The upcoming spiritual successor to the Castlevania series, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, will be moved from its unspecified release date in 2017 to early 2018, according to creator Koji Igarashi. The announcement was made via a development update video, in which Igarashi reasoned out that "between our current production setup and release deadline [he] realized that at this rate the game may not end up meeting [his] quality standards".

To help in making the game in line with his intended vision, he further stated that a new development team has been added to the main crew and that they are "in the process of securing these new developers", which probably means they're hammering out the contract specifics or something.

Bloodstained will follow the footsteps of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, widely considered the greatest Castlevania ever made, although it still remains to be seen just how much of it will be carried over to Bloodstained. The video below shows that aside from the obvious difference in graphics, Bloodstained seems like it's keeping in line, especially the upbeat soundtrack, one of the highlights of Symphony of the Night. But why specifically Symphony of the Night, you may ask? Well, Igarashi had his hands all over the PlayStation masterpiece.

Bloodstained was originally brought to life courtesy of fan requests for Igarashi, who left Konami, to create another game similar to his previous works. To create the game, Igarashi turned to Kickstarter and subsequently earned more than $5 million in funding. It now ranks as the second-highest funded campaign in the video games category, just behind Shenmue 3. Fans shouldn't feel disappointed with the delay, because the last thing they or the game's Kickstarter backers would want is a shitty game hurried out of the gate. Igarashi pretty much said the same thing in the video - the decision for the delay is to be sure that "the game is done right the first time".

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will be available for the PS4, Xbox One, PC, Wii U, PS Vita, Mac, and Linux. Deep Silver will serve as the publisher of the game.