Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night gets help from Shantae studio WayForward

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, the long-awaited Kickstarter-funded project from former Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi, is getting help from another studio to help wrap development. WayForward, best known for platformers like the Shantae games, is now pitching in.

“In consideration of their past achievements, WayForward will be helping the development team realize my vision for this game,” Igarashi wrote in the latest developer’s update. “Maybe I am even more excited than everyone else — with their help Bloodstained will become an even better game.”

WayForward joins developers DICO and Monobit on the Inti Creates-led project, all of whom are working to help bring this game to fruition, if slowly.

Jason Ryan, community manager at publisher 505 Games, chimed in at the end of the post to echo Igarashi’s excitement. His most crucial addition: WayForward’s involvement should help Bloodstained finally make it to release, more than four years after the game was funded.

In August, Igarashi said that the Castlevania-style adventure game would not launch until 2019, two years later its original March 2017 release window. He attributed this to the development team needing to respond to backers’ feedback on a demo released earlier this year. At the same time, he announced that the team had canceled a planned Vita version of Bloodstained.

As for when in 2019 the game will arrive, Ryan asked fans to remain patient.

“To address the ‘when’ questions that pop up each time we don’t announce a release date, I’ll point to my comment in our previous Kickstarter Update. As soon as we have a concrete release date, we will let everyone know. With WayForward on the project, we get closer to that announcement,” he wrote.