Planned Release Date: January 2027

About This Game

Five warlords signed a pact in cursed ink. One shinobi survived it.
Inkblade is a stealth hack-and-slash set in feudal Japan. You are Kage, the scribe who ground the ink for the Black Covenant and watched his own lord die for refusing to sign it. Slip into each warlord's castle by moonlight, climb it floor by floor, and cut him down at the summit. Then take his province on the war map, where every castle you hold grows your clan's army.



Every raid is a new fortress, built across five procedural floors: the outer grounds, the garden, the palace halls, the keep and the summit.

• Stay unseen. Guards walk their patrols with vision cones and growing suspicion. Drop from the rafters, silence them and vanish in smoke.
  
• Or don't. Leave a body where it can be found and a runner will ring the bell. The castle locks down, and the exit stays barred while anyone is still hunting you.
  
• Know the garrison. Archers watch from the walls, guard dogs run you down, a key carrier holds the way out and geisha heal the wounded.
  
• Ghost a floor for a bigger reward, take on side quests for extra troops, and choose a blessing between floors to shape the climb.

When the bell rings, draw steel. Sword combat that rewards nerve over button-mashing.

• Combos: three-hit strings, heavy strikes, dash slashes, air combos and plunging slams from above.
  
• Flash lunge: dash through a line of enemies and watch the delayed cuts land behind you.
  
• Block and parry: steel rings, sparks fly and both fighters are driven apart. Time it right for a parry.
  
• Finishers: break an enemy's posture for a brutal finisher, or take his head clean off.
  
• Shinobi tools: kunai, smoke, caltrops and a grapple to the rafters.
  
• Use the castle: topple lanterns into fires and knock guards into the ponds.

Kage is a Black shinobi in feudal Japan, told with a 1970s grindhouse swagger. The castles, the lords and the history play it straight; Kage talks back. He's cool, unhurried and funny under pressure, with 82 voiced one-liners for 24 different moments of a raid, while the lords and their courts speak Japanese with English subtitles.
"Okay, okay. Plan B. Plan B is violence."
Strong language and the commentary itself can each be switched off.



Five names on the scroll. Each lord rules a cursed castle, and each fight is framed by in-engine cutscenes.

• Akagane Gendō, the Oni Lord: his granaries are full; his villages are empty.
  
• Minase Sadamori, the Drowned Daimyō: he broke a dam to drown a valley, and the river took him too.
  
• Kumoi Tadaoki, the Spider Shōgun: waiting at the top of his web.
  
• Lady Tamamo, the Nine-Tailed Regent: she rules from behind her masks.
  
• The Ink Sovereign: Bokuō, who wrote the Covenant.

Between raids, rival clans fight over a 3D hex map of sixteen provinces.

• Career: a season-long war against rival houses, each with its own playstyle and skill. Fortify your holdings, put down revolts, collect bounties and use the underdog bonus to come back from behind. Win by domination, or by holding the most land when the season ends.
  
• Survival (Shura-dō): castle after castle, each one harder, until you fall.
  
• Leaderboards: six Steam leaderboards, from Survival score to silent kills and ghosted floors.
  
• Practice raid and a brush-painted comic tutorial.

• Procedural castles: five floors per raid, never the same fortress twice
  
• Stealth with vision cones, suspicion, alarms, lockdowns and key carriers
  
• Fast, weighty sword combat with parries, posture breaks and finishers
  
• Five cursed lords, each with their own castle, retinue and story
  
• Kage, fully voiced in English; the lords and their courts in Japanese
  
• Career campaign for 16 provinces, plus Survival mode with Steam leaderboards
  
• Full controller support, with text sized for Steam Deck

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

InkBlade uses generative AI tools during development to assist artists in the pre-visualization: character and creature portraits, and some marketing images and trailer animation. All generated assets are selected, edited, composited and integrated by the Revenant Machine team before they ship. Game design, code, writing and card rules are authored by hand. The game does not generate any content with AI while you play.

Mature Content Description

The developers describe the content like this:

Your player avatar can kill enemies with sword