Update #48: The Village By The Castle

Oh and Dan, yeah, I miss the shader vote stage, too...but we're not actually sure that was/is the castle entrance. It could very well be fairly deep in, or like Astaroth said a later part of the entrance. As with SotN, the warg hallways look quite a bit different from the post-Death ones.

The village is cool! If there were villagers there freaked out about the appearance of a castle that would be neat, but an abandoned village a la Rondo of blood is fine too!

The only thing I have to note about is that the wagon appears kind of weird as a platform. It doesn't really "pop" the same way that the awnings do.

Bloodstained looks very good. Iga and his team, and most Kickstarter games, cant help but invite scrutiny so that's exactly what people give them. Which bits are constructive or not are for the devs to decide.

I think Iga and his team have shown they have sharp instincts thus far and by the time the game is released it'll be a great, well polished package.


Ooh, check out the new Shinobi up there. I'm gonna go play that again.

I think 5 times over budget is wrong... it's 5 times over the original budget but stretch goals aren't included in such.

Well, if we were to make numbers now, they asked for 500.00, but got 5.545.991. That's over eleven times what they asked. On the other hand the campaign launched clearly stating they secured a publisher that asked them to gather those 500.000 to see if there was interest for the game.
If memory serves, that's 10% of the budget they needed to secure, so the real budget was 5.000.000, that was going to be given by the publisher, once the campaign succeeded.
Now, we supposedly have 5.545.991 plus 4.500.000 given by the publisher, so if we are going to be precise, that's roughly over two times the final budget. And this is where it gets messier.
When they announced the delay to 2018; they also announced they partnered with 505. So, were they the original publisher that requested to run the KS campaign? Are they gonna put that 4.500.000 they were supposed to received to make the core game if they aren't?
Bloody hell, I've been looking into the 10% thing, but reading all the updates I couldn't find a source, so that might as well be wrong. In any case, it's not as much, but let's say they have just the 5.545.991 KS budget, less 5% percent of KS fees, which is 277.299,55, that leave us with 5.268.691.45, and I'm not counting the Slacker Backer funding. Mostly because last time I heard it wasn't that big of a number.

Then we have the stretch goals, and the whole rewards from some of the high tier backers, I know those ain't gonna be cheap, but still, it can't cost the extra 5.045.991 extra they got over the initial campaign goal.

I'm far from being a producer for my word to be worth anything more than a fan rant, though.

But it's cool we can debate about this, ever since the campaign launched I've been at the edge of my seat for this, and it's the first time I've backed something, so I've never been a role like this before, and I know I may come as overbearing, but that's how much I'm excited for this.

Concerning the problems some people have with the art direction (colors, details, textures. environment, etc.), I can't help but think that all/most of those could have been avoided if Iga and the rest of the team were more mindful of the discrepancy between the in-combat and character concept art in the KS pitch.
The combat art looks like it would be best represented via a Shantae approach, meaning popping colors, cell shading, hand drawn parts and soft, thick outlines.
Meanwhile, the character art asks for a more realistic presentation with a darker color palette in order to emulate the Ayami Kojima art which some fans eagerly await to come to life.
To make matters worse, Iga's previous 2D work gave no hint as to how BS will look, as the style of those games could have naturally evolved into either one of the two above.

Well, the only way to sort these matters out now is to swiftly release an area impressive enough to win the Shantae crowd over, because that messy last update sure didn't calm their spirits.

I want variety, perhaps colorful places that are somewhat more dear, or personal to both Miriam and Gebel, as they are connected. With different styles, we can get all kinds of feelings.

Being goth in heart, I feel darkness, grey and black on white is nice, it it tends to get too dull after a while, even if the blood of my enemies would "light up" the floors and walls.

Naa.. Give me different scenarios, give me the feel of progression, claustrophobic sensation that we are getting closer to a source, a void or a nightmare. Have colorful areas will make the dark so much frightening.

I love those 2.5D graphics, but others have greatly criticized them.