Ushi No Tane Forum

Hey everyone, Roberto Piraino “Angel-Corlux” from 505 here, and today we have a special announcement to make! Below is the trailer for the 2nd playable character in Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night:


Zangetsu is confirmed playable! <:D

Wield the Zangetsuto katana and slice through the demons of hell, or torment and obliterate them with primal elemental talisman magics. Playing as Zangetsu opens up a whole host of new ways to enjoy the game, explore the castle with his hook chain and discover what secrets await his blade!

Many of you probably guessed or assumed correctly that this was coming for some time now, but I guarantee not a single one of you will ever guess who our third playable character is going to be… >:] (*angelic muahahahaing*)

We’ll have more to reveal soon!

Moving on to publishing details, we have an important announcement for our fans and backers in Japan.

Due to some unexpected logistical difficulties, Bloodstained won’t be publicly available in Japan on June 18 & 25, 2019. However, the game will still be coming to Japan on all platforms both digital and physical, we’re still working to confirm exact dates, and we’ll share more as soon as we have confirmed information.

The current plan is for Japanese backers to receive temporary Steam keys on June 18, 2019 so they can start playing right away while we confirm the public release date on all platforms for Japan.

In addition to the above regarding Japan, we also want to remind all our international fans that while the global launch for Bloodstained is June 18 and June 25, certain regions of the world use slightly different release dates. You can check if your regional release date differs from the global one by checking with your regional online / physical retailer.

It was also pointed out to me that in the last update we didn’t mention a few of the stretch goals that are coming; I knew I’d forget something with all that content!

Additional content available day 1:

Nightmare Mode
New Game Plus
8-bit retro level
Cheat codes
As before, stay tuned for trailers, reveals, previews and more for this content. Some of the above like the 8-bit retro level and cheat codes are built into the game, and not technically a day 1 update, but it bears mentioning as I saw some fans questioning if this content was still confirmed.

Fangamer is still working on locking in all final shipping arrangements. If you haven’t updated your address yet, your last chance to do so expires TOMORROW, Friday, May 31, 2019! (Even if your mailing address hasn't changed, please confirm itin your backer survey or through the email reminders Fangamer has been sending out to ensure your game goes as soon as it's ready. If you haven't gotten those emails and don't have your survey link, click here.)

Fangamer's been working on the backer rewards, too, and while we don't want to give away too much of the surprise I did want to show off the art for the soundtrack from Nina Matsumoto, designer of the Alchemist's Curse shirt.

Whenever I look at this I can practically hear and feel the wind blowing through the roses and Miriam’s hair… We'll be revealing more backer rewards soon!

An update on “Miriam’s Gaze” PS4 dynamic theme preorder bonus: I’m happy to announce that we will be providing every PS4 backer, both digital and physical and regardless of tier, this dynamic theme for free! Will share more news on when to expect these codes as soon as we have all the details locked down. I’m biased but it’s really beautiful and features the song “Holy Wisdom” straight from the soundtrack. Big thanks to Truant Pixel for making the theme.

Update on the FuturePak steel cases: The previously mentioned 800 cases are on track to be made available exclusively to backers (1 per backer) shortly after the game launches. It’s our plan to use this initial sale to evaluate demand, and consider offering a larger amount of these steel cases for sale to the backers and possibly even the wider public.

For further context on the FuturePak steel cases, this effort was originally a retail-only exclusive item to incentivize preorders. Instead of peeling off content and locking it away behind a preorder bonus, we fought to make sure we were offering this steel case instead. The total number of cases available is actually quite low, and in the USA (one of our biggest markets) there’s only several thousand of these cases on offer. We also can’t offer these for free to all or even a majority of the backers since that would mean a cost of several hundred thousand dollars. It’s also not feasible to make the 800 free, as then you open a can of worms regarding who gets them, why, etc.

I mention the above to hopefully communicate that we made the FuturePak available as a preorder bonus to incentivize preorders and help the success of the game long term, while also trying to respect backers and the integrity of the game’s content. And the cost to make them free isn’t a problem just because “money” but because those kinds of numbers represent the cost of possible DLC content, which I hope everyone will agree is much more important and valuable than steel cases. Having said that, however, we’re trying our best to make these cases available to all backers who want them as outlined above.

We’ve also seen your feedback regarding the choice to make the Iga Boss and Swordwhip available to non-backers for $9.99 via the “Iga’s Back Pack”.

First, since I’ve seen some confusion online, I’d like to reiterate that any and all backers who were entitled to receive this content will be getting it for free. In practical terms, this means if you backed at $60 or above, you will receive the “Iga’s Back Pack” DLC at no additional cost.

Another concern we’ve seen is that offering the “Iga’s Back Pack” DLC for $9.99 instead of making it backer-exclusive, devalues the backer order and is a bad deal. I’d like to help clear this up:

As mentioned above, let’s exclude the relatively very small minority of public customers who get the steel book. That means that $60 backers compared to $60 public customers receives the following:

Hopefully the above makes it clear that the $60 backers still have at least an additional $10 value and access to exclusive rewards compared to non-backers.

Having said the above, we’ve seen various comments and misconceptions regarding this I’d like to try and clear up:

Kickstarter is not a traditional preorder system where it’s about getting the best deal, even though backers here have.
Curse of the Moon is definitely part of this equation, as whether one wants to consider having paid for it or not, backers get it as part of the $60 purchase, non-backers don’t.
The $28 vs. $60 pledge still has appropriate value considering the above mentioned rewards. $28 backers ‘only’ receive the base game and Curse of the Moon.
We understand if having clarified the above there is still negative feedback, however hopefully it’s clear now that we are intent on securing the immediate and long term success of Bloodstained so we can see more content and hopefully create a brand new Igavania franchise bigger and better than ever, while also being respectful of the backers, who everyone at ArtPlay and at 505 Games is grateful to for helping make all of this possible.

Whew, that was a wall of text if ever I’ve written one. As always, please come find us on Bloodstained’s official Discord server, you’ll often find me and my 505 colleagues on there, ready to chat!