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The spiritual successor to the "Igavania" styled Castlevania games, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, has faced another delay. Not only has the game been pushed back to 2019, an announcement was made stating that the PlayStation Vita version of the game has been cancelled. According to the team, the Vita port cancellation is due to Sony discontinuing physical games for the system, and getting rid of online support for some games, rather than the cause being internal issues with the game itself. Those who backed Bloodstained and requested a Vita version can now change their platform, or instead ask for a refund. The reason for the game's delay is to improve the project based on player input from the recent beta and E3 impressions.

Source: Kickstarter Update

 

[SonowRaevius]

Again, this isn't the first Kickstarter by former professionals that goes sour along the way, we've seen it before and we know where it leads. I'm a huge fan of Castlevania myself and I fully intended to pick this game, but it's been long enough for me to believe that Iga, the artist that he is, keeps reworking the game over and over to make it "perfect". That's not how you finish a project, that's how you make one level every couple of years. There's only so much polish you can give an asset before you start ruining it over time, and I have a feeling that's what's happening here - instead of following a strict roadmap the team is just "kinda doing things", and such lack of organisation leads to massive delays. I'm more than familiar with the level of effort required to get a game ready to ship, I made a game with a small team of devs as our IT finals project, it's not an easy task at all. Thing is, you need to know when to let it go. When you have a team of passionate artists working on something, you also need a team leader or project manager who puts their foot on people's necks and tells them that enough is enough and they can get back to "polishing" when the product gets further along the roadmap. This is more important than you might think, without someone with that attitude you get Duke Nukem Forever'd into mediocrity. My claims are not "unfounded", they're backed up by multiple projects that faced the sane fate and we're basically in development for as long as there was money left to develop them, often times even getting companies in the red.

He hasn't been reworking it though, the game has pretty much been the same throughout so far, which is why I bring up the Demo, it show a start contrast and how far they have come in development and a lot of that has been based off user feedback.

As for too much polish, how much is too much polish? That is kind of a vague thing to really say, all things considered the polish they have put on the game so far has been great, and, again, was at the request of the fans.

Yes sometimes a project should be let go when it starts hemorrhaging money, but so far that has not been the case for the game, or at least nothing that reveals it to be so.

As for Duke Nukem and other similar project those went on for a decade or longer, had many dev teams with different visions for the game, and no one really guiding anyone and again, from what has been seen at least, the vision and design has remained the same for Bloodstained throughout its history.

Yes other projects have had delays and failed or were never released, but there are many other games, even kickstarters, that have had successful launches and praise despite delays. Shantae Half-Genie Hero had some delays as well, but it was an amazing game that is still supported and took 3 years to create, should they have just let it go despite that because of a couple of delays?

If it is delayed much further than 2019 then I will concede that maybe they are taking us for a ride with this, but so far they have shown no signs of doing so. They already made the 8-bit game that was promised and have given 0 reasons to distrust them.

As you said yourself though only time will tell.

 

[Foxi4]

He hasn't been reworking it though, the game has pretty much been the same throughout so far, which is why I bring up the Demo, it show a start contrast and how far they have come in development and a lot of that has been based off user feedback.

As for too much polish, how much is too much polish? That is kind of a vague thing to really say, all things considered the polish they have put on the game so far has been great, and, again, was at the request of the fans.

Yes sometimes a project should be let go when it starts hemorrhaging money, but so far that has not been the case for the game, or at least nothing that reveals it to be so.

As for Duke Nukem and other similar project those went on for a decade or longer, had many dev teams with different visions for the game, and no one really guiding anyone and again, from what has been seen at least, the vision and design has remained the same for Bloodstained throughout its history.

Yes other projects have had delays and failed or were never released, but there are many other games, even kickstarters, that have had successful launches and praise despite delays. Shantae Half-Genie Hero had some delays as well, but it was an amazing game that is still supported and took 3 years to create, should they have just let it go despite that because of a couple of delays?

If it is delayed much further than 2019 then I will concede that maybe they are taking us for a ride with this, but so far they have shown no signs of doing so. They already made the 8-bit game that was promised and have given 0 reasons to distrust them.

As you said yourself though only time will tell.

Way Forward is an actual company with a track record of successfully delivering products, Iga just made a rag-tag group of developers, the case here is a bit different. InExile is a better example of what you're talking about, they also know how to deliver project goals. In my opinion it's worthwhile to delay a project if it's close to golden, but needs work - as Miyamoto once said about delays, a broken game is a failed game forever. Thing is, you first need to have a framework and realistic goals. I myself suffer from the perfectionism problem in my projects and all it leads to is procrastination. There's a time to do minor fixes and then there's time to just do what has to be done, it's good to work with a schedule. I wish Bloodstain developers the best, but I can't help but be pessimistic - I'd rather be positively surprised than disappointed.

 

[KingVamp]

Going have to agree with SonowRaevius. Not saying you guys will be wrong, but I feel like there's a lot of jumping the gun in this thread.

 

[SonowRaevius]

Way Forward is an actual company with a track record of successfully delivering products, Iga just made a rag-tag group of developers, the case here is a bit different. InExile is a better example of what you're talking about, they also know how to deliver project goals. In my opinion it's worthwhile to delay a project if it's close to golden, but needs work - as Miyamoto once said about delays, a broken game is a failed game forever. Thing is, you first need to have a framework and realistic goals. I myself suffer from the perfectionism problem in my projects and all it leads to is procrastination. There's a time to do minor fixes and then there's time to just do what has to be done, it's good to work with a schedule. I wish Bloodstain developers the best, but I can't help but be pessimistic - I'd rather be positively surprised than disappointed.

Then on this note I will say To each their own.
I will also apologize for any insults or harsh words I may have said here.
I've had a rough couple of past days and that is really no excuse to take that frustration out on fellow forum members.

 

[Hells Malice]

I suppose not everyone has actually played the latest demo so they wouldn't know

Game is already very good and very promising. There's basically no room to actually be pessimistic since the only real thing that could bring the game down at this point, is being too short. But there's absolutely no way to assume or infer such a thing.

Companies should really stop giving timeframes until they're 100% sure. Stupidity runs rampant when announcements like this come out, even though it's just realistic timeframes crashing into unrealistic deadlines. A bad company would force the game out, a good company throws up a delay to finish the product.

People are far too impatient and disconnected from reality. So far Bloodstained has shown nothing but promise, but I suppose it wouldn't be fun without the morons crying about crowdfunded games for any arbitrary reason they can come up with. Things don't quite work like they do when you have a publisher breathing down your neck to force out a shoddy product. If they have the funds to delay the project's release to further better it, more power to 'em.