Hello everyone! IGA here.

We would like to talk about the shard-crafting system. We’ve discussed the crafting element of Bloodstained in the past, and I’m sure everyone knows about item crafting and the shard rank-up system from the Beta Backer Demo.

However, in addition to all those… you can actually create new shards from crafting!

Let's begin with an example. Riga Storaema is a Conjure Shard — these were formerly known as Trigger Shards — that conjures fire columns.


Rigo Storaema

If you upgrade this shard, you’ll be able to create a new Directional Shard called Riga Dohin.


Using an existing shard and materials to create a new shard. (You can keep your old one, too!)

(As a side note, the Riga Storaema shard you used as a base will not disappear after you’ve created a new shard; instead, the item used with the shard will disappear. In other words, the item acts as a catalyst to create a newly enhanced ability from the existing ability. So you get to use your favorite shard to create new ones without losing it. I think it's a pretty good deal!)


Voila! Riga Dohin.


Our current phase of development has been fixing bugs, bugs, and bugs... There was a particular bug that caused lighting to weigh heavily on system resources which is now gone. With that solved, we can now be more flexible with lighting, which we’re improving on a daily basis. We’re all working hard to deliver a solid game to everyone.

We're still going strong. Thank you for your support!



Have some fanart you'd like to see featured in a future Bloodstained backer update? Tag it #IGAVANIA or #bloodstained on your platform of choice and we'll do our best to find it!


Rock Cr


大作@warthecheese


伯



Hey, all!

We hope you are excited for this reveal of shard crafting. Being able to gather the materials and develop additional shards (without losing your existing ones) will add greatly to your arsenal.

Between item crafting, upgrading shards and now being able to craft new shards (and upgrading those too), you’ll be able to choose the loadout that is just right for you and the enemies you’ll be facing. Managing your weapons, items and shards will be important as you get deeper into the game.

The screenshots above are from the current build of the game. This is just a small taste of some of the visual work that has been happening behind the scenes over the last few months. We will delve into the visual changes in a future development update.

We appreciate your patience as the teams from Artplay, WayForward and DICO are continuing their work on the game and we march towards our 2019 launch.

Jason Ryan, a.k.a. “Question”

Sr Community Manager – 505 Games

December Update - Development News and the Team at Work



Merry Christmas. IGA here.

This year is coming closer to an end...

In this update, we have a very important announcement to make. Bloodstained will no longer be supported on Mac and Linux. We have made this tough decision due to challenges of supporting middleware and online feature support and making sure we deliver on the rest of the scope for the game. We will be offering backers who planned to play the game on Mac and Linux the option to change the platform of their order. If you would like to change your platform, please send an email with your new platform request from the email address associated with your Kickstarter pledge. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience and we hope for your understanding.

Development has reached its peak — we are currently checking the performance of Bloodstained on each platform. Overall, we are done with enemy placement and entering the adjustment phase. But there are still many progression-blocking bugs that must be taken care of.

I’d like to pass along some photos of the development team.


IGA at work









It doesn't look like we are in a crunch period, does it? But we actually work quietly like this most of the time.

WayForward have already helped us improve the game in a number of ways, including creating incredible assets and lighting placements that we’re looking forward to.



Today we’d like to share a new enemy concept art. This is Forneus, a demon fish. I would hate to come face to face with him at an aquarium… Well, Forneus will be useful for cooking, and will surely be delicious.

Our whole team is working very hard. We look forward to your continued support.

メリークリスマスIGAです。

今年ももうすぐ終わりですね…。

今回のバッカーアップデートは、まず一つお知らせがあります。

BloodstainedはMacとLinuxをサポートすることを中止いたしました。

ミドルウェア周りの対応とオンライン周りが難しく、ゲームをお届けするためにも断念することとしました。

なにとぞご了承いただければと存じます。

MacとLinux版を希望のバッカーには機種変更のオプションを入れます。

詳細はファンゲーマーのコメントをご参照ください。

現在、開発は本当に佳境で、現在では各プラットフォームでも動作確認が行われています。

敵セットは大体終わり、調整段階に入っています。

ただ、まだ大きなストップバグが残っているので、それを何とか取り切りたいと思っています。

現状の開発現場の写真を掲載します。

修羅場に見えないかもしれないですが、粛々と作業しているさまが見て取れるかと思います。

ウェイフォワードさんに手伝ってもらっているブラッシュアップ部分ですが、背景の一部に関してとても素敵なアセットとライティングで初期段階ではありますが、期待できるものも見えてきました。

まだ公開できるものはないですが、これらも期待してもらえればと存じます。

今回はフォルネウスという魚の悪魔のコンセプトアートを用意しました。

海水浴に行ってこんな魚に出会ったら、本当に嫌ですね…。

ただ今回は料理にも使われるので、きっと美味なんでしょうね…。

というわけで、制作スタッフ頑張っておりますので、ますますの応援お願いします。


As always we've collected some of our favorite fanart from the Bloodstained community for your perusal. If you'd like to be a part of this gallery in a future update, tag your art #igavania or #bloodstained to help us find it!


Keitchez
https://www.deviantart.com/keitchez/art/Miriam-bloodstained-RItual-of-the-night-753586346


knerrvana
http://knerrvana.tumblr.com/post/175418821064/havent-drawn-miriam-in-years-but-since


doku-bara
https://doku-bara.tumblr.com/post/175846665424/bloodstained-dominiquedoodle


Happy Holidays, Army of the Night.

As IGA mentioned, the team is working on fine-tuning enemy placement throughout the game. This polishing effort is a very important and delicate step. Moving the spawn point for a creature five steps in either direction or adding an additional creature can have a big impact on the flow of a level. It takes a lot of trial and error to get it ‘just right’ and we want it to be ‘just right’.

In order to get to this point a huge amount of work had to be completed. Level layouts, enemies, animations, assets, combat systems, etc. Due to WayForward’s help on crushing bugs, asset creation and lighting, each level is being made to play better and to look better at the same time.

There’s still a lot to do, but this is an exciting stage of development as we work towards our 2019 launch.

Thanks for your patience!

We hope everyone has a great holiday and a Happy New Year.

Jason Ryan, a.k.a. “Question”
Sr Community Manager – 505 Games

Discuss this update on the Bloodstained forums or in the Bloodstained Discord.

If you're a fan of side-scrolling action games—and I have an inkling that many of you are—we've got some excellent news for you in this month's update. I'll let IGA tell you about it.



It's me, IGA.

For this month's update, we have an incredible support who will be joining the Bloodstained team. Can you guess who? It's WayForward!

That's right, WayForward, the makers of Shantae! As you may already know, they are top-tier when it comes to side-scrolling action games. There is even a staff member who previously worked on one of my projects, which is incredibly encouraging.

In consideration of their past achievements, WayForward will be helping the development team realize my vision for this game. Maybe I am even more excited than everyone else - with their help Bloodstained will become an even better game.

We also have some new enemy concept art to show you. This is Cyhyreath.



Cyhyreath first appears to be crouching on the floor. Once the player approaches her, she will fly around and make a death shriek to attack the player.

It's a traditional gothic horror design, and I think it's lovely.

I was talking with the team just before writing this comment and, with WayForward's help, they have been busy helping to improve the game and fix any bugs that pop up.

Speaking of which, there's a really tough one that’s making the game crash that needs to be fixed before the game reaches everyone, so we are scything through them all.

Thank you, everyone, for your continued support!



As always we've got collected some of your fanart to show off. If you'd like to join the parade, make sure to tag your art #IGAVANIA or #bloodstained to help us find it. (Maybe we can get some Bloodstained/Shantae crossover art after today's announcement?)


nealakuma


illusta


mildkat



We cannot be happier to have WayForward on the project. Best known for the Shantae series, they bring decades of development experience to help us bring Bloodstained to the finish line.

As for Cyhyreath, she’s just one of many amazing enemies that are in various levels of completion behind the scenes. We want to make sure that there are plenty of surprises on launch day, so while we will show off some of the villains IGA has waiting, we certainly won’t show them all.

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.

Thanks for being with us as we continue to work on Bloodstained!

Jason Ryan, a.k.a. “Question”
Sr Community Manager – 505 Games

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/2319659

Copy of the update is below, please go to the link for full update with images!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We've got some development updates for you—along with an extremely mood-lit look at IGA's Halloween costume—so let's get right to it!


Happy Halloween! IGA here. I am delivering this message to you exactly as you see me here in the photo.


By the way, I got all this in Akihabara.

This time we would like to introduce a new enemy. This is Killer Barber, the murderous hairdresser. Well... the name really speaks for itself. He uses his scissor arms to climb across the ceiling and swiftly attack towards the player. This character can also—well, I should leave it at that for now.


Our staff has been working on placing enemies based on difficulty level.

When I see the Nightmare Mode enemy placements, I always wonder if it's okay to make a game this difficult. I’ve worked on enemy placement in games before, so I understand that the person making those decisions becomes more and more immune to difficulty level over time. I think that’s what’s happening to the team now—they’re getting a little vicious with it…

We've also been working on the models—we've been meticulously adjusting each character. In particular, we're focused on facial features. Gebel is looking more and more handsome these days...


Every day we fight through the challenges of development, but we know we're working to create a game worthy of reaching everyone's hands. Thank you for your continued support.


Been working diligently through Inktober? Hoping to find yourself in a future fanart spotlight? Tag your art #bloodstained or #igavania on your platform of choice and we'll find it! (If you need a prompt... check out that updated Gebel.)

ADSouto


Happy Halloween, Army of the Night!

We hope all of you have some fun Halloween plans for the coming weekend (because it’s weird to celebrate Halloween on the first weekend of November). As you can imagine, Halloween is one of our favorite times of year. I am getting out my own favorite costume for this year’s company Halloween party.


We hope that today’s updates are as exciting for you as they are for us! The Killer Barber is a particularly nasty enemy. He doesn’t politely walk towards you, he quickly climbs around the walls and ceiling to attack from various angles. Weapon and shard choices really begin to matter when facing these more complex foes. I haven’t had the pleasure of fighting him in the game yet, but he’s going to be a fun one.

The before and after of Gebel is a small taste of the visual updates that have been happening behind the scenes.

We know everyone is waiting to see a more comprehensive view of the game’s visual improvements. A lot of that work is still in progress and not ready to be revealed. We are going to wait until the look of the game is mostly locked before we share.

The same applies for our release date. The number one question right now is “When?” and the second most popular is “approximately when?”. Until we hit certain internal development milestones we are not going to discuss the release date because there are still variables; we do not want to give out a date and then change it. Even saying Spring/Summer/Fall/Winter or 1st/2nd/3rd/4th quarter would result in confusion if we had to release slightly later or earlier than announced, or at the start or end of one of those cycles. We do have a target date internally that we feel confident about, but until we can nail it down, we will wait to reveal it.

I want to thank all of our backers and fans for your patience as work progresses on the game. The final game is going to be worth it.

Jason Ryan, a.k.a. “Question”

Sr Community Manager – 505 Games

Hey, all.

The latest update is here. Our goal going forward is to have the updates live on the last Thursday of each month.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iga/bloodstained-ritual-of-the-night/posts/2299212

You should go to the actual page to get the full text and the Fan Art section, but here is the text from the update:



As we creep into autumn we've got a new development update for you from IGA, filled with news about what the team's been working on. Let's get right to it:


Hi everyone, IGA here.

We would like to give a report of our current development progress.

Lately, the team has been working on the lighting of the environment and the lip-sync of the characters.

We’re aiming for a 2D-style look and feel in this game, and we have special techniques in place to achieve it, but they also create additional developmental challenges for us. However, after a number of adjustments, as well as finding the right lighting angle and contrast, we finally feel that we’ve found the aesthetic we were searching for.

Recently we’ve also found a new method for the fog that is less computationally expensive for the environment. My slogan - always pursue more beautifully, and more lightly.

As for the lip-syncing, we’ve made adjustments to the height of the mouths, which were too large before. Right now we've only adjusted Miriam and Dominique, but it's looking good so far! We will continue to work on the rest of the characters the same way.

We’re also happy to announce the launch of the Beta Backer Demo for our GOG backers! We didn’t want to delay the launch of the demo while we completed preparations for its launch on GOG, but now we are able to distribute GOG versions of the demo to the people who chose it as their platform. We will continue to support the main game for GOG from here on, so please do not worry.

In addition to the adjustments I’ve told you about, we’re actually also working on the final boss right now. There were many issues and challenges that we are facing using the original design, but I guess that's pretty common for us. We have been developing new solutions each day and now we’re coming close to creating the final boss that everyone is hoping for. This will be the last time we talk about the final boss until the game's release—please look forward to it!

Fangamer note: If you chose GOG for your Bloodstained final game platform, we'll be assigning GOG demo keys to your backer management page tonight. If you don't have that link handy, you can get it back on our survey resender page.



Lots of great new stuff in the fanart feeds this month! If you'd like to be part of a future fanart spotlight, tag your work with #IGAVANIA or #bloodstained on your social media platform of choice and we'll find it.


Stormhead - https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=69439464 -


ひより- https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=68950186


∇ - https://www.pixiv.net/member_illust.php?mode=medium&illust_id=70525671



Hello, everyone!

You may not have seen me around, so I’ll introduce myself. My name is Jason Ryan and I have the privilege to be a part of the Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night team as a Senior Community Manager from 505 games.

I’d like to thank everyone for their feedback on the recent Beta Backer Demo. We are excited to see the enthusiasm and excitement everyone has for the game and your willingness to let us know what we can do to make the game the best it can be before launch.

In the weeks following the new demo’s release we received hundreds of suggestions, feedback threads and bug reports on Reddit, the Forums and on Steam. All of these player-made posts were compiled and sent to both the 505 and Artplay production teams. From there the lists are prioritized and production needs and schedules established. Our goal is to make sure that when RotN ships, it’s worth the wait.

We appreciate all of the Backers and fans who have joined us along this journey with Bloodstained. If you’d like to keep up to date on everything that is going on, be sure to join the ever-excellent Bloodstained community on Discord, Facebook, Twitter, or the forums.

Thank you.

Jason Ryan, a.k.a. “Question”
Sr Community Manager – 505 Games[/quote]