Shovel Knight has been teased as coming to Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night in a free DLC update some time after launch.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is no stranger to bizarre trailers, but the newly released Launch Trailer may just take the cake. Torturing a man in a castle chamber, lead designer Koji Igarashi promises the studio will “make a game the way it should be done”, accepting criticism, promising quality and, teasingly, announcing 13 DLC updates will be added to Bloodstained for free.
We already know that Zangetsu will be arriving in a later update, voiced of course by the excellent David Hayter. ArtPlay has previously stated that there will be three playable characters for Bloodstained, and this latest trailer certainly gives the impression that Shovel Knight will be filling one of those slots. After Miriam makes her way through a Shovel Knight pixel environment, we eventually see the Knight himself at the end of the trailer, looking impressively buff and still capable of bouncing on enemy heads with the best of them.
We don’t know when Shovel Knight will be added to Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, but the trailer does give us a look at what else is on the way. The full list on the Bloodstained website announces the following will be on the way sometime after launch:
- Speedrun mode
- Pure Miriam Outfit
- Boss Rush Mode
- Online and Local Co-op and Vs. Mode
- Roguelike Mode
- 2 Extra Playable Characters
- Chaos Mode
- Classic Mode
- Boss Revenge Mode
Co-op and Versus will obviously be fantastic additions, but the Roguelike and Boss Revenge Modes really sound like they’ll add a good deal of replayability to Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is widely seen as the spiritual successor to the Castlevania series, with the studio even comically referring to the game as ‘Igavania’. It’s out already on PC, PS4 and Xbox One, and will be coming to Nintendo Switch in just a few days.