Making big, genre-specific swings in Blasphemous II

gamedeveloper.com:

The original Blasphemous was one of many games that found crowdfunding success on Kickstarter, and the developers at The Game Kitchen would find greater acclaim upon release. Focusing on a sprawling dark pilgrimage through an unsettling world inspired by Spanish folklore and the iconography of Roman Catholicism, Blasphemous is a richly detailed 2D fantasy action-platformer that took some cues from Dark Souls and the Metroidvania genre.

Following the solid success of the original, which reached over a million players, The Game Kitchen wanted to aim bigger for Blasphemous II, which meant rebuilding the visual design of the world, revising the storytelling, and updating the entire Unity codebase in order to make a more fully realized world for the follow up.

In an interview with Blasphemous II creative director Erique Cabeza and producer David Erosa, they explain how lost concepts from the original game reappear here, and the reasons why their darker and more open-ended sequel needed to hit the reset button.

For the sequel, many of the concepts and innovations were "nearly impossible" to pull off for the original game. Working with publisher Team17, the developers had a more significant budget and scope to work with, which led to the decision to rework the entire game structure and art design from the ground up.

Set generations after Blasphemous' epilogue DLC The Wounds Of Eventide, the silent protagonist and cursed knight, The Penitent One, reawakens from a generations-long slumber to a radically changed kingdom of Cvstodia. Embarking on a new mission to confront powerful sentinels known as the Confraternity, who have control of the mysterious force known as "the Miracle," The Penitent One explores the new kingdom and its