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It would take too long to go into the debacle of Japanese videogame developer Konami, so just know that one of their prominent developers, Koji Igarashi, left the company during that turbulent time and struck out to found his own studio, Artplay. Igarashi is most well-known for the 1997 hit title Castlevania: Symphony of the Night ,a seminal platform action game that has few competitors to this day. The first crowd-funded game for his new studio, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, is due out this year and is more than a little similar in gameplay, theme and name to his 1997 hit. Stick to what you know, eh?
The wait is killing me — but in the meantime, as a result of his crowdfunding campaign doing really well, Igarashi hired the studio Inti Creates to develop a short, retro-themed prequel game to tide us over. That game is Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, and it was released a few days ago. If you’ve ever played the old NES Castlevania trilogy, specifically Castlevania III, you’ll know exactly what to expect. It’s a side-scrolling platform game in which the player controls demon-hunting swordsman Zangetsu, who meets three other characters: the agile, whipwielding Miriam (who is also the star of the upcoming game), the magic-casting but frail Alfred, and the shape-shifting Gebel. The player can switch between the four characters at will, and each has a unique set of abilities that they can employ against enemies or use to find hidden paths through the levels.
The obvious appeal of this game is its old-school nature. It’s got that 8-bit pixel art retro theme to look like the old NES Castlevania games — albeit in widescreen with more colours and less flicker than the NES — and with a hearty measure of challenge. I was tempted to say it is rock hard, but in most instances all I had to do was stop being an idiot and find a new approach to a seemingly impassable obstacle, such as using Alfred’s fire-shield ability to nullify a swarm of flying enemies that knocked me into death pits while I was navigating treacherous jumps; or hiding in the corner of an arena and using Gebel’s upwardangled attack to hit a troublesome boss. But the fact that your character flies backwards, often into death pits, whenever they get hit by an enemy is an old-school inclusion I could have done without. LS