Bloodstained: Ritual Of The Night, is the triumphant return of Koji Igarashi, who had a large hand in creating some of the most well-loved Castlevania games in the franchise, mainly known for Symphony Of The Night and Aria Of Sorrow.

The games are innovative for the series, introducing elements of the RPG genre to the action-adventure/horror platforming gameplay seen in the earlier entries. Bloodstained makes a number of changes to the format that Igarashi established, even if a lot of those are things like improved graphics and a different story. There’s so much to do in this game that these few parts of the game are worth investigating.

10 8-Bit Nightmare

One of the coolest places in the game is the area referred to as “8-Bit Nightmare”. 8-Bit Nightmare is a throwback to the older Castlevania games, both in the design of the levels and in terms of the relative difficulty. The player only has to be about halfway through the game to access the area, which can be reached in the Hall Of Termination. Leave the teleportation room there, hit the ceiling on the right, and break through, where there’s a secret room. There’s another fake wall on the left, and there it is.

9 Orlok Dracula

Orlok Dracula isn’t a character that the player would be likely to miss altogether, but there are a few quirks to his existence. First of all, the voice actors in both English and Japanese audio are the actors who played Alucard. He can also be fought as a secret boss if the player has completed more than 99.0% of the map. To do this, the player must take a book called “Tome Of Conquest”, after a while, Orlok will attack the player for stealing it.

8 KuneKune

KuneKune is a secret boss that’s based on a creature from internet lore from contemporary Japan. The KuneKune is something akin to Slenderman, although there are radically different parts of the lore for each creature.

The KuneKune is considered by most to be a mistaken scarecrow, but it definitely shows up in Bloodstained. If the player goes back to where they fought the train boss earlier and sits on the chair there, they’ll be met with a boss fight featuring KuneKune.

7 The Igarashi Painting

Igarashi is well known for leaving Easter eggs all over his games, and most of the easter eggs serve no real purpose outside of their entertainment value. This is one of those easter eggs. While there are paintings of various backers who helped fund the project, there’s one that looks just a little more familiar than the rest. Aside from that, there’s an entire boss named IGA who is modeled on Dracula, from the Shard he drops to the moveset he utilizes against the player.

6 Gebel’s Glasses

Gebel’s Glasses definitely come in handy for Miriam, but the issue isn’t necessarily the prospect of finding them in some secluded spot on the map, the issue is that there are very specific conditions that need to be met before the glasses can be acquired. To get them, the player must scour the entire map for every enemy, and then be awarded the shard corresponding to that enemy. Once all of that is done, the glasses are pretty much just handed to them by Johannes.

5 Miriam’s Music

There are plenty of chairs strewn across the map over the course of Bloodstained, but most of them seem like they pretty much do nothing. This might be fixed in some sort of DLC that hasn’t been released yet, but there’s one, in particular, that’s worth having a seat in.

In the Garden of Silence, there’s a grand piano with a chair in front of it which Miriam can sit at. Once she does, she’ll start playing a beautiful piece. In fact, if you have Carabosse equipped, she’ll sing for you.

4 The Celeste Room

In Livre Ex Machina, it seems like there’s a bit of an unfinished area of the game. Referred to as Celeste’s room, the player can find a key in the Hall of Termination after destroying a false ceiling. Once the player opens the room the key corresponds to, they’ll be met with a lot of disappointment since there’s pretty much just a chair inside in addition to a few music boxes the player can interact with.

3 Wandering Eye

For whatever reason, Igarashi seems to enjoy adding tons and tons of visual gags into his games, and a large part of that is probably the fact that he wants to establish a sense of spooky and cheesy fun on top of the stressful gameplay, and in a game filled with werewolves and vampires, it only makes sense that there would be tons of weird jokes.

One of the biggest ones is a large painting with one eye that’s more pronounced than usual which follows the player.

2 Chair Mimics

The game is absolutely filled with chairs, and they really do pretty much nothing for the player other than having a unique animation. If the player goes through the whole game without sitting in the chairs (because why would you?) it’s not obvious that some of the chairs are mimics. The Shard acquired from the Chair Mimic demons allow the ability to summon chairs, which regenerate mana.

1 Todd, The Cursed Barber

While he’s easy to miss, most players probably wouldn’t be too happy with themselves if they did. While the player has no doubt come across tons of the barber enemies who have knives for fingers and are frankly pretty annoying. That being said, not all of them are bad. In Dian Cécht Cathedral, there’s a man who was cursed until he can give 666 haircuts named Todd. He can alter the player’s physical characteristics for enhanced customization.

NEXT: 10 Best Games Of The Metroidvania Revival