Inti Creates on Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX's progress, how Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon came to be, and why Gunvolt 3 hasn't happened

In a recent interview with Game*Spark (translated by NintendoEverything), Inti Creates' Takuya Aizu opened up about Luminous Avenger iX, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, and the lack of Azure Striker Gunvolt 3. Check out the development details on Luminous Avenger iX and Bloodstained below, as well as an explanation as to why we haven't seen Gunvolt 3 yet.

GS: When did Luminous Avenger iX’s development begin, then? How long are you expecting it to continue?

Aizu: We started at the beginning of the year, so I’d say we’re probably about… Ten percent done. If you asked the director though he’d probably say something more like five percent. (laughs)

GS: About how big is iX’s development, scale-wise?

Aizu: For Gunvolt games we usually have around six or seven people working on the characters, the world, the gameplay systems, etc. From there development only gets bigger, until we have around 40 people working on the final product. When iX was still in the conceptual stages of development, we felt like we should take the time to focus on strengthening the game’s core concepts. We’ll usually announce something after we have around two to three in-game stages done. It’d be quite unusual for Inti Creates to announce something that hasn’t even left the core stages of development yet.

GS: Luminous Avenger iX isn’t Gunvolt 3, is it? What’s your reasoning behind that?

Aizu: This may make him a bit angry, but the director of the Gunvolt series – Yoshihisa Tsuda – is having a bit of a tough time coming up with Gunvolt 3. I’d think it’d be difficult for anybody who isn’t Tsuda to come up with a suitable next entry, so to keep fans from having to wait forever, we’re busy working like ants to release a spin-off title. That’s not the whole of it, but it’s what we can tell you today!

GS: Next let’s talk a little about Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon. How did you become involved in its development?

Aizu: Well for starters, in 2015 we were involved in Mr. Koji Igarashi’s Kickstarter campaign for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night! We cooperated primarily for the sake of managing the campaign as well as artwork and initial development. From a developer’s viewpoint, we essentially donated art to the campaign, and some development when the campaign actually began. In the campaign there was a stretch goal promising the release of an 8-bit prequel game, and when it was achieved, we decided initially that we’d make them for handheld devices such as the 3DS and PlayStation Vita.

In coming up with the game, we felt that having a Metroidvania-style exploration-based game would be a little redundant, so we couldn’t just make the same game with different graphics. So, after some thought we decided on having the 8-bit game rely on a stage-clear type formula and set it as a stretch goal! To put it simply, we were a bit too busy with Curse of the Moon and other things to work on Ritual of the Night. Though, at the following year’s E3 in 2016, the playable Alpha demo of Ritual of the Night proved to be really popular! Eventually we had to hand off development on Ritual of the Night to another company and focused all of our efforts on the 8-bit game. That being said, Curse of the Moon was a game that we were consistently refining during its development.