Bloodstained

Bloodstained is a side-scrolling action RPG series built around the creative direction of Koji Igarashi, the producer who spent years shaping the Castlevania franchise at Konami. After leaving the company, Igarashi took his interest in exploration-driven gothic action to the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, where the project raised money on the promise of a spiritual successor to the games he had made before. ArtPlay, the studio founded to build it, handled development with 505 Games publishing.

The flagship title, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, arrived in 2019 and follows Miriam, an orphan marked by an alchemist's curse, through a demon-infested castle in a version of England drawn from the 18th century. The game leans on the genre template Igarashi helped establish: a single large interconnected map, abilities that unlock new routes, character levels, equipment, and a shard system that grants powers taken from defeated enemies.

Alongside the main game, the series includes the retro-styled Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon and its sequel, both built in an 8-bit idiom as companion pieces to the Kickstarter campaign. A further mainline entry, Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement, has been announced as a prequel set in 16th-century England with a 2.5D presentation. Reports in August 2026 placed its release in 2027. [edit]

Ritual of the Night hands the player a castle and lets the map do the teaching. Rooms connect into one continuous structure, and progress depends on finding the ability that opens the next stretch of corridor. Miriam gains those abilities through shards, fragments harvested from enemies and then equipped, so the combat loop feeds directly into exploration. Levels, weapons, armor, and crafting sit on top of that foundation, giving the game more numerical depth than the older Castlevania titles it draws from.

The castle itself changes as Miriam moves through it, with new hazards and enemy types appearing in areas already visited. Bosses gate major sections and tend to reward shards with unusual uses, which encourages revisiting old ground with fresh tools. Difficulty sits on the demanding side of the genre, though the leveling and equipment systems let a patient player outscale most obstacles. [edit]

An 18th-century cabal of alchemists, watching their influence erode as scientific inquiry spreads, makes a desperate attempt to hold the world's attention. The ritual they devise goes wrong, and a demonic castle materializes in England. Miriam, one of the orphans the alchemists had marked with a curse, wakes from a decade-long sleep into a country overrun by the consequences of that failure.

She is not the only one of the cursed children. The narrative turns on what happened to the others and on the motives of the alchemists who used them, with a cast that includes the demon-slayer Gebel and a supporting roster of allies and antagonists encountered across the castle. The tone stays gothic and grim, closer to the mood of Igarashi's earlier work than to anything self-aware. [edit]