Back in 2019, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night finally launched after a big Kickstarter campaign that raised over $5.5 million, with this project even being headed up by longtime Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi. It is a spiritual successor to Konami's franchise, more specifically to games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. While Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night had a somewhat rocky post-launch period with bugs and issues, especially on the Switch, it still sold quite a bit and was a success.
The developers behind Ritual of the Night have continued to support this game ever since it launched, with various updates and patches to fix some issues that were present at launch. These updates have also seen various playable characters being added to the game as well. Earlier this year, Bloodstained: RotN saw a crossover with Child of Light, a game published by Ubisoft. Another crossover is coming to the Castlevania spiritual successor, this time originating from the award-winning indie game Journey.
In a new blog post on Bloodstained: RotN's website, it is revealed that this Journey crossover will contain a brand-new area that can be explored. This area will be coming to the game on August 23, promising a boss and level design that is reminiscent of Thatgamecompany's iconic indie game. This can be seen with the screenshots that show off the iconic desert, along with dark tunnels for players to explore and a boss fight near the end that is similar to some of the more fearsome guardians in Journey.
The guardian itself is a dragon-like entity, where if a player manages to conquer it, they will be rewarded with a special equipable item that is inspired by Journey as well. In order to access this area, players must have freed Gebel and have access to the Den of Behemoths. Once that is done, a new room will be marked on the map that contains the entrance to this new area. This new area will not have any effect on the map completion percentage or achievements of the base game, with a number of issues being addressed in this upcoming update too.
The post outlines that the developers of Bloodstained: RotN are huge fans of Journey and are excited to see fans explore this new area. This update comes at an appropriate time, considering Journey is celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2022. Alongside starting development for a sequel to Bloodstained: RotN, the team is hard at work in completing the game's current roadmap. The next updates are scheduled to be in Fall and Winter of this year.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is available now for PC, Mobile, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
