Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Koji Igarashi spent years producing Castlevania games at Konami. When he left to form ArtPlay, he took the side-scrolling, map-filling formula with him. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is the result: a 2019 action RPG built by an independent studio and funded through a 2015 Kickstarter campaign that pulled in more than $5.5 million from backers, roughly eleven times its original goal. 505 Games published it, and it arrived in June 2019 for PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, later reaching Amazon Luna, Android, iOS, and Stadia.

You control Miriam, a young woman whose body is slowly crystallizing thanks to a curse tied to alchemists and demons. She fights through a sprawling gothic castle that opens up as she gains new abilities, the classic Metroidvania loop of backtracking, secret rooms, and bosses that test your timing. Combat mixes melee weapons with magic and a crafting system for gear, food, and shards that grant powers. The game is set in 18th-century England, where a paranormal force has summoned a demon-infested castle along with crystal shards infused with power. It earned generally positive reviews, with critics calling it a worthy follow-up to the Castlevania titles that inspired it.

Inti Creates made the retro companion Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon as a Kickstarter stretch goal, and it launched in May 2018, followed by a sequel in July 2020. A prequel, Bloodstained: The Scarlet Engagement, was announced in 2021 and has since been pushed to 2027. A TGS 2026 trailer spotlighted new mechanics including dragonback battles. The original game keeps getting reissued, too: a physical Complete Edition bundling all DLC is on the way, and the PC version was free for a limited window in December 2025. [edit]

Miriam moves through a castle that behaves like a locked puzzle box. Every new shard she absorbs from a defeated demon adds a tool, and the map quietly reopens as you realize which wall a new jump or projectile can break. That shard system is the heart of it: shards drop from enemies and come in categories that map to attacks, passive boosts, and summons, so two players can build very different Miriams from the same castle. Melee weapons range from whips to greatswords, and the crafting bench lets you cook food for buffs and forge gear from materials you farm.

The structure owes a clear debt to the Igavania line, specifically the Aria and Dawn of Sorrow era, with a bigger map and more systems layered on top. The castle is full of unexpected monsters and side mysteries, and boss fights lean on pattern reading and timing rather than raw stats. Backtracking is constant but usually rewarding, since secret rooms and optional areas hide behind abilities you pick up hours later. It is a long game, and the post-launch DLC has only added to the roster of modes and characters. [edit]

Miriam was orphaned and then marked by an alchemist's demonic curse, a condition that turns her body to crystal from the inside. The same force that scarred her has summoned a demon-infested castle in 18th-century England, and the summoner is Gebel, someone she knows far too well. She heads into the castle to hunt him down and kill him, which is the whole of her mission on paper and considerably more complicated once the shards start talking.

The castle itself is the real antagonist, a place built out of alchemy and bad bargains, and the story unfolds through the rooms and the bosses rather than long cutscenes. The crystallization curse ties directly into the gameplay: the shards Miriam absorbs are fragments of demonic power, and using them is both her weapon and her slow undoing. It is a gothic horror setup in the Castlevania tradition, and it plays the family tragedy straight. [edit]