“Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night,” the spiritual successor to Koji Igarashi‘s Castlevania series, officially releases on Steam, GOG.com, PS4, and Xbox One on Jun. 18. It comes to Nintendo Switch a week later on Jun. 25. Publisher 505 Games has big plans for the side-scroller after its launch, and shared what downloadable content fans can expect on the game’s newly launched website on Thursday.
“Bloodstained” players can expect a lot of new modes in future patches, including a speedrun mode and boss rush mode. Online and local co-op are also on the way, along with a Vs. mode, a roguelike mode, a chaos mode, a classic mode, and a boss revenge mode. Players get two extra playable characters and a cosmetic “Pure Miriam” outfit as well.
Additionally, “Bloodstained’s” developers are offering an “Iga’s Back Pack” DLC starting on Jun. 18. It costs $10 and includes content that was previously exclusive to Kickstarter backers. Players who buy it can fight a digital version of Igarashi himself and earn a powerful Swordwhip weapon. The team decided to release the pack after asking the backer community if they were OK with it. Nearly 30,000 people said they were.
“To try and be as transparent as possible, making this content available to everyone wasn’t just about making money,” Igarashi said in a Kickstarter post on Thursday. “I mean obviously that’s a part of it, but the chief things I was considering was making sure everyone had a safe and legitimate way to get the full game experience no matter when they find out about ‘Bloodstained,’ whether that’s five months ago or five years from now, and that we were being respectful of the price backers originally paid (hence the DLC pricing).”
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“I understand that not everyone will be 100% happy with this decision, but hopefully this helps in understanding the reasoning behind it,” he added. “And of course all backers entitled to this content will receive the DLC for free.”
“Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night” is a gothic horror action game set in 18th century England, according to its website. Its protagonist, an orphan named Miriam suffering from an alchemist’s curse, must make her way through a demon-infested castle to defeat a summoner named Gebel. Igarashi launched a Kickstarter for the game in 2014, where it raised over $5.5 million, making it one of the most-funded video game projects on the platform.
