Igarashi's Bloodstained breaks Kickstarter record

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is now the most funded video game in the history of Kickstarter, with more than $4.61 million raised 19 hours before the close of its campaign.

The only two projects in Kickstarter's "Games" category to raise more money are Ouya with $8.59 million and Exploding Kittens with $8.78 million - a console and a card game respectively.

Purely in terms of video games, though, Koji Igarashi's spiritual successor to the Castlevania games on which his reputation was built has raised more than any other. The next nearest is inXile Entertainment's Torment: Tides of Numenera with $4.18 million, then Obsidian's Project Eternity with $3.98 million.

However, Bloodstained has also exceeded its creator's expectations by a far wider margin, with 922 per cent of its funding target raised versus 465 per cent for Torment and 362 per cent for Project Eternity.

Igarashi decided to use Kickstarter for Bloodstained because the companies that could feasibly fund the project were unsure whether a market existed for that kind of games any more.

"When we launched the Kickstarter not only did we prove the market for a game like this, we became the Number 1 video game Kickstarter of all time," Igarashi said on Bloodstained's Kickstarter page.

"I wish I could rewind the clock to the beginning of the campaign and kick myself for thinking we would probably only raise $800,000 if we got lucky."