“How early is too early to present a playable build of your game at E3?” asked Wes when he sampled the successfully crowdfunded Castlevania spiritual successor Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night back in June. His ten minute playthrough was familiar but lacking the quality he’d hoped for going into the demo—even in its alpha state. Against his assessment, then, it’s perhaps of little surprise that Bloodstained has now been pushed back from its proposed launch in March next year to the first half of 2018.
“We've got an important development update from IGA [Koji Igarashi] this week, and we wanted to make sure the backers were the first to hear it,” reads a new Kickstarter backer update. “In short: To ensure the game meets his quality standards, IGA is bringing on additional developers and has moved his estimate for the game's release back to the first half of 2018.”
The post is accompanied by the following developer diary:
A footnote from IGA features on the update page within which he says keeping backers waiting is “the last thing” he wants to do, however he feels responsible for delivering the “best product” he possible can.
The update continues: “All of us on the campaign and development sides of the team are looking forward to playing the finished game as soon as we can, but as IGA says, we also want this game to be "done right the first time."
“We'll continue to keep you updated on the development process every step of the way. (In fact, the next regularly scheduled update, featuring some songs and commentary from Michiru Yamane, is just about ready to go. And as IGA mentioned, you can expect more news about the development process as soon as it's available.)”
Although every delay comes with its share of disappointment, given Bloodstained secured $5,545,991 in crowdfunding (having originally asked for just $500,000), more time in the oven to ensure a quality game makes sense—more so when taking Wes’ aforementioned thoughts into consideration.
