Koji Igarashi Kickstarts Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (2.5D, backdash, 2018)

That's my understanding as well, though I was looking for contemporary examples. I just don't think "dev must be able to ace boss fight" is a novel or bold standard today.

I think the philosophy is profound in its simplicity. It's the kind of thing that makes you roll your eyes and think "of course," but if you aren't consciously aware of it during development, it can mess up your design on a fundamental level.

Nintendo's philosophy of designing a game around gameplay, not around a character is another good example of "profound in its simplicity."
 
You mean Hunter mode. That's the one that gave you stronger subweapons and homing daggers. Thief boosts your luck, weakens your stats, but still gives you access to the DSS cards.

/pedantic

That's probably it. I haven't played it in forever (I think it's lodged in my GBA somewhere in my basement. I sort of wish I could play it on a SP, never got the chance). But yea, hunter mode felt the most difficult because the DSS was pretty op. My cousin was the one who told me how to glitch the DSS when I was a kid. He found it randomly by switching cards during the charge up of the DSS. It was pretty funny that other people found the same glitch and use it because card farming sucked in that game.
 
I think the philosophy is profound in its simplicity. It's the kind of thing that makes you roll your eyes and think "of course," but if you aren't consciously aware of it during development, it can mess up your design on a fundamental level.

Nintendo's philosophy of designing a game around gameplay, not around a character is another good example of "profound in its simplicity."

I guess so. And I'm probably biased since I was programming a couple boss fights just earlier this month, so it's probably something I've given more thought than the average person.
 
Question for people who contributed to Mighty No. 9 and other high-profile multiplatform Kickstarter games that took 1 year or longer to produce:

How soon are you generally expected to identify your preferred platform after the successful Kickstarter ends? Symphony of the Night is probably still my favorite video game ever, but I still haven't really decided to throw money at a PS4/Wii U/whatever yet, and I'm not sure if my laptop is going to be able to handle a circa-2016 hopefully-as-pretty-as-the-concept-images 2.5D game.
 
I asked a few questions and got an answer:

Will the $100+ backers get the OST on multiple CDs if there is a large amount of music created?

Do you have a frame rate target for development of the game?

Will the digital music downloads be available in a lossless format such as FLAC?

Hi TSM! It's too early to say if there will be multiple CDs, or what the frame rate will be, but the tracks will be available in a lossless format.
Thank you for your support!

So no guarantee of 60 fps, but we'll be getting the OST in lossless audio.
 
I asked a few questions and got an answer:

Will the $100+ backers get the OST on multiple CDs if there is a large amount of music created?

Do you have a frame rate target for development of the game?

Will the digital music downloads be available in a lossless format such as FLAC?



So no guarantee of 60 fps, but we'll be getting the OST in lossless audio.

Nice, I wonder if they will do a physical OST release. They might as well press some Blu-ray Music discs if there are too many tracks for a single CD.
 
Relax dude, wasn't pooping on him or anything.

Didn't want him to do a bunch of work if it wasn't necessary.

RELAX!? YOU WANT ME TO RELAX? ON THE INTERNET?

Sorry about that. We just went though the same thing yesterday and I unfairly reacted to you as if you were somehow responsible and building upon the posts of the original member. This was unconscious to me and impolite, and I apologize. Instead of assuming you were trying to dissuade him from posting, I should have considered you were trying to save him effort. Please accept my apology.
 
Just passed Yooka-Layee KS number, guess goes to show that stretch goals do work.

I think it's more of it shows you that good tiers work. IMO Yooka's tiers are really bad and all digital loses much appeal and charm for a kickstarter. Bloodstained actually has a lot of good tiers and it shows you how valuable people want a physical copy of the game, which has seen a lot more backers in that tier.
 
I think it's more of it shows you that good tiers work. IMO Yooka's tiers are really bad and all digital loses much appeal and charm for a kickstarter. Bloodstained actually has a lot of good tiers and it shows you how valuable people want a physical copy of the game, which has seen a lot more backers in that tier.

Yeah, I really hope this sends a clear message that people want physical for future kickstarters that can feasibly offer physical copies. Every tier where there's a choice between physical and digital for this KS has significantly more backers for the physical version.
 
I'm glad to see that it's very successful. SOTN is one of my favorite games of all time (top 10). I would back if the money budget wasn't too tight (just got laid off). Will buy after it's out tho, for sure.
 
I kinda want to see them do a take on the Inverted Castle from SOTN, but I'd rather they not bite off more than they can chew. It's already looking to be a pretty meaty game.
 
I kinda want to see them do a take on the Inverted Castle from SOTN, but I'd rather they not bite off more than they can chew. It's already looking to be a pretty meaty game.

It will for sure hit the $2,750,000 stretch goal which is "Iga's biggest castle". I think we'll have more than enough content even without inverting the castle.
 
Any word on a WiiU version now that funding has gone beyond his expectations?
iirc the kickstarter said they didnt have plans because they were using UE4 which isnt easily compatible with WiiU, but then gave this weird vague hint or tease or something I forgot the specific wording of.
 
Well, holy crap!

I think it's crazy how YL got to 1 million faster than Bloodstained and still was surpassed even thought it has been on KS almost a week earlier.

YL had a much harsher drop for it's 2nd and 3rd days compared to Iga's which held up pretty well on it's second day and had a normal drop on it's third. The lack of late game stretch goals has also has hurt YL's momentum going into the slow period of it's campaign.
 
YL had a much harsher drop for it's 2nd and 3rd days compared to Iga's which held up pretty well on it's second day and had a normal drop on it's third. The lack of late game stretch goals has also has hurt YL's momentum going into the slow period of it's campaign.
Yeah,Bloodstained knew how to keep momentum rolling, though I suspect Yooka-Laylee's stretch goals may have been more pragmatic and the last one may be the best value. The last time I remember that sort of thing happening was Shadowrun: Dragonfall, and that far exceeded the original game.
 
Any word on a WiiU version now that funding has gone beyond his expectations?
iirc the kickstarter said they didnt have plans because they were using UE4 which isnt easily compatible with WiiU, but then gave this weird vague hint or tease or something I forgot the specific wording of.

You can see the top of the Wii U logo in the shadow at the bottom of the stretch goal image (3MM value).
 
Well, holy crap!

I think it's crazy how YL got to 1 million faster than Bloodstained and still was surpassed even thought it has been on KS almost a week earlier.

It's not really surprising, since both campaigns have been handled drastically different. Bloodstained's campaign has been designed around getting as much money as possible with lots of stretch goals, the achievement meta game and so on. The developers of Yooka-Laylee, on the other hand, seemed to have a specific scope for the game in mind and once the initial set of stretch goal had been achieved, they were completely satisfied and they haven't really tried to make a big push since then.
 
I kinda want to see them do a take on the Inverted Castle from SOTN, but I'd rather they not bite off more than they can chew. It's already looking to be a pretty meaty game.

There was no chance even before stretch goals that this game wouldn't have something akin to the inverted castle; that's like SotN's signature move.

Wow, thanks for this, is it possible to reach this stretch goal or is it just gonna come to a halt soon?

The campaign will 100% finish over $3m and will likely finish a decent chunk over $4m.
 
There was no chance even before stretch goals that this game wouldn't have something akin to the inverted castle; that's like SotN's signature move.

I agree, it's a pretty safe bet to take because most of the metroidvanias had post-"normal" ending content or a true ending which unlocks more of the game.
Sorrow games had the chaos stuff, PoR had more paintings after the sisters (and an awesome fights against Richter), and OoE had the castle.
I have no doubt that this game would have a decent amount of content going by Iga's track record.
 
It's interesting to compare the high-profile game Kickstarters.

Yooka-Laylee has 20,000 more backers even though it has raised about as much as Bloodstained at this point. So Bloodstained's backers give more on average. Yooka-Laylee's kickstarter also has more intermediate tiers (5 to get to ~$60 compared to 3 for Bloodstained). I wonder how much impact that has on whether people back a project at all versus backing at a higher level than they would have if a lower option were available.

Anyway, as someone else said, the approach was quite different. Yooka Laylee had a low funding target and a long run of 45 days. The devs almost seemed surprised at the response whereas the Bloodstained kickstarter was neatly designed to raise as much as possible. It's cool to see them both suceeding.

I never played SotN. I loved Circle of the Moon for GBA though. Looking forward to Bloodstained.
 
Yeah, I really hope this sends a clear message that people want physical for future kickstarters that can feasibly offer physical copies. Every tier where there's a choice between physical and digital for this KS has significantly more backers for the physical version.

Just imagine what Yooka-Laylee could have got in funding if they offered the same tiers as Bloodstained with ALOT more backers.
 
I almost think that Playtonic is deliberately not trying to court too many more backers. It seems like at this point they have more money than they even know what to do with, hence the 500,000 GBP DLC stretch goal. They already have got enough to fund everything they ever hoped for, so they had to promise a whole extra product just to have something to spend all that extra money on.
 
Just imagine what Yooka-Laylee could have got in funding if they offered the same tiers as Bloodstained with ALOT more backers.

There's a trade of though. It's not like that's free extra money. More people that order physical things the more you have to pay to have physical things made, organized, and delivered.

This kickstarter being affiliated with Fangamer probably gives them a lot more confidence that physical goods can be handled in a way that isn't disruptive or costly to the actual game development. Yooka-Laylee, or most other kickstarters, don't have that going for them.
 
It would probably have had less backers if the tiers were the same so it may have made even less.
I expect roughly equal, maybe even a bit ahead, though that may be the dregs of late 90s pessimism that 3D games like Banjo-Kazooie would fully displace 2D platformers, even if the situation would turn out to be more that platformers entirely were going to niche beyond Mario titles.
 
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