOS is a mobile operating system developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes the system software for iPads predating iPadOS—which was introduced in 2019—as well as on the iPod Touch devices—which were discontinued in mid-2022. It is the world's second-most widely installed mobile operating system, after Android. It is the basis for three other operating systems made by Apple: iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS. It is proprietary software, although some parts of it are open source under the Apple Public Source License and other licenses.

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (September 2021)

According to review aggregator Metacritic, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night received "generally favorable" reviews on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, and "mixed or average" reviews on Nintendo Switch.^{[62][63][64][65]}

At launch, the Nintendo Switch version was seen as inferior to the other versions, with critics citing input lag, washed-out visuals, and stuttering frame rates.^[72][73] In response, the developers shifted their resources to optimizing the Nintendo Switch version with a series of smaller patches instead of having players wait for a single large update.^[74]

The PC version was among the best-selling new releases on Steam when it released.^[75][b] By June 2020, the game had reached 1 million units sold.^[77]

Awards

The game was nominated for the Off Broadway Award for Best Indie Game at the New York Game Awards,^[78] and won the award for "Control Precision" at the NAVGTR Awards, whereas its other nomination was for "Game, Original Action";^[79] it was also nominated for "Most Promising New Intellectual Property" at the SXSW Gaming Awards.^[80]

Discover more about Reception related topics

Metacritic

Metacritic

Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged. Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc Doyle, and Julie Doyle Roberts in 1999, and is owned by Fandom, Inc. as of 2023.

Game Informer

Game Informer

Game Informer is an American monthly video game magazine featuring articles, news, strategy, and reviews of video games and associated consoles. It debuted in August 1991 when video game retailer FuncoLand started publishing an in-house newsletter. The publication is now owned and published by GameStop, who bought FuncoLand in 2000. Due to this, a large amount of promotion is done in-store, which has contributed to the success of the magazine. As of June 2017, it is the 5th most popular magazine by copies circulated.

GameSpot

GameSpot

GameSpot is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition to the information produced by GameSpot staff, the site also allows users to write their own reviews, blogs, and post on the site's forums. It has been owned by Fandom, Inc. since October 2022.

IGN

IGN

IGN is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former editor-in-chief, Peer Schneider. The IGN website was the brainchild of media entrepreneur Chris Anderson and launched on September 29, 1996. It focuses on games, films, anime, television, comics, technology, and other media. Originally a network of desktop websites, IGN is also distributed on mobile platforms, console programs on the Xbox and PlayStation, FireTV, Roku, and via YouTube, Twitch, Hulu, and Snapchat.

PC Gamer

PC Gamer

PC Gamer is a magazine and website founded in the United Kingdom in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future plc. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries. The magazine features news on developments in the video game industry, previews of new games, and reviews of the latest popular PC games, along with other features relating to hardware, mods, "classic" games and various other topics.

TouchArcade

TouchArcade

TouchArcade is a mobile video game website that launched in 2008. Arnold Kim of MacRumors worked on the site and its editor-in-chief was Eli Hodapp from 2009 to 2019.

Review aggregator

Review aggregator

A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews and ratings of products and services. This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users can view the reviews, selling information to third parties about consumer tendencies, and creating databases for companies to learn about their actual and potential customers. The system enables users to easily compare many different reviews of the same work. Many of these systems calculate an approximate average assessment, usually based on assigning a numeric value to each review related to its degree of positive rating of the work.

Frame rate

Frame rate

Frame rate is typically the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (frames) are captured or displayed. This definition applies to film and video cameras, computer animation, and motion capture systems. In these contexts, frame rate may be used interchangeably with frame frequency and refresh rate, which are expressed in hertz. Although in the context of computer graphics performance, FPS is the rate at which a system, particularly a GPU, is able to generate frames, and refresh rate is the frequency at which a display shows completed frames. In electronic camera specifications frame rate refers to the maximum possible rate a frame could be captured, but in practice, other settings may reduce the actual frequency to a lower number than the frame rate.

Steam (service)

Steam (service)

Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront from Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to distributing third-party game publishers' titles in late 2005. Steam offers various features, like digital rights management (DRM), game server matchmaking, anti-cheat measures, social networking and game streaming services. Users receive automatic game updates, cloud storage for game progress, and community features such as direct messaging, in-game chats and a community market.

SXSW Gaming Awards

SXSW Gaming Awards

The SXSW Gaming Awards were awards given to video games during the annual South by Southwest Festival (SXSW), held in Austin, Texas typically in March of that year. The Awards were part of the SXSW Gaming Expo which is part of the SXSW Interactive branch of the festival.

Miriam, Zangetsu, Gebel, and Alfred appeared in the 2018 strategy RPG Kingdom Two Crowns as part of a crossover event in April 2020.^[81] Miriam also appears as a playable character in the 2021 fighting game Mighty Fight Federation.^[82]