11 September 2026HousekeepingClaude Opus 5
The biggest file in the game was reorganised into readable pieces, with the game's first automated test suite to keep it honest — the game itself plays exactly as before.
- The enemy code, which had grown into one enormous file, is now split into clear per-enemy pieces. Every line was moved unchanged, so all eight enemy types and all three bosses behave precisely as they did.
- Added the game's first automated tests, which check that every enemy still exists, that all the tuning numbers are untouched, that ducking still slips you under attacks, and that every level holds exactly the enemies it always held.
- Upgraded the 3D graphics library to the studio's current version. Shadow edges are a touch crisper as a result; nothing else about the look changed.
- No gameplay, balance, controls or content were altered in any way. This was a tidy-up under the hood.
29 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Act four, "Above the Storm" — four new levels, a storm that hunts you, and the campaign's last stretch to the Storm Keep.
- Four new levels take the campaign from twelve to sixteen: The Chimney Stair, The Lightning Road, The Cloud Sea and The Thunderhead, the climb out of the foundry and up to the keep's own foundations.
- The storm is now a hazard in its own right. Lightning rods stand on the decks, and when one lights up you cannot duck it and you cannot jump it — the only answer is to not be standing there. The warning is long and it is drawn on the ground beside you.
- The Cloud Sea breaks out above the weather into the only daylight in the game: three long platform bridges over open sky, the widest crossings anywhere in the campaign, worked by kite riders with all the room they want.
- Storm Keep is still the last level and the Storm Shogun still ends the story. Saves carry across untouched — if you were partway through, Continue picks up exactly where it left off, and if you had already beaten him, the keep stays yours.
- New storm sound throughout: rods drawing a charge, strikes landing on iron, wind and a far-off shrine bell across the sky bridges. The opening narration was re-cut to name the roads you actually travel now.
23 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The duck gate that trapped you is fixed, ducking now looks like a real shinobi slide, and two new enemies close out the roster at eight.
- Fixed a trap in Grove of Whispers: after crawling under the fallen gate there was no room to stand back up before the crates, and you could get stuck there for good. The gate and the crates have been moved apart, and one held jump vaults the stack cleanly out of the crawl.
- Ducking is a proper slide now. Moving, you drop into a low shinobi slide with a lead leg out, a hand skimming the ground, a trailing scarf and a spray of grit; standing still under a gate, you settle onto one knee instead.
- The whole ninja has been rebuilt with rounder, jointed limbs — real elbows, knees and ankles, a hooded head, wrapped forearms and shins, and a longer scarf that trails behind you. Every enemy and all three bosses got the same upgrade.
- New enemy, the Lanternbearer: a rival drifting overhead under a burning paper lantern who marks the ground beneath you and sets it alight. The fire stays lit and it outlives him, so keep moving — and think twice before cutting him down while standing underneath.
- New enemy, the Kagemusha: your own shadow, in your own colours, fighting with your own kit. It shadow-dashes, it double-jumps after you onto ledges, and it turns your blade aside. Bait its guard, wait for it to drop, then cut — it can never block two swings in a row.
- Both new enemies appear across the back half of the campaign, from Lantern Alleys through to Storm Keep.
- Every other level, all three bosses and every jump timing are untouched.
21 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Act three finally has a boss — the Foundry Oni, the smith who forged the Storm Shogun's armour, waiting on the floor of his own hall.
- The Foundry Oni now guards the end of The Oni's Forge, a huge horned smith with a forge maul and armour glowing at the seams. He is the third boss of the campaign.
- His hammer slam sends two ridges of white-hot, buckled floor racing out along the deck. They are ankle high, so crouching will not save you — this is the one attack in the game you have to jump.
- The crucible above the arena tips and drops a curtain of molten iron. The safe gaps are marked in blue a beat before it falls, and one is never where you are already standing, so every pour costs you a run. He narrows it down to a single gap once he is hurt.
- Get too close and he answers with a flat hammer sweep. In his last third he slams twice in a row and calls his forge hands in off the line.
- New sound throughout the fight — his bellow, the hammer coming up, the slam, the ridges running out, the crucible chain, and the forge finally going cold — plus two spoken lines when the doors shut behind you.
- The arena is properly sealed now: nothing else on the level can wander into the fight while you are dodging.
- Every other level, both other bosses and all jump timings are untouched.
19 August 2026ImprovementClaude Fable 5
Smooth edges at last, weather with weight, and a run that shakes and bleeds red when you take a hit.
- Jagged edges are fixed — anti-aliasing was configured but never actually reaching the screen, the same fault its sister game had.
- Each biome now has its own glow strength, and the light pulses on a boss defeat, a retry, a lightning strike, a level completion and a gate opening.
- Taking damage shakes the camera and bleeds red in from the edges — armed only on a real loss of health, so it never lies.
- Landing dust, ring and shake now scale with how far you actually fell.
- Platforms, walls, arch beams, decks, roofs and the torii catch shadows, and a contact shadow follows you along whatever you are standing over.
- Petals, fireflies and embers are soft glowing sprites that flicker individually; rain falls as velocity-streaked lines.
- Levels, jump feel and every hitbox are untouched.
16 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Act 3, “The Iron Foundry” — four new levels inside the keep’s arsenal, where the floor moves and the hammers don’t wait for you.
- Four brand-new levels take the campaign to twelve: The Slag Gate, The Stamping Line, The Bellows Deep and The Oni’s Forge, set in a foundry lit only by its own blast furnaces.
- The floor is no longer on your side. Casting lines run with you or against you, and standing still is now a decision the conveyor makes for you.
- Drop stamps come down on their own timer and stop at exactly crouch height, so you either run the gap while they’re up or duck and crawl under them. Watch for the glow and listen for the ratchet.
- Molten iron replaces the flood. There is no wading in a foundry — the pours are crossed on walkways or not at all.
- Storm Keep is still the last level and the ending is still the ending. If you had a saved campaign, it carries straight over and picks up exactly where it should; a finished campaign keeps everything it earned.
- Level select is now a two-column list, so twelve levels still fit on screen.
11 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Two new enemies join the clan's ranks — a shield-bearing footsoldier you have to get behind, and something that rides the bamboo and drops on anyone who stands still.
- The Ashigaru carries a heavy pavise and your katana simply rings off the front of it. Dash straight through him and cut his back, throw a shuriken over the rim from mid-air, drop an overhead cut from a jump, or bait his shield bash and strike while his guard is down.
- Hack at that shield long enough and it splits apart and falls off him — he keeps coming, faster and angrier, with nothing left to hide behind.
- The Clinger rides a bamboo column above the road, slides down to meet you, and drops feet-first on anyone who stops underneath. Keep running and it lands behind you. Ducking will not save you.
- Once it's down it scuttles along the deck after you for a few seconds before climbing back up. A shuriken will take it off the pole before it ever commits.
- Both turn up across almost the whole campaign: the Clinger first appears in the Grove of Whispers, the Ashigaru on the rooftops at dusk — and one of them joins the gate line on the Drowned Road, so that exit will not open until you work out how to get past a shield.
- Four new sounds: the clang of steel on a shield, the crack of one breaking, the rattle and hiss from overhead, and the whump of something heavy landing on the boards.
5 August 2026ImprovementClaude Sonnet 5
Act 2 gets its boss fight — the Tide Priest, guarding the Sunken Shrine.
- The Sunken Shrine's empty final courtyard is now a real boss arena: face the Tide Priest before the road to Storm Keep opens.
- Phase one floods the ground beneath your feet — jump to the platforms or go under.
- Phase two sends a wave of water sweeping the whole courtyard — duck to let it pass over you.
- In his final phase he keeps both attacks coming and calls in reinforcements.
- New voice lines and sound effects give the Tide Priest his own presence, distinct from the Storm Shogun.
29 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Act 2 opens the flooded river valley — three new levels — and mashing the jump button finally works the way you would expect.
- Three new levels open a whole new act, The Drowned Road: a rain-flooded river valley with a tide that rises and falls, sagging rope bridges, and half-sunken shrine gates to crawl under.
- The river is a real threat now. Shallow floodwater sweeps you off the road when the tide comes in, and the deep channels will drown you outright, so watch the water line and time your run.
- A mashed double jump now goes higher than a single jump instead of lower. Panic-tapping the button gets you up and over things; timing it at the top of your jump still gets you highest of all.
- The opening narration no longer promises five roads to the Shogun’s gate — there are more of them now. The first tutorial crate stack is also slightly lower, so players who mash rather than hold no longer get stuck at the level that exists to teach the double jump.
- Fixed a ledge early in Lantern Alleys that was too high to reach with a single jump.
- Your progress carries over. The new act slots in before the Storm Keep, and anyone who already beat the game keeps access to every level.
27 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
You can finally reach the platforms, you can duck, and you can read your health at a glance.
- Fixed the jump. It reaches higher, a quick tap no longer produces a useless hop, and mashing the button now gives you far more of a double jump instead of wasting it.
- Every stage first platform is now within reach of a single jump, and the game actually teaches you the rest: level one opens with a safe practice run that shows you the jump, the double jump, the duck and the shadow dash before anything can hurt you.
- New move: DUCK. Hold down to drop into a crouch at half your height, crawl under low gateways and slip beneath swinging logs and chest-high darts. Nine spots across the campaign now answer to it.
- Swinging logs now make a sound as they come at you, so you get a warning instead of a surprise.
- The heads-up display was rebuilt: bigger, clearer hearts that pulse when you take a hit and stay countable on a phone screen, and the full control list now lives on the pause menu.
26 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Run Shinobi Run is now playable on a phone — a thumb stick, four action buttons and a landscape prompt, with nothing about the keyboard or controller game changed.
- Play the whole campaign on a phone: drag anywhere in the lower screen to run, and tap JUMP, SLASH, DASH or the shuriken button with your right thumb.
- Hold the stick down and tap JUMP to drop through a wooden platform, exactly as down + SPACE always did.
- Turn the phone sideways and the game says so, then gets out of the way; the title, level select and pause menus now fit a phone screen instead of running off both edges.
- The on-screen hints follow whatever you last touched — thumb, keyboard or pad — and swap live, no setting.
25 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Enemies stopped respecting platforms — they leap the gaps after you, ride the wind above you, and now hold every level exit shut until you put them down.
- Rival ninja now leap across gaps to chase you. Standing on the next platform is no longer safe — watch for the crouch, because that is your only warning.
- New enemy: the kite rider. He circles above you, flares his paper wings, then dives straight through wherever you are standing. Platforms mean nothing to him, but one clean hit brings him down.
- New enemy: the gate captain. Levels one to four no longer end on an open gate — a horned lieutenant with five hearts and a two-hit combo now wards the exit shut, with an escort at his side. Cut them both down and the gate opens.
- Extra hearts placed before each gate duel so you can go into the fight with something in the tank.
- Pausing, opening Options, then pressing Escape now takes you back to the pause menu instead of dropping you straight into the fight. Escape also backs out of menus on the title screen.
- The on-screen control line now mentions P for pause and M for mute.
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.
- Run Shinobi Run now quietly reports its own progress — where players start, which levels they clear, where they fall, and when they outrun the storm — so the studio can see how far people get and tune the campaign.
22 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 4.8
Fixed the Storm Shogun retry — dying to the boss no longer strands you outside the arena, and the arena you are locked into is finally something you can see.
- Dying to the Storm Shogun now puts you straight back into his arena instead of leaving you stuck outside a wall you cannot get past
- The Shogun is restored to full health on every retry and gives you a moment to land, so each attempt is a clean fight instead of a war of attrition
- Every retry also restocks your shuriken, so you are never sent back in empty-handed
- The arena now seals behind you with a visible storm ward that slams up when the fight starts and dissolves when the Shogun falls — no more invisible walls
- Polish pass: P pauses and resumes, Start and B both close the pause menu (B no longer dumps you to the main menu), the master volume slider works on a controller, the victory sting plays over the ending, and the title screen tracks how many times you have cleared the storm
21 July 2026ImprovementClaude Fable 5
Combat feel overhaul and a proper opening scene, straight from the owner's first playtest notes.
- The katana now cuts horizontally — a flat sweeping slash into the scene instead of a vertical chop, alternating forehand and backhand
- Sword hits land with real impact: a freeze-frame, screen shake, a white flash on the enemy, sparks flying along the cut and enemies knocked back or sent tumbling
- Swinging the sword now steps the shinobi forward slightly, giving each cut weight
- The opening cinematic now shows the shinobi throughout — kneeling in the bamboo, rising to his feet and drawing the blade as the title appears (before, the platform could appear empty)
- Fixed a rare bug where dying mid-swing froze the sword arm after respawn