Legends of the Industry – E3 Edition: A Brief Interview With Koji Igarashi

While previewing the upcoming exploration-platformer Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night I was lucky enough to be able to interview the legendary Koji Igarashi about the upcoming title. As the producer and scenario writer of 12 different Castlevania titles, I was incredibly interested to hear Igarashi’s perspective on the genre he helped create.

What made you want to return to the exploration-platformer genre after so long away from it?

So there are a couple of reasons why. It was very hard to prove that there is a demand for this old-school type of game, but during this time, I saw that Keiji Inafune [Mega Man, Mighty No. 9] was very successful with his Kickstarter campaign, and I was very inspired by that. That was the reason why I wanted to go back to it, because I felt confident that there was a demand for this kind of experience.

How different is it to work on a crowdfunded project compared to working for a company and its shareholders? Is it more comfortable or more stressful?

The big difference between working on a crowdfunded project instead of working for a company is that with a company you have teams of in-house developers whose relative skill level you know. Right now, we’re a very small team so we have to outsource to other developers and other studios in order to make such a big title.

Another difficult part is that, in a larger publishing company, you have a lot of larger supporting teams for things like marketing. When you’re independent like this and working on a crowdfunded project, there is no other teams to help you out, so we have to do all that by ourselves, which is quite difficult. As for which one is better, there isn’t much of a difference when it comes to pressure. The pressure we’ve felt since the beginning of this project is still present, but speaking with fans so often helps with that.

I would imagine the fan support would certainly be more vocal, since you’d be speaking to them a lot.

Hearing the direct voices of the fans and the community itself during development is really helpful, and we’re really grateful for that. Sometimes we’re able to incorporate their feedback into the game when we hear that, so it’s really great.

If Bloodstained does well, would you be interested in making a series of it, or DLC? Or are you primarily focusing on the game right now?

Right now, with such a high expectation for Bloodstained, if it’s successful we’d like to make it a franchise.

In the lead-up to further titles, are planning on supporting Bloodstained post-release, whether it’s through additional levels and DLC, or are you going to go straight into additional games?

If we were to try to make another game or a sequel, we would have to start brainstorming before Bloodstained even releases. For additional content after the game releases, it’s something that we’re still figuring out. We can’t really comment on our plans at the time.

To learn more about Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, check out our preview of the game from E3.