Upon the release of Castlevania: Curse of the Belmonts, developer Evil Empire discussed adjustments to the game's pacing. The team experimented with heavy, slow-paced combat as well as faster action speeds, ultimately seeking a balance between combat feel and the proportion of exploration.
The development team stated that the game went through many iterations during production. An early version leaned closer to Dark Souls: featuring heavy combat, a slower overall pace, and higher difficulty and intensity. Developers later concluded that this design was too slow and tense, failing to capture the Castlevania feel they wished to preserve.
The team subsequently increased the game's pace, only to find it became too similar to Dead Cells, with insufficient emphasis on exploration. The final direction aimed to retain the Castlevania series' sense of exploration and more deliberate pacing, while ensuring smooth action controls. Evil Empire had previously contributed to post-launch development of Dead Cells and its crossover content with Castlevania. The team lead also noted that during their collaboration with Konami, they valued maintaining creative control while also considering the expectations of the series' fans.
Just hours after launching on Steam, the game reached a peak concurrent player count of 17,896, surpassing the historical peak for Dead Cells mentioned in interviews. These are immediate figures from the launch period; the development team stated at the time that they were still awaiting player feedback.