We might never get a proper Bloodborne remake, or even a current-gen remaster, but that hasn’t stopped fans from continuing to experiment with their own spin-offs of FromSoftware’s dark fantasy action game. The latest is called Bloodborne Top Down Arena, and it’s exactly what it sounds like: a Diablo-style reimagining of the 2015 PlayStation game.
“I haven’t touched Bloodborne Remake for a year for 50 reasons (too big, too risky to finally be C&D),” announced solo developer Maxime Foulquier on Tuesday. “But last week I decided to start a new project from scratch, Bloodborne Top Down Arena.” A short clip demonstrated the project in action, complete with dodge roll invincibility and gory finishers.
The fan game doesn’t appear to be playable anywhere yet, though Foulquier said he is looking for volunteer play testers. It’s also not clear if the plan is to recreate the entire map of Bloodborne or just a smaller combat arena that shows off the concept in a more limited form. It certainly sounds more like the latter.
One thing Foulquier will definitely want to look into doing is changing the name. Another Bloodborne fan project called Bloodborne Kart came to Steam last year but was forced by Sony, which published Bloodborne, to remove the name from its title. As a result it’s now called Nightmare Kart. Presumably, the same will work for Bloodborne Top Down Arena. Maybe it can just be called Hunter Arena.
While Dark Souls, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, and Elden Ring are all widely-acclaimed and very popular, Bloodborne fans are built different and the game retains a special place in PlayStation players’ imagination. It’s never been ported to PC (officially, at least) or even PS5, and it doesn’t sound like a remaster, remake, or sequel is anywhere in the current pipeline at FromSoftware. At least projects like Bloodborne Top Down Arena are continuing to keep the hype alive in the meantime.
