Castlevania is finally back, and it's in exactly the right hands

Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse - Announcement Trailer | PS5 Games - YouTube

Every once in awhile the world stops delivering us a nonstop cavalcade of horrors—and questionable videogame trailers—to simply serve up something obviously good and right. Today that happened with Castlevania: Belmont's Curse, a new 2D action platformer from Evil Empire and Motion Twin, developers of the excellent Dead Cells.

It's no coincidence that the new game, set in 1499 Paris, is set not long after the popular Netflix series, starring "Trevor Belmont’s successor" with a whip in hand. Though the character isn't named, their red hair is a likely giveaway that we're looking at the daughter of vampire hunter Trevor Belmont and mage Sypha Belnades.

Motion Twin is credited with an "advisory" role with Evil Empire handling the bulk of development, as it did with years of Dead Cells DLC. On the PlayStation blog, Belmont's Curse is described as a "2D exploration action game," which I'd say is legalese for what series fans would call a metroidvania or Igavania, for Symphony of the Night producer Koji Igarashi.

"Crack your whip to move around freely like a trapeze artist and master its mechanics to get creative and pounce on your prey like a wolf in fast-paced combat," the PlayStation blog says about Belmont's Curse.

"There will be more weapons and abilities for you to master. In today’s reveal, you can see our hero use the Sword, which is easy to use and offers solid attack power. There’ll be more weapons and abilities revealed in the future. You will need to strategically plan your next move in combat and make full use of the tools to hand to stand a chance to save the city from the brink of destruction."

Igarashi, the longtime Castlevania lead, left Konami in 2014 to make his own spiritual successor, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Its long-in-development sequel is slated to release this year—as is Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse.

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

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