On April Fools’ Day last year, Lilith Walther, the creator of the Bloodborne PSX project announced that she was canceling her PS1 demake to instead create a racing kart version of it. She showed off some footage of the project, which looked too good to remain a joke video. Apparently, Walther thought so too. Today, she announced that Bloodborne Kart is actively under development. She intends to release it “When it’s ready.”
While the announcement video is relatively sparse, you can see some actual gameplay in the original demo of the retro-style racing game. The main difference is that the Hunter, who acts as the protagonist in the original FromSoftware action game, is now riding on a slick motorcycle instead of a teeny go-kart. There’s something inherently comical about mashing up a family-friendly racing game and … well, Bloodborne.
The bit where Gianni Matragrano screams “BLOODBORNE KAAAARRRTTTTT” is the funniest part of the announcement. In the words of Kotaku staffer Jeremy Winslow, “I’d be so pissed if at every “you died” screen, someone screamed BLOOOODBOOOOORNE.” Hopefully, that’s not going to be what happens when you get hit by a turtle shell in the middle of a race.
Bloodborne is an action RPG that FromSoftware released in 2015. It’s famous for its Lovecraftian horror aesthetics, dense lore, deep dungeon crawling mechanics, and an unforgiving difficulty curve. Like all FromSoftware games, there’s a pretty devoted fandom–to wit there’s a Return to Yharnam event going on as we speak, years after release– which is why interest in the original retro-style demake was so high.
Bloodborne Kart was already an established meme in the community after someone had made fake leaks of a Bloodborne racing game from Assassin’s Creed Syndicate. Walther told Kotaku that the April Fools’ video was the most watched Bloodborne PSX video ever. Since there was clearly a demand for the concept, she felt that “it was the right thing to do.” When asked about a tentative release date, the creator said that it shouldn’t take as long as the original Bloodborne PSX. She’s optimistic about the game taking a few months, since she already had the assets and codebase.
Walther released the original PS1 Bloodborne demake on January 31 of this year, and you can download it for free on itch.io. The fan game allows you to play the first section of Bloodborne, and it can hopefully tide fans over until the Yharnam Grand Prix.