In 2021, Lilith Walther — lead developer of the Video Game Demake Bloodborne PSX — made an important announcement: Bloodborne PSX was to be cancelled and a new project, Bloodborne Kart, would take its place.
Of course, it was April Fools' Day, so everyone understood that it was simply a glorious meme and Bloodborne PSX development resumed afterward... at least, it was a meme, until Bloodborne PSX released and a trailer for the team's next project was announced...
Bloodborne Kart is a Retraux Mascot Racer Fan Game based on FromSoftware's Bloodborne, mashing up its setting, characters, and mechanics with classic kart racing chaos. Players can choose from a number of different Bloodborne characters to play as in order to race throughout the streets of Yharnam, demolishing their opposition with an assortment of weapons.
This fangame was originally slated for release on the 31st of January, 2024, however, on January 26, the game would end up getting delayed to an unspecified date after legal issues from Sony Interactive Entertainment forced the team to strip away the Bloodborne branding in favor of making it an original game.
On April 1, 2024, the game has been announced to have been rebranded as Nightmare Kart and will be released on Steam and Itch.io for free on May 31, 2024.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Curves: Trailers show that Micolash is way taller compared to the other hunters. This is so that he's more proportionally sized with the vehicles everyone rides.
- Baby Carriage: Mergo is a playable racer and "appears" exactly as they did in the original game, leading to the sight of an empty, self-propelled baby carriage zipping about the racetrack at high speed.
- Bait-and-Switch: Micolash's intro cutscene shows him shambling offscreen, towards his kart, his shadow projected onto the wall. Obviously, he's going to get into the kart and drive off... and then he instead does a goofy-looking sprint into the distance.
- Bathos: The game is built around the grim and bleak setting of Bloodborne while also being a silly and wacky kart racer where the contrast between the two is used to enhance the humor.
- Denser and Wackier: It's the Bloodborne setting, but a kart racer. Instead of all the characters slaughtering each other, they're vying to win a race around the tracks. Much of the humor in the trailers is the stark juxtaposition of the grim, bleak seriousness of the narrative with lighthearted mascot racing.
- Handicapped Badass: Gehrman is still wheelchair-bound as he was in Bloodborne, except this time he's shown to be able to compete in motor vehicle races just by pushing his chair around in his debut trailer.
- Monowheel Mayhem: Lady Maria's trailer shows that her vehicle of choice is a giant clockwork wheel, which takes the shape of the Astral Clocktower's clock.
- Retraux: The assets shown in the trailers use the same PlayStation 1-ish artstyle as Bloodborne PSX. Textures are pixellated, objects have vertex warping when in motion, and a thick distance fog covers things that are too far from the camera.
- Shout-Out: The announcement trailer features a parody of the AKIRA poster when the title drops, with the Good Hunter approaching their bike identically to Kaneda towards his own. For another AKIRA reference, the release date trailer features another homage, this time to Kaneda sliding on his bike away from the camera (spoofed with Father Gascoigne doing likewise).
- Super-Speed: Micolash's trailer shows him to be able to compete in kart races by simply running really fast.
- Super Wheelchair: Trailers show that Gehrman's wheelchair has been tricked-out with a massive motorbike muffler, one that spews gouts of fire whenever he revs the engine.
