Koji Igarashi’s Castlevania revival is Kickstarter’s most funded video game

It turns out people really want a new Castlevania-style game. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, the next game from longtime Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi, has just become the most funded video game on Kickstarter. It surpassed RPG Torment: Tides of Numenera, which raised more than $4.1 million in April 2013.

Bloodstained first launched on Kickstarter last month, and managed to raise more than $1 million in less than 24 hours. And while it doesn’t have the Castlevania name attached to it, the game looks very reminiscent of Igarashi’s past work, which includes classics like Symphony of the Night. Just like those games, Bloodstained is a 2D action-adventure game with a heavy emphasis on exploration. The game takes place in a sprawling castle, and stars a new character named Miriam, described as “an orphan scarred by an alchemist curse which slowly crystallizes [her] skin.” Naturally, the cure is fighting lots of demons.

The success of Bloodstained shouldn’t be too surprising; Igarashi is just the latest in a long line of notable developers using crowdfunding to reimagine the games that made them famous. Mega Man mastermind Keiji Inafune, for instance, left Capcom to develop a very Mega Man-like game called Mighty No. 9. It raised more than $3.8 million on Kickstarter and is due to release in September. (Capcom, meanwhile, is using a different tactic to honor the Blue Bomber’s legacy.) Mighty No. 9 is being co-developed by Japanese studio Inti Creates, who also happen to be working on Bloodstained.

While the new milestone makes Igarashi’s new title the biggest video game on Kickstarter, it’s not quite the biggest in the games category overall. That title goes to Exploding Kittens, a card game from The Oatmeal, which raised $8.7 million back in February.

Bloodstained isn’t expected to launch until 2017.