Castlevania mobile game Grimoire of Souls was shut down in September 2020 after less than a year of operation, and while the project briefly seemed like a lost cause, it’s now getting an unlikely resurrection in the form of an Apple Arcade release.
In Grimoire of Souls, players take the role of six iconic Castlevania characters as they travel through various side-scrolling castles completing challenges, solving mysteries and trying to prevent the resurrection of Dracula.
Like other mobile titles, it was originally built around challenges including daily and weekly missions where players could team up to discover every secret hiding in the game. Also like other mobile games, it included microtransactions.
It was one of the first major mobile entries for the franchise, and experienced renewed interest thanks to the popularity of Netflix’s anime adaptation — but it appears this wasn’t enough to keep the game running. Not helping matters was that the game was released only in Canada and didn’t have a chance to spread its wings before it was pulled from shelves in September 2020.
The reasons for this removal are still unclear, but it’s good to see Konami giving the game another shot with brand new audiences via its upcoming iOS release. While we don’t know when the game will return to stores (outside of a nebulous “soon” date), we do know it’ll launch exclusively for Apple Arcade on iPhone and iPad.
Given Apple Arcade is a subscription service with a focus on microtransaction-free games, we can assume there’s been some tweaks to the Grimoire of Souls formula, but we don’t currently know what those will be. Regardless, it’s great to see Konami putting support behind Castlevania again given there’s been few mainline entries in the franchise over the past decade.
Unlike the original version of this game, Grimoire of Souls will be available for audiences outside Canada, so if you missed out the first time you’ll finally get a chance to play it when it launches for Apple Arcade “soon”.
You can check out the game’s original trailer below to see what you’ve been missing:
Keep an eye on the Apple App Store and Apple Arcade hubs for more information about when the game will launch.
Leave a Reply