Topic: Font for Bloodstained

[XombieMike]

Would anyone happen to know the font used on the Bloodstained title and the Ritual of the Night text that goest with it? I'm pretty sure it's custom, but I'm hoping I'm wrong. If one does not exist, has anyone here done any work creating Castlevania fonts that could help make one for Bloodstained? That would be great because I'm at a loss looking for one. Thanks!

[TheouAegis]

Most likely a custom font. While past fonts have been found to some extent, Konami's staff typically made its own fonts.

The B is most definitely customized and is actually quite gorgeous in my opinion.

Looking at the lowercase S, the font is characteristic of cursiva. Such a long descender with that kind of rounded tip is practically unheard of, which reinforces my belief that this is a custom font.

The L distinguishes it as a bastarda/hybrida typeface. The style is not common, but it is far more common than the S - the finalis at the top is supposed to double back across the stem, but it's severed midway, hence the defining bump on the left.

The D is characteristic of bastarda as well. Definitely too rounded to be fraktura or schwabacher.

The double-o ligature may be the defining attribute, but most font identifiers ignore ligatures. Furthermore, a double-o ligature is very rare among typefaces, from what I've seen at least.

The -ed ligature may also be a distinguishing feature. But for the same reason as the double-o lig may be hard to identify, the same may hold true here unfortunately.

One other feature that makes me think this is a custom font is the arm of the T does not cross the stem. Crossing the stem even just slightly is a very, very common feature in blackletter fonts. That this T is missing such a feature is critical. When you combine that with the style of the arm - how it is curved and tapered as opposed to broad like most blackletter fonts - the evidence is almost damning.

What could make things more difficult as well is if some of the lowercase letters are actually uppercase subscripts, which Konami did with the Castlevania III title font. This may be the case with the S. It could even be an upside-down S, since flourished ascenders are more common than descenders.


The closest I've come so far is Duc De Berry font, but that's still a long way off.

Here's what I ended up with trying to silhouette the title font with my crappy Photoshopping skills:



It is entirely possible the font did exist originally and was found in a catalogue of typefaces. Such things have been around for decades and decades.


Their use of a blackletter title font and an antiqua subtitle font leans more toward Nazi German style of writing, I think, whereas using the blackletter font for the subtitle would be more in line with Germanic Biblical writing. Odds are they just liked blackletter more, so they used it for the larger font.

A Franco-Bavarian font style for the title also helps highlight a feminine protagonist, whilst the harsh chiseled subtitle emphasizes her struggle.

[Shiroi Koumori]

Wow! There are so many things to learn from font reading. thanks man. 

[TheouAegis]

Depending on how much of a stickler you want to be, the typeface you use should match the setting of your game.

Throughout much of the middle to latter part of the millenium, antiqua script would have been used by the Roman church.

Fraktur was a popular style that re-joined textura with protogothic, but it was a (pre)modern font in use up until WWII.

In general Europeans felt there was a more satisfying quality to cursives, so cursiva and bastarde (hybrida) styles were preferred, along with antiqua (script closer to what we use today). France, Italy, and lower Prussia often used bastarde scripts. The French used cursiva for a few hundred years starting in the 13th century.

Guttenburg used textura and helped standardize the dotting of lowercase i and j. In turn, Schwabacher became the popular style of blackletter through the late 15th and 16th centuries. The French style was taller and narrower than the Prussian counterpart.

Up through the 15th century many literate Europeans wrote in protogothic script. Bear in mind, you most likely do not want to actually write in protogothic script: it was not very legible due to i and j not being dotted.

Up until around the 9th century, Carolignian miniscule script was the popular style around central Europe.


The British Isles primarily wrote in Insular script (which is why if you see something written in Insular script it might remind you of something from Robin Hood or Camelot), but that fell out of favor in the 11th century. At that point, textura style was the adopted norm until the end of the 16th century, when Roman typefaces became popular.


When combining typefaces, blackletter was used for the majority of the text while antiqua or Roman typeface was used for headings. (However, if the main text in your game is going to be blackletter, then stylistically it would make sense to use antiqua/roman for subheadings instead.)

[Gunlord]

Man, that's really interesting, TheouAegis. Where'd you learn that stuff?

[TheouAegis]

Research.

[XombieMike]

Thanks for yhe good info. I haha used some font analysis websites and they can't get me anything really all that close. I'm thinking this is just something I'm going to have to get from their official staff or make myself. I looked into making custom fonts with photoshop and a program that will need each letter as its own file, then combines them into an installable font. It sounds possible, but it's going to take me a while.

[Nagumo]

I managed to solve the case:

https://twitter.com/thejonkay/status/597819525011087361

[TheouAegis]

Oh yeah. It actually said on the Kickstarter site too. D'oh.

[XombieMike]

Great news! I have been talking with the Playism guys and they were kind enough to direct me to the proper fonts.

Deutsch Gothic was the one I was looking for: http://www.dafont.com/deutsch-gothic.font

Wisdom of the World was another used in the campaign that looks 8 bit. That's an EarthBound font and FanGamer probably has it if you go to their fourms and ask for it.

Atreyu was another cool looking font that was also used: http://www.losttype.com/font/?name=atreyu

[TheouAegis]

Um, those weren't the fonts used in the title. Atreyu and Deutsch Gothic are just a couple blackletter fonts. They are distinctly different from the one used in the Bloodstained title. Jon Kay even said he made the font himself.

Deutsch Gothic was the font used in the original Castlevania, not the font from Bloodstained.

Bradley Pro was the font used in Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse.

And Atreyu definitely isn't the font, as the Castlevania fonts are not fraktur, they're textura.

But whatever.

[XombieMike]

Sorry, you are right. My original intention was to find the title font, but as time past I settled for finding the fonts used in the Kickstarter for the headers and what not. Example:

[Lelygax]

Good to know that XombieMike is here too, he is the admin from the Bloodstained forums xD