After Konami clearly showed that they were no longer interested in making a new Castlevania, veterans Koji Igarashi and Shutaro Ida, among others, dropped out to develop Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
Funded via Kickstarter, it was a smashing success, and since then the duo have expanded the acclaimed adventure even further. In recent years, however, they have been working on the sequel. But now, Shutaro Ida – lead developer of the superb Castlevania games for Nintendo DS and producer of Bloodstained – has announced that he has to leave work due to cancer.
Castlevania legend Koji Igarashi – who was, among other things, programmer and scenario writer on the ultra-classic Castlevania: Symphony of the Night – of course regrets this and writes (translated with Bing):
“Until now, the DS series and Bloodstained have practically been produced mainly by director Shutaro. It is truly his work. It is a great blow to have him away from the project, but we will do our best not to let it get us down. We hope that he will recover to the point where we can work together again.”
The latter would of course be a dream, but for now we are of course keeping our fingers crossed for everything to go as well as it can for Shutaro Ida, and everything else is obviously very secondary.