After teasing us last week with his Sword and Whip site, Koji Igarashi (famed producer of the Castlevania series) has finally revealed the project he is working on, titled Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. The game is set to be a 2.5D ‘Igavania’, focusing on exploration with RPG and crafting elements thrown into the mix. If you’ve played Symphony of the Night, expect more of that sweet side scrolling goodness, with a few more bells and whistles added on. Bloodstained’s development will be headed Inti Crates, the studios behind Azure Striker Gunvolt with fellow Castlevania veteran Michiru Yamane composing the music.

As for the game itself, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night tasks you as Miriam, a young woman who is at the mercy of the dark Alchemist curse, which slowly turns a person’s body into magicrystals. After waking up from a 10 year slumber in which the curse matured and began to take over her body, demons have invaded the Earth due to the actions of Gebel, another person who suffers from the magicrystal curse. Due to his miraculous survival at the hands of the curse and his realisation that he is no longer human, he summoned a hellish castle which also brought on the demon scourge. It is reckoned that Gebel summoned the castle to give him and his fellow afflicated Miriam a place to live but as he remained among the hellspawn, Gebel forgot this noble ambition and became more and more corrupt. It is now Miriam’s job to infiltrate the castle, slay some demons and save her fellow cursed.

So, the set up is typical Castlevania, with brave hero entering into a huge castle full of demons to save/defeat the demonic lord inside. Again, while this may seem incredibly familiar to long time Castlevania fans, there will no doubt be some extra spin on the formula to make Bloodstained stand out. Seeing as this is going to be funded on Kickstarter, there are all sorts of rewards and stretch goals for backers to aim for. Rewards range from a physical copy of the game, to a signed Collector’s Edition and even stretching to a trip to Japan to meet Iga, a small stained glass, a silver ring crafted by Iga, the ability to create your own secret room in game and to have your pet turned into an ingame monster. I’m sure there will be one rich soul who will plump for the $10,000 reward. As for stretch goals, they range from a second playable character at $700,000, right up to David Hayter doing the voice for Gebel at $850,000. I am more than certain that Bloodstained will smash through that target and will no doubt have loads of extra goals in store as the money goes higher.

If you want to back Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, you can go to their Kickstarter right here and expect more news about yet another Kickstarter spiritual successor very soon. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is planned for release in March 2017 for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.