PS1-style fan game Bloodborne Kart has a PC release date

A fan-made Bloodborne racing game based on an April Fools’ joke is nearing completion, and now has a release date.

Bloodborne Kart will be released as a free PC download on itch.io on January 31, its creator Lilith Walther has announced.

Walther had previously released Bloodborne PSX, a PC ‘demake’ of FromSoftware‘s game that reimagines how the game would have played running on the first PlayStation.

Fans of the game then joked that Walther should turn her sights to Bloodborne Kart, a fake leak meme from 2017.

On April Fools’ Day in 2021, Walther posted fake gameplay footage of a PS1 Bloodborne karting game, joking that she was working on that now.

The joke would eventually become a reality, however, and Bloodborne Kart is now mere months away from release.

Bloodborne Kart will include 12 racers to choose from, and features 16 courses.

It will also boast a single-player campaign mode including boss fights, as well as local split-screen multiplayer and a Battle mode.

Although some have expressed concern that the game’s release may be blocked by Sony, the fact it’s clearly marked as a fan project and is being distributed for free will likely go in Walther’s favour.

Indeed, her Bloodborne PSX was covered in numerous publications at the time of its release, and is still readily available to download, with Sony seemingly taking no action to take it down.

Walther will be hoping Bloodborne Kart will be met with similar silence to programmer Dominic Szablewski’s fan-made web browser port of PlayStation classic Wipeout, which he released in August.

Further reading

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A new fan-made port of Wipeout can be played in a web browser

Its programmer asks Sony to leave it alone or shut it down and make their own remaster

Szablewski recompiled the original game’s source code and ported it to a version that can be run on web browsers, adding: “If anyone at Sony is reading this, please consider that you have (in my opinion) two equally good options – either let it be, or shut this thing down and get a real remaster going.”

It remains available to play at the time of writing.