Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night follows in the footsteps of the Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter, in which a legendary developer (in this case, Koji Igarashi) attempts to create a spiritual successor to a famous series that was put on ice by its owner.

Unlike Mighty No. 9, however, Ritual of the Night was a success, in spite of a lengthy development cycle that involved multiple developers and multiple delays, stretch goals that weren’t delivered until much later than expected (if at all), a subpar Nintendo Switch port, and many complaints of "poop" graphics. Overall, the game is considered to be a Kickstarter success story and was well-received by critics and fans alike, who consider it to be a worthy successor to Castlevania.

Classic II: Dominique's Curse/Developer Notes

Internal Project Name#

The internal project name of the game is ProjectBlood, as stated by the file "\Core\Sound\ProjectBlood.uexp" as well as many files using the abbreviated prefix "PB".

Unused Graphics#

Buer Ball

Added on update 1.3.1, clearly meant for the "Extra Mode" menu screen, presumably a mini-game involving demon Buer's bounce physics. Despite still having the graphic in the files, all references to it on PBSystemStringTable.uasset appear to have been overridden by Versus mode after update 1.5.

Unused Models#

A model for the Waystone meant to appear as an item drop in Classic Mode II: Dominique's Curse, never actually appears in-game.

Unused Playable Characters#

While Dominique got a whole game mode of her own in Classic Mode II: Dominique's Curse, it would appear the original plan for her would have been far less ambitious and just have her be playable in the main game like in Zangetsu Mode (despite of ArtPlay's attempts at dissuading from the idea that she was the third planned playable character.¹) Evidence of this includes HUD elements and a savefile icon as well as a fully-voiced cutscene for her final encounter against Miriam (both of which can be activated by modifying the game's memory values through CheatEngine). However, unlike other playable characters she doesn't appear to have any abilities in her pause menu, whether because these weren't finished or because they were meant to be unlocked throughout the game (like Bloodless). In updates after 1.3.1, trying to load the game as Dominique will make the game hang at the loading screen.

HUD

Face_Dominic	frameDominic

Save Icon

FaceCoin_Dominic	In-Game

Cutscene

Unused Animations#

The crows at the Castle Entrance use the model from a scrapped enemy and have an unused idle animation.

In-game	In-game (Zoomed-in)	N3048_Stay

Unused Text#

Entries for multiple items, enemies, and shards meant for the Archives not seen in the final game.

Enemies#

Items#

Shards#

Techniques#

Unused Maps#

Watch on YouTubeMultiple test maps for Classic Mode:

• "Classic_Gym" contains a set of platforms, including spinning cogs and an up-and-down platform. A statue holding a candle in the center which when destroyed will reveal one of the secret bonus points items (the crown). An upper area can be accessed, which contains insta-death guillotines and many destructible blocks, all containing health refilling items. Back in the lower area, there's a door gate after two unstable platforms (one respawnning-one, the other permanently lost), which leads into a room which contains a boomerang subweapon among other things, behind the breakable blocks there's a door gate leading into a long hallway filled with Lance Armor enemies, both bellow and above the player (likely to test their attack behavior).
• "Classic_Cinematic_Test_1" seems to be an animation test for the ending cutscene.
• "Classic_Cinematic_Test_2" uses the same map as Classic_Cinematic_Test_1, but contains a candle which drops an invincibility potion in the middle.
• "Classic_ForcedStairs" contains a set of stairs in the middle of the stage to which the player will always cling onto automatically, whether from the floor or when jumping, without pressing up. Due to this, it's also not possible for the player to jump down the stairs by pressing down + jump. In the game proper this effect is applied to all of the non-suspended staircases.
• "Classic_Objects" appears to be a duplicate of Classic_Gym but without the statue at the center of the first room, without any other breakable blocks in the upper room other than the default Unreal cubes, without the unstable platforms, and it completely lacks the Lance Armor room.
• "Classic_Spline_Testing" contains a set of candles which provide mana and all of the projectile subweapons, moving further into it shows that the level was made to test a path-tracking camera. It also appears that the player becomes stuck after walking inside the inner path.
• "Classic_Subweapons" contains a set of platforms and candles which drop mana and all the projectile subweapons. Additionally, on the left side of the room there's a bunch of breakable blocks containing health refilling items.
• "Classic_Items" contains a room filled with candles which drop all possible items in the game, including all of the secret bonus points items (alongside an invisible one, which should be the Lucky Cat statue), a 1-Up, health refill, a stage-clear heart (has no effect), all of the subweapons, the screen-clear laurel, an invincibility potion and common bonus points items.
• "Classic_LevelWarp_Test" will start with the same basic structure as Classic_Cinematic_Test_2, but once reached the center of the room it will load the player into the regular game starting from the second screen of the first stage.

Oddities#

Watch on YouTube

• When playing the game at an ultrawide (21:9) aspect ratio, Zangetsu makes an appearance during the ending sequence. While this is clearly a hint that he did survive by the end of the story (his footsteps can be heard and his shadow is faintly visible during the ending when playing the game normally), his off-screen appearance becomes random as a result.
• In Classic Mode II, the NPC portraits in the "Info" sub-menu appear to have weirdly high exposure levels in-game. The actual assets don't have this issue.

In-game

ui_icon_NPC_Groundskeeper_active	ui_icon_NPC_Lion1_active	ui_icon_NPC_Lion2_active	ui_icon_NPC_MerchantField_active	ui_icon_NPC_Ninja1_active
ui_icon_NPC_Ninja2_active	ui_icon_NPC_TownFly1_active	ui_icon_NPC_TownFly2_active	ui_icon_NPC_TownWalk1_active	ui_icon_NPC_TownWalk2_active
		128px

References#