Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Has a Release Window

It may be a horrible night to have a curse, but it’s a pretty good night if you’re looking forward to Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Nintendo had a tremendous Nintendo Direct late this afternoon, dropping bombs left and right. One of the big surprises was from 505 Games, which revealed that Koji Igarashi’s latest Metroidvania title finally has a release window. After years of development, we’ll be able to explore a brand new castle in Summer 2019.

The announcement was also paired with a brand new gameplay trailer, which you can check out below. Not only do we see some new gameplay footage, but 505 also noted the trailer contains our first look at Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night‘s “inverted castle.” For those of you new to this stuff, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night had a similar trick, which saw the player navigating Dracula’s castle a second time, but upside down. It’s much more impressive than it sounds, as the entire castle’s design has to support the gameplay both ways.

The road to Bloodstained has been long, with some unfortunate platform cancellations happening along the way. But Igarashi’s team has been hard at work since the original Kickstarter campaign, and even brought on WayForward recently to push this thing past the finish line. That extra manpower seems to have paid off, because last we heard of the team, there were some serious-sounding glitches being tackled.

As we head towards the end of the road, don’t miss out on Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, an 8-bit, Castlevania III-inspired action/platformer that serves as a prequel, or prologue of sorts.