Last week at E3 2017, we had the opportunity to go hands on with the upcoming "Igavania" title Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Being developed by Inti Creates and published by 505 Games, Bloodstained serves as a spiritual successor to the Castlevania games of yesteryear.

For those unfamiliar, Bloodstained began as a Kickstarter project in May of 2015 with a goal of raising $500,000. The community surrounding the game ended up blowing away the game's goal and raised a staggering $5.5 million dollars -- one of the largest Kickstarter funded games to date.

While at E3, we got to check out the most recent build of the game which was put together specifically for the show. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night also appeared at E3 last year and the demo that accompanied it was later made available to backers to play. Unfortunately, it was confirmed to us at the show that this specific demo that we played will not be released to backers. However, it's not all bad news. Bloodstained will soon go into early access for those who backed the game and that will provide them with ample time to try out Bloodstained for themselves.

As far as what you will actually see in our gameplay video goes, we were led through a section of the game's castle where we quickly gained upgrades and learned how to utilize basic mechanics such as platforming, magic, and melee combat. Additionally, we got to face off against one of the game's bosses (and nearly died) near the end of our session.

You can find the full gameplay demo for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night below to get a look at it for yourself. For more on Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, be sure to stay tuned later this week as we will be publishing an interview that we conducted with one of the main creators behind the game: Koji Igarashi. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night is scheduled to release on Xbox One, PS4, Ps Vita, Switch, PC, Mac, and Linux in the first half of 2018.