- 🏯 Kraken - 3 September 2026
Kraken The journey from Shikoku to Kansai just became a lot more dangerous. A giant kraken has risen from the depths, attacking the ship and threatening your passage. Fire & ice Shaders for burning and frozen enemies have been improved. Skill highlighting Hovering over upgrade cards now highlights the skills affected by the upgrade. Display settings We've added some long-requested graphics settings so you can better configure the game for your setup. Changes Player attributes are now displayed in the top-left corner. Added ambient sounds throughout the game. Added fireball skill. Removed character portraits. Changed Shikoku to be the green biome. Fixed flickering damage numbers. Roadmap We practice Open Development, creating our games in public. You have access to all our builds and our entire Trello task tracking board. In return we would love to hear your advice for making the game be…
- 🏯 Kansai - 1 April 2026
Kansai It is autumn season, the fields are golden and the leaves are turning orange. The demon horde is invading Kansai, overrunning even the mighty Himeji castle. Sailing In order to get from Shikoku to Kansai, head to Tokushima harbor and board a ship heading for Wakayama. Mountain pass Along the eastern mountains of Kansai, you'll find a pass to Chubu. Changes Increased weapon limit. (4 -> 11) Limited choice cards to offer at most one skill. Weapons deal precise damage instead of a random range. Added happy / unhappy survey. Enabled graphics jobs. Increased async texture upload buffer size and time slice. Fixed sorting of damage numbers. Fixed display of curse type damage. Roadmap We practice Open Development, creating our games in public. You have access to all our builds and our entire Trello task tracking board. In return we would love to hear your advice for making the game bette…
- 🏯 Poison, curse, and confusion - 22 March 2026
Debuffs We've added poison damage over time, a curse that stacks damage until it hits, and other debuffs to the game. The confusion debuff causes enemies to lose their target and wander around aimlessly. Multi-skill upgrades We've added upgrades that affect more than a single weapon or skill. With the right combination of weapons you can make the most out of these upgrades. Multiplayer You've been bringing your friends to the playtest, which we appreciate that. To facility even more multiplayer sessions, we've added public matchmaking. We've also fixed reviving, late joining, and reconnecting after disconnect. Changes Added public matchmaking. Added poison damage over time. Added curse delayed damage. Added confused debuff. Added enraging by attacking with fire. Added marking as a skill. Added bonus crit chance to marked. Added fragmentation grenades. Added quadruple grenade Added criti…
- 🏯 Goldbergs - 18 February 2026
Goldbergs As mentioned in the previous update, we're adding upgrades that allow you to build chain reactions. We're calling them goldbergs, inspired by Rube Goldberg machines, and they now come with extra icons to describe their behavior. Changes Bleeding damage now stacks. Fixed applying upgrades too many / too few times.
- 🏯 Shadow clones - 29 January 2026
Shadow clones We're taking inspiration from popular ninja animations to bring you shadow clones. The first weapon to feature clones is the spear, where the clones form a wedge and attack in unison. Spear throw In addition to the shadow clones, the spear also received a combo finisher that involves throwing the spear and skewering enemies along the way. Spear spike Speaking of skewering, we added an instant attack to the spear: a spike that bursts out of the ground to impale enemies, much like Vlad the Impaler. Goldbergs Inspired by Rube Goldberg machines, we're adding upgrades that allow you to build insane chain reactions, each step feeding into the next until a massive attack comes out at the end. Let us know in the comments what kind of chain reactions you want to build!
- 🏯 Chubu - 24 September 2025
The second region You can now travel to Chubu, an entirely new region. Unlike Shikoku, the demon horde has already overwhelmed Chubu and turned it into burning ruins. Villages are destroyed, chasms have split across the land, creep has calcified, and Mount Fuji is spewing lava. Nevertheless, you have to make your way across. Good luck!
- 🏯 Creep infestation - 6 April 2025
Creep infestation A demonic creep infestation is spreading across Japan. It has already metastasized to multiple locations on Shikoku island. Demons are emerging from the creep's hives and tunnels. Fight back, assault the creep cluster, and defeat its heart before the creep swallows all. Creep heart The creep heart at the center of a cluster sustains the creep. Creep, hives, and tunnels will regenerate until the heart is destroyed. Destroying the heart permanently cleanses the creep cluster from the island. Weapon masteries Players can now reach mastery in handling a weapon after reaching a high level with it. Masteries modify the properties of weapons and allow them to be further upgraded. Katana Slash mastery reduces enemy armor with each hit, making enemies more vulnerable to all attacks. Hankyu Shot mastery shoots two arrows at the same time. Boss attacks The boss at 12 minutes now…
- 🏯 Multiplayer fixes - 15 March 2025
Multiplayer fixes Fixed bonus item notification showing for all players. Fixed grave spawning in the wrong place. Fixed time starting to run before the first player is done loading. Fixed projectile trails sometimes going across the screen. Fixed loot trails sometimes going across the screen. Fixed enemies sometimes going across the screen. Fixed chests icons sometimes showing the wrong upgrade. Bug fixes and Improvements Fixed skill cooldown flickering when showing cards. Fixed loot trail flickering when showing cards. Fixed synchronization between card pause and bullet time. Added icons for card/chest mode.
- 🏯 Fixed spear thrust, halberd slam, and player animation jitter - 8 March 2025
Bug fixes and Improvements Fixed Spear Thrust card missing. Fixed Halberd Slam card missing. Fixed player animation jitter at low frame rates. Fixed typo in Rolling Boulder description.
- 🏯 Rolling boulder - 11 February 2025
Rolling boulder It's time to bring heavy machinery and steamroll demons. The rolling boulder might not attack very often, but when it does, it hits hard. Checkpoints Campfires are back! They save your progress and spawn point. In your next run you start from the campfire you activated most recently, allowing you to gradually explore the entire map. We've added a tooltip that pops up when you activate a campfire. Gongs & gates Gongs and torii are back and are finally working as intended. Once activated, you'll be faced with a tough boss and additional mobs. A reward awaits for those who can defeat the boss. We've added a tooltip here as well. Bug fixes and Improvements Improved visibility of boss attack telegraphing Campfires no longer reset during a run Gongs and gates no longer reset during a run
- 🏯 Spring cleaning - 6 February 2025
Your feedback 📢 We've made some changes based on your feedback. Most importantly, we've removed Tutorial Mode entirely and replaced it with a choice between upgrade cards and upgrade chests. Most of you prefer cards, so we made that the default. 📢 We've also removed some confusing parts of the game that weren't fully implemented yet: Removed difficulty selection 📢 Removed gong trigger 📢 Removed campfire trigger 📢 Removed vendors 📢 We're grateful for every bit of feedback that we receive. Thank you for helping us making the game better! Fixes and changes Minimap more detailed Minimap zoom buttons now bound to RB/LB Improved blizzard and meteor descriptions Attack damage renamed to damage Attack speed renamed to cooldown Cooldown icon now blue Added space key binding to pick choice cards Fixed picking choice cards while menu is open Fixed choice cards losing focus when opening and c…
- 🏯 Minimap, more boss fights and weapons - 22 January 2025
Minimap We've been working on adding a minimap that will not only display the geography of any explored area, but also indicate the location of unopened chests, bosses, gongs and torii gates, merchants and your fallen allies. Zoom in and out to see what areas of the map are yet to be explored! Weapons Two new weapons come with this update, Meteor and Blizzard. Call upon nature's wrath and shower enemies with fire and ice, burning them to crisp or freezing them in place. Boss Behaviours Two additional boss behaviours have been added, one casting multiple small ranged attacks, and another that will test what you have learned in previous boss fights, with an added twist. Bug fixes and Improvements Added boss charging visual effect Improved telegraphing and damage visuals of bosses Fixed charge boss sometimes not charging when the player gets close to the boss Fixed charge boss sometimes te…
- 🏯 Boss fights, spear, and halberd - 7 December 2024
Boss fights We've been working on boss fights behind the scenes. This update contains the first two behaviors our bosses can have, melee area attacks and charge attacks. Of course all boss attacks are clearly telegraphed, giving you time to run to safety. We're always looking for additional behaviors. Let us know in the comments if there is something you would like us to add. Weapons This update also brings two additional melee weapons for the samurai. No samurai game would be complete without katana, yari, and naginata. Spear thrust: a long range melee attack that can reach half-way across the screen. Halberd slam: slams the ground to create a huge damage area, pushing enemies outward. Bug fixes and improvements Added Steam Timeline integration. Star pickup now gives bonus attack speed, move speed, armor, or loot range for a limited amount of time. 📢 Added difficulty selection. We're…
- 🏯 Lightning balance - 22 November 2024
As many of you have noticed, our lightning character Raijin had some extremely overpowered attacks, especially the lightning aura. Thank you all for alerting us via the in-game feedback form and on our forums. The lightning aura and lightning ball were not supposed to ship. What you saw was the raw form we implement new weapons in before we balance them to the rest of the game. Sorry to everyone who had a bad play experience because of this! At the same time, it was actually good that this happened. We practice Open Development, creating our games in public. You have access to all our builds, mistakes, and failures. You see us slip, fall, and get up again. Major parts of the game are still missing, and the existing features are a work in progress. We are ashamed to show the game before it is polished, but it is crucial to do so anyway. Only through continuous iteration based on your fee…
- 🏯 Cat! - 15 November 2024
We've added three new weapons for you to find. Grenade 💣 Shuriken Glaives that bounce between enemies Claw swipe More permanent upgrades are coming back: Armor Health Loot magnet range Attack speed As always, you can unlock them by leveling up your characters and skills, and surviving for a long time. Bugs smashed: Fixed projectile trails. Fixed unique shop nodes not becoming red when unaffordable. Fixed unique shop showing sashimono when locked. Fixed applying passive damage upgrades on spawn. Fixed encirclement enemies getting stuck Fixed blood visualizer out-of-bounds warning. Fixed dead enemies getting destroyed before the end of the frame. Fixed magnetized loot getting destroyed before the end of the frame. Fixed yumi shot and hankyu shot arrows spawning inside the player. Fixed yumi snipe arrow clipping into player character. Fixed shuriken glaives spawning inside player. Fixed s…
- 🏯 Astral upgrades - 8 November 2024
Permanent progression upgrades are back! And not just the generic ones, but also unique upgrade like: life-steal for the katana an additional skill slot a new powerful yumi attack 🏹 You can unlock them by leveling up your characters and skills, and surviving for a long time. Additionally we've decluttered the villages a bit, making them easier to navigate, and fixed lots of small issues.
- 🏯 Lightning strikes - 5 October 2024
Today's shocking update comes with a new playable electrifying character and three new weapons. Chain lightning: jumps between enemies, dealing damage and stun. Fork lightning: targets multiple enemies at the same time. Lightning strike: hits a random enemy, can explode.⚡ We also fixed the blurry fonts in menus and made compass arrows to chests and other players more noticeable.
- 🏯 Tutorial mode - 20 September 2024
The most common feedback we've received from you, our players, is that upgrade choices are difficult to understand. Today we have good news for you. 😊 We have upgrade choice cards now, telling you what each upgrade does. The game pauses until you make your choice. We're calling this tutorial mode. Tutorial mode is only available when playing solo. In multiplayer mode we keep spawning the upgrades as chests into the world to keep the flow of the game going. Let us know in the comments below what you think about tutorial mode! ❤️
- 🏯 Dark Samurai @ Raid Survivors Festival - 19 September 2024
We're happy to announce that Dark Samurai is part of the Raid Survivors Festival on Steam! The event is a celebration of Bullet Heaven games, featuring many great titles from talented developers. Check it out! Playtest If you're a survivors-like expert, make sure to sign up for our playtest. Let us know which features of other games you want to see in our game. We want to hear your feedback! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2574640/Dark_Samurai/
- 🏯 Weapons, weapons, weapons! - 16 September 2024
Weapons We've completely overhauled the weapon system. You can now hold and upgrade up to four weapons at any time and find the combination that works best for you. 🏹 We've also added new weapons, including Kunai: Throwing knifes that fly in the movement direction. Hankyu Shot: A smaller bow that can fire arrows faster. Shuriken Ring: Throws shuriken that orbit around you. Unpicked weapon chests now act as a soft ban on that weapon. If you don't like a weapon, leave its chests on the ground and it won't appear again in the run. Visuals In some locations there now is a thin layer of fog on the ground. Just like the water, the fog reacts to your movement and your weapons. The player character now automatically faces the nearest enemy. This aligns better with weapons that automatically target the nearest enemy, like the katana slash and the hankyu shot. You can still manually override the…
