Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow - Development

Development

The production of Dawn of Sorrow was announced on January 6, 2005 as the first Castlevania game to be released on the Nintendo DS. Longtime Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi was in charge of the production. The choice to use the Nintendo DS in favor of the Sony PlayStation Portable was due to Aria of Sorrow's success on Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, and Igarashi's observations during the 2005 E3 Media and Business Summit of both consoles. Igarashi felt that the storyline with Soma Cruz and the Tactical Soul system were a waste to only use in one game, contributing to his desire to make a sequel. The original design team from Aria of Sorrow, as well as numerous new additions from Konami Tokyo, was involved in the production of Dawn of Sorrow. Igarashi intended to include a white collar Japanese worker in the game. This worker would be a manager in a Japanese firm and have a family as well. However, the development team's opposition to this idea forced him to drop this prospect.

The use of the technical features of the Nintendo DS was one of the production team's principal concerns during development. The DS touch screen was a primary point of interest, and several functions, such as picking up items on the screen and moving them, were originally intended to be incorporated. However, scheduling problems forced the development team to abandon many of these ideas. Igarashi's primary concern with using the touch screen was that it would detract from "the Castlevania pure action gameplay," in which the player would have to slow down play in order to use the stylus. The DS microphone was looked at during development, but Igarashi noted that although he found humorous uses for it, it was never seriously considered for inclusion into the game.

For the graphical representations of the numerous enemies in the game, Igarashi had sprites from previous Castlevania games such as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night reused, and the development team redesigned them for use on the Nintendo DS. Unlike most recent Castlevania games, Ayami Kojima did not participate in the character designs for Dawn of Sorrow. Instead, the characters were drawn in a distinctive anime style. This was done due to influence from producer Koji Igarashi, who wanted to market the game to a younger audience. Aria of Sorrow's sales figures did not meet expectations, and as a result, Igarashi consulted Konami's sales department. The staff concluded that the demographics of the Game Boy Advance did not line up with the series' target age group. Igarashi believed that the Nintendo DS inherently attracted a younger audience, and he was working to court them with the anime style. Furthermore, Igarashi considered the anime style a litmus test for whether future Castlevania games would incorporate it. Kojima's hiatus was also to allow her to concentrate upon her character designs for Castlevania: Curse of Darkness.