Inti Creates · PC / Switch / 3DS / PlayStation 4 / Vita · 2018 · Inspired by: Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse
A Kickstarter stretch goal that turned into one of the finest 8-bit tributes ever made — an homage to Castlevania III so faithful that IGN suggested it walked a thin line between tribute and outright theft.
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon exists because a crowdfunding campaign overperformed. When Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night — his spiritual successor to the Castlevania games he had shepherded at Konami — blew past its goals, one of the promises made was a retro-styled companion game. Inti Creates delivered it: revealed at the BitSummit indie festival in Kyoto on 12 May 2018 and released a fortnight later on 24 May across the 3DS, Switch, PlayStation 4, Vita, and Windows. The game is an unabashed homage to Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse, and specifically to the two features that made that 1989 game exceptional: branching pathways through the castle, and multiple playable characters with entirely different abilities. Curse of the Moon follows Zangetsu, a cursed swordsman hunting demons for revenge, who is joined over the course of the game by Miriam, Alfred, and Gebel — a whip-adjacent acrobat, a frail spellcaster, and a powerful demon, each mapping recognisably onto the Castlevania III roster while remaining distinct. The 8-bit presentation is meticulous rather than merely nostalgic: the sprite work, the stiff-but-fair jump arcs, the sub-weapon system, the knockback on damage, and the deliberate pacing all reconstruct the feel of an NES Castlevania with a precision that suggests genuine study rather than pastiche. IGN wrote that the game "treads a thin line between homage and outright theft," concluding that it was a successful tribute — perhaps done "a little too accurately for its own good." That ambivalence is the point. Curse of the Moon is not a modern game wearing retro clothes but a genuine attempt to make the Castlevania III sequel that Konami never did, by the people who best understood what made it work. Crucially, it also offers a choice at each character encounter — recruit them, ignore them, or kill them — which alters the difficulty and the ending, a modern touch that deepens the original's structure without betraying it.
Curse of the Moon takes direct aim at the two things that made Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse special: branching routes through the game and a cast of playable characters with wholly different movesets. Zangetsu is joined by Miriam, Alfred, and Gebel, each recognisably echoing a member of the 1989 game's roster while standing on their own. The 8-bit reconstruction is exacting — sprite work, jump arcs, sub-weapons, damage knockback, and pacing all rebuilt with the fidelity of genuine study rather than surface pastiche. IGN's verdict that it walks "a thin line between homage and outright theft," done perhaps "a little too accurately for its own good," is less a criticism than a description of the ambition.
The game exists only because Koji Igarashi's Kickstarter for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night overshot its funding targets, obliging the team to produce a retro-styled companion piece. Inti Creates could have delivered a throwaway novelty; instead they built one of the finest 8-bit tributes ever made, and released it a full year before the game it was meant to accompany. It even improves on its model in one respect: at each character encounter the player may recruit, ignore, or kill the newcomer, and those choices alter both difficulty and ending — a modern structural idea layered onto a 1989 design without ever betraying it.