Konami, never one to learn from past mistakes, is back at it again with another Castlevania mobile game! The company has partnered with Shengqu Games to develop Moonlight Rhapsody, which is scheduled to be tested in China sometime this year.
Daniel Ahmad, a Senior Analyst at Niko Partners, tweeted the news about Moonlight Rhapsody’s development and upcoming release. Ahmad describes the game as an action-adventure side scroller that “innovates on the original console games”.
Ahmad’s tweet included a 53-second long video detailing several environment screenshots, in-game characters, and gameplay clips. Based on the video, the game will feature side-scrolling, platforming, and Alucard—in other words, everything one would expect from an entry into the Castlevania franchise.
Konami’s last attempt at a mobile game, Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls, soft-launched last year in Canada and never quite made it to a worldwide release. While the company has since announced that Grimoire of Souls will be shutting down this September, the general sentiment among fans holds that it’s no great loss.
The ill-fated Grimoire of Souls aside, Konami has found a measure of success in the mobile gaming market. Contra: Return is a fairly popular Konami property, which was developed and published in China by megacorporation Tencent Holdings. The game has recently celebrated its third anniversary and has consistently ranked among iOS China’s top 50 games since its launch. Although the game has been made available in Taiwan and an English version released for Southeast Asia, whether the game will eventually see a global release remains unknown.
Regardless, Contra’s success proves that Konami is indeed capable of creating a popular mobile game! Moonlight Rhapsody’s apparent return to the console games’ recognizable side-scrolling, action-adventure format may spell redemption for the Castlevania mobile scene, but even if the game proves to be popular in China, there’s no guarantee it will see a worldwide release anytime soon, if at all.
Still, Konami once again attempting to bring Castlevania to mobile devices bears paying attention to. The franchise’s last console game was Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2, which was released back in 2014. It’s been a healthy six years since then. While Konami may yet prove otherwise, players can probably expect to find Castlevania on mobile and only mobile for the foreseeable future.
Source: Twitter
