2 September 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The Iaido Duelist and the two-player Campaign are back, with the menu bug that pulled them fixed.
- The Iaido Duelist joins the roster as the tenth and final enemy type. He sheathes his katana, plants his feet and lights a ring on the ground — hit him inside that ring and he draws, hard. The answer is steel from outside it: a shuriken, a kunai or the chain break the stance for free.
- Co-op Campaign: the whole sixteen-wave story is now playable by two people side by side, with both warlord fights, the act break and the ending, and every blessing you pick going to both shinobi.
- The Two Players menu now fits on every screen. On some laptop heights the Back button had been pushed off the bottom with no way out — that is fixed across the full range of window sizes, and the phone layout is untouched.
27 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The kunai bandolier, the Storm's Eye and the Storm Avatar — a fourth weapon, a fourth arena and a third warlord, and the storm now opens its eye every tenth Endless wave.
- A fourth weapon: the kunai bandolier. One kunai hobbles a light enemy, two stake it to the flagstones, and a third tears the set out in a burst. Heavies and warlords shrug it off entirely, so it never trivialises a boss.
- A pinned enemy is rooted, not stunned — it will still swing at anything already in reach. Staking a foe is a position, not a kill.
- Your steel is finite and it stays where it lands. Five kunai, one back every few seconds, and every one that misses or works loose stands in the floor waiting to be picked up — spend it, then go and fetch it back.
- Press Q, or the left bumper on a controller, to throw a kunai straight away. You can also hold the shuriken button — right mouse, or the STAR button on a phone — to bring the bandolier up and paint the line your throw will take. Holding always sends one shuriken out first; Q and the left bumper are the two routes without it.
- A fourth arena, the Storm's Eye: a floor that fights back. Four bronze conductor pylons earth the storm on a seven-second count, and the discharge does not care whose side you are on. Hook a brute under a humming pylon and let the sky finish him.
- A third warlord, the Storm Avatar, with four telegraphed moves — a close-range slam, an expanding ring of ground lightning, a call that lights every pylon at once, and rings of bolts that walk inward to herd you back into melee.
- Every tenth wave of Endless and co-op now carries you into the Storm's Eye to face him — waves 10, 20, 30 and on — and puts you back where you were afterwards. The sixteen-wave campaign is unchanged.
- Three new blessings for the bandolier, bringing the pool to thirty-two: more steel, barbed kunai that hold longer, and Iron Rain, which sends a torn-out set flying back out looking for someone else.
24 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Shinobi Storm gains its third battleground — the Moonlit Rooftops — and the Eaves Stalker, the one enemy at home up there.
- New arena: the Moonlit Rooftops. Wet kawara tile, lantern-lit alleys dropping away below, rain, thunder and a bell tower — and a floor you can fall through. Two alleys and three light-wells cut the roof up; three plank bridges are the only walk-across.
- Mind the gaps. Step over an edge and you go down into the alley, losing a slice of health and your position — but a shadow-dash clears any gap in the arena, and you get a moment's grace on the lip before you drop.
- The alley cuts both ways. Knock a light enemy over an edge and it is gone for good. Heavies and warlords are far too planted to be shoved off, so the roof will not fight your hard fights for you.
- New enemy: the Eaves Stalker. No sword, just climbing claws — he paints the tile he means to land on, then crosses an entire alley in one pounce that comes down in a burst of broken tile. Step off his lane and punish the landing, or swat him out of the air mid-flight.
- The campaign climbs. Clearing wave twelve now plays a new scene taking the fight up onto the roofs, and the Storm Tengu finale is fought at his own height. Endless and co-op move up at wave thirteen too.
- Two narration lines that had been silent captions since the Burning Village landed are now spoken aloud, along with three new lines for the climb.
19 August 2026ImprovementClaude Fable 5
The edges are smooth for the first time — the game had been shipping without the anti-aliasing it thought it had — and the katana now draws the reach of its own cut.
- Jagged edges are gone. Anti-aliasing was switched on in the settings but never actually reached the screen; it does now.
- Hit-stop and slow-motion now push the bloom, drain colour toward the edges and punch the camera in, all easing back to normal afterwards.
- The katana leaves a blade ribbon tracing the arc of the cut, and the naginata sweep and boss charge have ribbons of their own.
- Shrine petals and village embers tumble as real flakes instead of flat round dots, and boss slams, acolyte bolts and Tengu gales scorch and crack the ground they land on.
- Telegraph colours, attack reach and all colliders are untouched.
20 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The shinobi has a third weapon — a kusarigama chain you wind up and let fly, with two beats and three blessings of its own.
- New weapon: the kusarigama. Hold the chain button to wind the weighted sickle overhead, release to strike. The longer you hold, the further and harder it lands — but winding slows you down, so there's a real decision with a brute walking at you.
- Its first beat is the hook: hurl the chain out and drag a foe off its feet all the way back to you, stunned and ready for the katana. Finally there's an answer to the throwers, war-drummers and storm acolytes who spend the whole fight hanging back out of reach.
- Its second beat is the sweep: a huge circling arc of chain that reaches nearly twice as far as the katana and shoves everything around you away. Pull one in, then clear the rest off.
- Brutes, shieldbearers, naginata guards and warlords are too heavy to drag — the chain bites them harder instead, so they still have to be fought the old way.
- Three new blessings only the chain uses: Iron Coil (hits harder and winds faster), Ghost Fang (the hook catches more than one foe at a time) and Falling Anchor (a dragged foe crashes down and cuts everything around it).
- Phone players get a fourth thumb button, CHAIN, on the right — hold it and let go, exactly like the keyboard.
15 August 2026HousekeepingClaude Opus 5
The physics engine this game runs on moved up a version. No gameplay was touched.
- The physics library was updated to its current release, which closes a deprecation warning the old version printed to the browser console on every single load.
- This is pure maintenance: no levels, balance, controls or content were changed, and the game's test suite passes exactly as before.
- Worth knowing: the new release changes how bouncing and ground-snapping are timed internally. Nothing was deliberately retuned, so if something feels different, that is worth telling us about.
15 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The first boss goes down a quarter sooner. Everything about how he fights is untouched.
- The Oni Warlord at campaign wave 8 has a quarter less health.
- His phase changes still land at the same points in the fight — they are measured as fractions of his health rather than fixed numbers — so the enrage and the summons arrive exactly where they always did, just sooner on the clock.
- Same attacks, same timings, same tells. The Tengu was left alone and nothing was strengthened to compensate.
14 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Act II now burns — Shinobi Storm gets a second arena, the Burning Village, with tight streets, a well at the crossroads and carts on fire.
- A whole second battleground: the Burning Village, a burnt-out village of four house blocks, a cross of narrow streets and a stone well at the centre where they meet.
- The village fights differently. Enemies can no longer close on you from every angle at once — they funnel down four street mouths, and the well, the burning handcarts, the straw bales and the fallen roof beams are all things a badly-aimed dash ends against.
- Act II of the campaign is fought there. Beat the Oni Warlord and the act break now marches you out of the shrine and down into the village, which is already alight when you arrive.
- Endless and co-op reach it too, from wave nine, so you can see the new arena without finishing Act I first.
- New artwork throughout the village: scorched cobbles, charred timber, cracked plaster storehouses, burnt thatch and tile roofs, torn stall banners, with embers rising off the fires and ash falling through them.
- The moonlit shrine is exactly as you left it — same ground, same lanterns, same feel.
3 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The campaign is now two acts and sixteen hand-built waves, ending on a brand-new boss — and you no longer have to beat it all in one sitting.
- The campaign is sixteen waves in two acts instead of eight. Every wave is hand-built, named, and there to teach you one thing — from “three strikes make a combo” all the way to “nothing here staggers.”
- A new final boss: the Storm Tengu. He hovers over the shrine and fights with four moves — a diving charge down a lane he paints on the floor, a wing-blast that owns the ground around him, a storm of iron feathers, and lightning that walks across the courtyard hunting you. He calls reinforcements out of the sky three times on the way down.
- Two new enemies. The Storm Acolyte never swings at you — he marks the flagstones you are standing on and drops lightning there a beat later, and killing him does not stop a bolt he has already called. The Oni Shieldbearer turns anything you swing at his front, so the shadow-dash stops being an escape and becomes the way in.
- Beat the Oni Warlord and the game saves your progress. “Continue · Act II” on the main menu picks the run back up with every blessing you earned, so a sixteen-wave campaign fits into two evenings.
- Fell the Warlord and a new cinematic tells you who was really behind the storm, with fresh narration and a few words from the thing itself.
- New sounds for all of it: thunder strikes, a blade turned on iron, and the beat of very large wings.
2 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Three new enemy types join the shrine, and the Oni Warlord learns two new tricks — a shoulder-charge and the power to call reinforcements mid-fight.
- A kunoichi now stalks the courtyard. She does not run at you, she vanishes in a puff of smoke and reappears at your flank — outrunning her does not work, so learn to dash straight through her.
- Naginata guards sweep a huge arc with a polearm and paint the ground they are about to cut. They commit to a direction, so get around the side and they swing at nothing.
- War-drummers never swing at you at all. They pound a beat that makes every enemy nearby faster and hit harder. Kill the drummer first.
- The Oni Warlord now lowers his shoulder and charges down a marked lane, and three times during the fight he calls in reinforcements — including the new foes. You have to clear what he calls as well as the Warlord himself to win.
- Each new enemy introduces itself by name the first time you meet it, with a hint about what beats it.
- Waves three onward are a touch busier — about one extra foe each — as the new types take their place in the rotation. Waves one and two are untouched.
- New sounds for the war drum, the polearm sweep, the smoke-step and the Warlord horn.
26 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Shinobi Storm now plays on a phone — a thumb stick, three combat buttons and a rotate prompt — with the desktop game left exactly as it was.
- Touch controls: a thumb stick appears wherever your left thumb lands, with SLASH, STAR and DASH under your right thumb and a pause button on the far side.
- Turning the phone upright now shows a rotate prompt and pauses your run, so you never lose a wave while you swivel the handset.
- Every screen now fits a sideways phone. The main menu’s Options button and the mute switch used to sit off the bottom edge where nobody could reach them, and the between-wave blessing cards ran off the screen. Both fixed.
- On-screen help switches to touch prompts the moment you play with your hands, the same way it already switched between keyboard and controller.
- The vitality bar and the control legend moved out from under the new thumb buttons, so nothing important hides behind your hands.
- Nothing about desktop play changed: same katana feel, same timings, same mouse aim, same controller support.
23 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 4.8
Added quiet, privacy-safe gameplay analytics (run starts, progress milestones, deaths, and wins) so the studio can see how players actually experience the game.
- The studio can now see how far players get in each run — start, waves cleared, deaths, and full-campaign wins — with no change to how the game looks or plays.
13 July 2026HousekeepingClaude Opus 4.8
Fixed a bug in the shared cutscene system where holding a button as a cinematic began could skip it instantly — cutscenes now play as intended.
- Fixed a bug where a button still held down from the previous screen — the one you just pressed to confirm a menu — was mistaken for a fresh press the instant a cinematic opened, skipping the whole scene before a single frame played. Intros and endings now start properly.
- The problem depended on how long you held the button: a quick tap hid it, while a normal press destroyed the scene, which is why it went unnoticed for so long. Controller players were affected most.
- Skipping and fast-forwarding still work exactly as they always did — press to advance a line, or skip the scene entirely, once the button is released and pressed again.
- Added an automated test suite around the cutscene controls so this class of bug is caught before it ever reaches a player again.
- Gameplay, visuals, audio and balance are completely untouched — this is a repair to a shared piece of the studio cinematic system, applied to every game that uses it.
10 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 4.8
Rebuilt the intro, death, and victory as real voiced camera-directed cinematics over the moonlit shrine.
- A new campaign now opens on a cinematic intro — the camera sweeps the shrine as the Oni Warlord threatens to burn it and the last shinobi draws steel, voiced by a grave narrator and the Warlord himself; fully skippable, and retries jump straight to the fight.
- Falling is now a dramatic, letterboxed Cut Down moment with a spoken line instead of a plain game-over card.
- Clearing the campaign earns a genuine victory sequence with narration: the camera circles your surviving ninja amid golden embers before the results screen.
- Added storm-thunder and a triumphant war-drum swell to underscore the new scenes.
- All cinematics honor the mute toggle and read perfectly with sound off.
10 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 4.8
Sharper katana slashes and kicked-up dust give every move more weight.
- The katana slash now draws a crisp crescent blade-swoosh that sweeps across the swing, alternating left and right through your combo — far more readable than before.
- Your ninja kicks up little puffs of dust with each running step.
- The shadow-dash now bursts a big cloud of dust and a low shockwave ring, so blinks across the courtyard really land.
- All the feel-good combat timing, damage and hitboxes are exactly as before — this is pure visual polish.
7 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 4.8
Shinobi Storm goes two-player — a couch co-op survival mode and a best-of-three versus duel, both on one screen.
- New 2 Players menu: team up in Co-op Survival against endless waves, or face off in a Versus Duel.
- Co-op gives each ninja their own life — when a partner falls they're downed, not dead, and you can revive them by reaching their side; clearing a wave revives them too.
- Versus is a best-of-three katana, shuriken and shadow-dash duel with per-fighter health bars, round pips and a winner's screen.
- Player 1 uses keyboard and mouse, Player 2 grabs a controller — a ready screen shows the setup and detects your pad live.
- A smart camera zooms to keep both ninjas on screen no matter how far apart they roam.
- Single-player Campaign and Endless play exactly as before — nothing about the solo combat feel changed.
6 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 4.8
Shinobi Storm now plays end to end on a controller - combat, menus, and a brand-new pause.
- Full gamepad support: move with the left stick or d-pad, aim with the right stick, and slash, throw shuriken, and shadow-dash from the face buttons and triggers
- Every screen is controller-friendly - the main menu, Options (adjust the volume sliders with the d-pad), the upgrade-card picks, and the game-over and victory screens all navigate with the pad
- New pause: hit Start on a controller, or Esc/P on the keyboard, to freeze the fight and resume when you are ready
- On-screen button prompts now switch between keyboard and controller automatically the moment you use one, and plugging a pad in or out shows a notice (unplugging mid-fight pauses for you)
6 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 4.8
Shinobi Storm gets a real campaign — eight waves, a towering Oni Warlord boss, and a victory finale — plus an Endless mode and a proper options menu.
- New Campaign mode: fight through eight waves and face the Oni Warlord, a massive horned boss with a ground-slam, shuriken volleys, and an enraged second wind, complete with its own health bar.
- Beat the warlord to earn a full victory sequence — the endless grind now has an ending worth chasing.
- The original infinite arena lives on as Endless mode, untouched, for high-score runs.
- New Options screen on the menu: separate master and music volume sliders and a sound on/off toggle, all remembered between sessions.
- Cleaner menus: pick your mode up front, and return to the shrine from either the victory or defeat screen.
- Two new sounds add weight to the finale: a bone-shaking warlord roar and a triumphant victory stinger.