2025 has been a wild year. From a Chinese social media app taking the world by storm after TikTok faced a ban from the United States of America to Denmark jokingly offering to purchase California, it is no secret that we live in interesting times. Yet, just when I thought that I had been desensitized to everything that life had to throw at me, I’m sucker punched by the reveal of a spiritual successor to my favorite game of all time. After a decade, I and many other avid fans had given up on the idea of a sequel for Bloodborne. Yet, revealed in the April 2025 Nintendo Direct, The Duskbloods seems to be just that.
To understand just how big this news is, some context must be given. Bloodborne was released to much fanfare in 2015, created by the Japanese studio Fromsoftware in collaboration with Sony, a juggernaut in the gaming industry. While being the brainchild of Hidetaka Miyazaki, the intellectual property of Bloodborne is owned by Sony, meaning that any sequel would require Sony’s sign off-something. In an interview with IGN, Miyazaki revealed that while he had many fond memories of Bloodborne, he found the idea of a true sequel to be unlikely considering Sony owning the intellectual property, “We simply don’t own the IP at FromSoftware. For me personally, it was a great project.” However, it seems that he has found a clever way to bypass that issue by creating a strong spiritual successor to Bloodborne.
And this is where The Duskbloods enters the story. Introduced as a title exclusive to the Nintendo Switch 2, The Duskbloods is a Victorian era horror game reminiscent of the Gothic charm offered by Bloodborne. Projected to release on the Nintendo Switch 2 sometime next year, the game’s announcement trailer serves as somewhat of a hype machine, revealing some elements of the game’s design while keeping a remarkable amount of information out of public knowledge.
Yet, even from the brief three minute glance offered by the trailer, The Duskbloods seems to share far too many similarities with Bloodborne for it to be a simple coincidence. Call me crazy, but a horror game taking place in 20th century Britain with themes of blood and of the moon has to be at least a nod towards one of Fromsoftware’s best games.
Whether or not The Duskborn is a cheeky sequel to Bloodborne or just a love letter to diehard fans who don’t know when to lay their foolish ambitions to rest, only time will tell.
