Hi, I’m Daniel Thurman

Daniel reviews cyberpunk books, games, and more.

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  • This Is What Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night Might Look Like if It Was Demade as a Game Boy Game

    We love demakes around here, and there sure are a lot of good ones these days. Some of them are real, fully playable games. And some are pixel art mockups. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is the latest to get the demake treatment, though it does fall into the latter category. These are pixel art mockups of what Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night might look like if demade as a Game Boy game. And it looks phenomenal.

    So phenomenal in fact that it makes me sad that it’s not a real game. These beautiful screen shots are brought to us by Game Boy Demakes, an account that spotlights the best of modern (and sometimes not-so-modern) games demade with Game Boy visuals. If you have time you should browse through what they have posted. It’s all top-notch, authentic-looking Game Boy graphics.

    Game Boy Demakes has even created a Game Boy rom file for the mockups over at their Patreon page. It’s free to download for everyone and you can use your favorite Game Boy emulator to load up the mockups. This is great if you use filters and want to see what this game looks like with your favorite filters applied. That’s why my above screen shots all have scanlines on them. Because I put scanlines on everything.

    Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night of course is Koji Igarashi’s spiritual successor to the Castlevania franchise, which he was a vital part of in the later years of the series. The game has been accompanied by two 8-bit style spinoff titles, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon and Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2. The Curse of the Moon games are sort of demakes themselves, resembling the Castlevania titles of the NES era pretty strongly both in visuals and game play.

    We can only hope that this gets popular enough to inspire someone to actually demake Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night for real on Game Boy and have it be a fully playable game. That might actually be my preferred way to play it.

  • Grim Guardians: Demon Purge Is Inti Creates’ Next 2D Action Game

    Inti Creates, the developers behind renowned game series such as Mega Man Zero and Azure Striker Gunvolt have announced their next project. The game is going to be called Grim Guardians: Demon Purge. It looks to be another 2D action game in Inti Creates tradition but this time in the vein of Castlevania. I have to pause here and try to calm down. I mean just look at it.

    Grim Guardians: Demon Purge stars two sisters, Shinobu and Maya Kamizono. They are exploring—and kicking ass in, clearly—a castle owned by a demon in order to rid their land of a curse brought on by said demon. The two sisters appear to have different weapons and abilities with the player able to swap between them. I imagine there are ways to strategically use each of their different abilities to navigate the castle, solve puzzles, and fight enemies in tandem.

    Grim Guardians centers around two demon hunters who return to their school after a mission only to find a demonic castle where it once stood. Players control both of the demon hunting sisters in this 2D side-scrolling action game. Players must master each of the sisters’ unique abilities and attributes to overcome the challenging stages with bosses awaiting their arrival. They’ll also be able to find new routes through each stage using the 2 characters’ abilities, keeping play throughs fresh.

    -Press Release

    Shinobu’s main attack is a submachine gun for long range attacks. And Maya appears to use magical origami to create weapons for close range attacks. Origami weapons. Sorry, just had to say that again. The juxtaposition of the two characters also opens up multiplayer possibilities here.

    Inti Creates have announced Grim Guardians: Demon Purge ahead of Bitsummit in Kyoto. They plan to show a demo of the game at the event. The game is currently in development with no projected timeframe for release. Inti Creats have put up an official website for the game that you might want to keep an eye on.

    This is not Inti Creates’ first foray into Castlevania-like territory of course. The company developed and published Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon in 2018 and its sequel in 2020. Both of which were critically acclaimed companion games to Koji Igarashi’s Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night game. They were 8-bit style spinoffs of sorts (and were amazing).

    While we don’t have a release date yet, rest assured though that as both a huge Inti Creates and Castlevania fan I will make it my personal mission to keep up with this game. Featuring Inti Creates’ gorgeous sprite art but with a gothic style reminiscent of Castlevania, this ticks so many boxes for me. It ticks them, and then ticks them again.