Wearing a Hat for Your Audience: Koji Igarashi on Why Bloodstained Should Delight His Fanbase

There’s wine on the floor. At least, we’ve been led to believe that there is. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night’s 2015 Kickstarter began with a video in which one Koji Igarashi shatters a glass of wine against a hard castle floor. Now, with the delayed release of the game finally close enough for its vampiric breath to tickle the hairs on your nape, he’s gone and done it again. Another glass of wine wasted, this time in the name of Bloodstained's release date reveal trailer.

Except, there never was any wine on the floor, and perhaps nobody is more disappointed about this than Igarashi himself. “I’m a little sad about that. Back when we made the Kickstarter reveal trailer, we actually went to Napa Valley, but that wasn’t actually wine in that glass!” he says, laughing. “That was too bad.”

Not that anything would have been stained with merlot, even if there were any. “We also used a bit of, uh, video magic. We actually caught the wine glass with some cloth.”

Amusing anecdotes aside, Igarashi is perhaps fiercely determined that a gag about smashing some glassware is the only wool that gets pulled over the eyes of his fans. That last glass saw its life (not actually) taken in the name of responding to criticism surrounding Bloodstained’s visuals, something that has only gotten louder at large thanks to social media and the ease of commenting, as many people who poured hours of work into the now-delayed Sonic the Hedgehog movie are no doubt feeling.

Actually, we decided to change the visual style as the result of feedback not only from backers, but also because of criticism in places such as magazines and other media...

“Actually, we decided to change the visual style as the result of feedback not only from backers, but also because of criticism in places such as magazines and other media,” he says while also stretching hidden diplomatic muscles by not once giving me the stink-eye. “In our effort to update the visuals we worked on assets – changing some, not all, but a good amount of them, and we also put considerable work into the lighting. We actually changed this completely and made an entirely new lighting concept to help all of the details in the game to really pop out.”

It’s true that, while the latest trailer pitches the visual overhaul as being a response to fan outcry, thoughts that the game could and should look better has stretched beyond the core fanbase, and I’m certainly of a mind that the new version looks better than the old. After all, standards in 2019 are different to those of 2015. All of which leaves me wondering – when exactly did the change feel inevitable, and how exactly does such criticism differ from the kind of pushback that Igarashi may have received from a powerhouse such as Konami?

“With publishers,” he says, quite matter-of-factly, “I actually felt that there was never too much pressure. I had an amount of freedom to make the games I wanted. With backers, though, I actually think it’s pretty positive: feedback comes swiftly, and this makes it easier to correct things.”

He accredits getting the feeling of jumping correct to backer feedback, and this ‘for the fans’ mentality is something that drives everything that Igarashi is doing, to the point where he tells me he doesn’t even consider himself an indie developer because “my definition of an indie is a developer, or developers, who make the games that they want to make, that they want to release.” This really is a key point of difference, as Iga describes himself as “always thinking about the customer, the player, and what they want to play.”

I take this as a chance to ask what might happen if his departure from Konami had been a spectacle comparable to Kojima’s, and what he might make if somebody offered him a blank cheque to make a game with no consideration beyond his own heart’s desire.

“I’d just want to make a game that wouldn’t sell, that’s really art. I wouldn’t keep it under lock and key or anything, I would of course release it, however only a handful of people would likely ever really get it, really understand it,” he says, laughing, his eyes gazing skyward. “I would really like to have a lot of money to make a game like that. I could probably do something like that even with a modest budget, but I like the idea of being given a lot of money to make it with.”

The more we dig into Bloodstained, what to expect from it and the philosophy driving its entire development, the clearer it is that Igarashi’s fantasy is perhaps a fantasy because it is so far removed from what he’s actually doing. Bloodstained is Castlevania in all but name, and not even a heathy river of games sharing its core genre has done anything to influence that.

“With regard to when we launched Kickstarter and all of the games released since then, I feel that what’s most important is that there are fans who are really, truly interested in these types of games, in ‘Metroidvania’ style games. So, because of that, no matter what – Bloodstained or no Bloodstained – Metroidvania-style titles would probably have come out. Since I’m so busy right now, I don’t really have time to play many games, but I have played and enjoyed La-Mulana.”

It is perhaps what doesn’t get mentioned that speaks the loudest here. At no point is there a peep about Dead Cells or Hollow Knight, Axiom Verge or Ori, Iconoclasts or Guacamelee. This only becomes more pronounced when I inquire about how Bloodstained sets itself apart from any number of other games that have been modernising classic genres.

“The difference regarding Bloodstained compared to other older-genre revivals is the scale of the game, and I hope that I can make a game that everyone enjoys,” he tells us, again embracing his mission to entertain. “There are various things in Bloodstained, but I’m not a player, so it’s hard for me to specifically know what may or may not surprise people once it’s out there. I can say, though, that this is the largest map I’ve ever made for this style of game, so I hope that players will be pleasantly surprised by the size of it. But maybe they will be angry?” He laughs again. “I hope not.”

This is the largest map I've ever made for this style of game...

To be honest, it’s hard to imagine the fanbase getting upset because the map is too big, but at the same time, Bloodstained will be played by a broad spectrum of players. Igarashi is acutely aware, for instance, that this pure, Castlevania-like spiritual successor will be experienced by players who aren’t old enough to have owned a PSone copy of Symphony of the Night, and by turn, won't necessarily have an understanding of Igarashi's heritage.

“There are players who may never have experienced the joy of some older, classic games, or have much interest in them. And while it’s not a specific goal, I’m hoping that Bloodstained can maybe show people why these some older games were fun.”

As if subconsciously making a statement, Igarashi puts his famed fedora back on as my time with him winds to a close. There’s no pretence here, no pretending at things that won’t exist, no overpromising. Just a desire to make a really good Castlevania game to the recipe he helped to refine. And, honestly, that’s fine. While there are others out there taking the genre in more experimental directions, there’s nothing wrong with simply aiming to make a thing that people want, and make it well. And if they want it to wear a hat, then it’ll wear a hat.

Tim Henderson is a veteran Australian games journalist who now lives in Osaka. Read his feature about the revival of the Japanese games industry here and feel free to say hello on Twitter here.