It seems those waiting for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night’s roguelike mode will likely be disappointed. On Bloodstained’s Kickstarter page, Jason Ryan, Sr Community Manager of 505 Games, announced that the roguelike mode for the 2D platformer has been canceled. The mode was a $5 million stretch goal during the game’s Kickstarter campaign. According to Ryan, the game mode is not compatible with the game’s code.
“One of the promised stretch goals for the game was Roguelike,” Ryan explained. “Unfortunately, the code that was created early in the game’s development is not currently compatible with this type of gameplay (especially a procedurally generated castle). Due to this, we regret to announce that we will not be developing Roguelike as part of the project’s planned stretch goals.”
“We know this is a mode that many of you were eagerly anticipating and we apologize that we will not be able to make it happen as planned.”
In order to fill the hole that the roguelike mode has made, another mode will be released in its place. The mode is called Randomizer and will be released for free alongside Zangetsu, the second playable character. In this mode, players choose up to eight different game parameters when starting a game to be randomized during the playthrough. This can change the locations of items, randomize where save-points and warp rooms are and change which boss will end the game.
The mode will ensure safeguards to make sure that items needed in order to beat the game are obtainable, keeping players from softlocking their progress. Once the parameters have been set, a seed will be generated that can be used for reference or share with others. There will also be a timer to track a player’s progress and display their completion time at the end of a run.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is available now for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. A definitive release date for Zangetsu and the Randomizer mode has not been given yet.
