Castlevania: Lords of Shadow may be heading to Steam, ahead of its whipcracking sequel

Steamdatabasemancy is a word referring to fine art of gazing into the Steam database, to try and foretell the future of PC gaming. As with looking into a cup of tea or playing the stock market, it's an art that disappoints as often as it... appoints, with right-on leaks like Brutal Legend and Dyad just about making up for misleading Halo 3 entries . So you should probably take the addition of the original Castlevania: Lords of Shadow with a pinch of salt (and maybe a couple of cloves of garlic), despite how legit its entry seems.

NeoGAF member Nabs spotted the game yesterday, which is curiously listed as "Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Early Access Comp". The 'billingtype' is also down as "Proof of Prepurchase Only", leading us to believe that the original game may be offered as a pre-order bonus for the sequel, which has yet to appear on Steam.

If and when it does arrive, we're likely in for a treat (well, if the port's up to scratch), as MercurySteam's reboot of the ancient Castlevania series rather impressed me when it first arrived back in 2010. Lords of Shadow 2 - which does have a confirmed PC version - is currently on track for later this year.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.