An 8-bit spin-off of Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is coming later this month

You might remember that the Kickstarter campaign for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, the platformer from Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi due out later this year, was the most successful video game crowdfund on the platform, raising more than $5.5 million (it's since been usurped by Shenmue 3). But you might not remember that the campaign also promised a smaller, 8-bit prequel as one of its stretch goals. That game, called Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, was announced this week, and it'll be with us later this month.

While Ritual of the Night harks back to Symphony of the Night and later Castlevania games, Curse of the Moon looks back further into the series' history for inspiration, with trippy music, a limited colour palette and a small set of animations.

It'll be more linear than Ritual of the Night: you'll control Zangetsu, a demon slayer out to kill a monster living in a castle. As you play you'll unlock new characters to control, including an alchemist that can create copies of himself and a man that can turn himself into a bat. Playing as each one will reveal new paths forward and alter the game's ending.

It's out on May 24, and the Steam page is live. It'll cost you $10, but it'll be free to anyone that pledged over $28 for Ritual of the Night.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.