Katana Zero is part of the growing indie genre of stylish action games where blood gushes by the bucket loads and you can only get hit once. It is a fast paced pixel art tour-de-force that presents puzzle rooms full of baddies and gives you a set of rock-paper-scissor styled tools to make your way forward. This is a game I started recently and was probably going to put down as it wasn't really doing anything all that special until about three levels in. The core conceit here is that you are taking drugs that give you some degree of prescience so when you're tackling stages you're in a "planning" state. This lets the game play around with the idea of death in a way reminiscent of how in the Sands of Time the Prince would say "thats not how that happened" anytime you missed a jump. At the surface this seems to be just another hyper violent one-of-those with a fancy looking bullet-time mechanic. What is fascinating is how when you get deeper into the story the gameplay mechanic of "rewinding" time starts to heavily seep into the narrative. Suddenly you are faced with the prospect of an unreliable narrator as the story glitches, rewinds and resets in very curious twist and turns. Eventually the whole thing begins to fly off the rails in truly bizarre ways that you wouldn't expect employing both gameplay and narrative to emphasize the time dilation shenanigans. There is for instance a cutscene where you get to make some seemingly benign dialog choices that gets recontextualized through the time glitching in a very smart way that I didn't see coming.

Gameplay wise Katana Zero keeps up for the most part. There is just enough variety to the stages to keep the basic room clearing action from getting too stale. There are a few curve balls that make some of the areas a blast to get through and the challenge similarly never gets too out of hand - although for those with good reflexes there is a speedrun mode. My only real complaint is that Katana Zero quite literally ends on a big To Be Continued. The main programmer has announced that they are hard at work on a free DLC that is supposed to be roughly half the length of the full game (so around 2hrs I reckon) that I am hoping is going to tie up the loose ends - and there are many. It seems that just as you're reaching some crescendo of the final act, the game throws even more twists and characters your way and then just rolls the credits. Still if you have Game Pass this is a really fun 4hr ride that I would recommend action fans to try out. I remember the Quick Look didn't really do much for me and even the beginning stages sort of made me dismiss offhand, but there is more to it than one would expect. The gameplay is fast and fluid and the art is really great as well.

So I'm writing this as a sort of community PSA: I think this game sort of slipped through the cracks but is worth giving a shot as there is definitely more to it than meets the eye.

I bought this a year ago, played the first two levels, thought "that's cool" and put it down. I picked it back up recently and kept going with it.

Holy shit, this game went places I REALLY didn't expect. I strongly recommend spending an afternoon or two with this, it's excellent! Supposedly the devs are working on a free DLC sequel but that hasn't released.

This game is great. Thanks to Gamepass I checked it out.

@justin258: Yah that story gets really wild I was very surprised because it seemed like such a by the numbers affair at first.

I only played two levels as well. It was so, so, so Hotline Miami that I instead opted to replay Hotline Miami 2 instead. The hyper-violent lone wolf living in an apartment unreliable narrator in an achronological story was a little too "inspired by." Knowing that the story goes places though, it makes me want to get back in, especially if it's only a few hours long.

This is mostly why I shrugged and put it down a year ago. That was a mistake.

It's not that this is some insane life-changing amazing story that flew under a lot of people's radar... but I thought the story told and the way it's presented is really, really well-done and I've spent some time thinking about it afterwards. I'll almost certainly replay it at some point.

Also needs to be said that the gameplay also does different stuff than Hotline Miami. I think they did a lot of cool stuff with the whole time-rewind motif the game is going with.

I wonder when that free DLC is coming, it's starting to feel like if Asura's Wrath never got the DLC.

@retris: I would say that Hotline Miami is a bit more free-form than Katana Zero. In Hotline Miami you can pick up a variety of different weapons, use doors in the environment and it's a lot more edge of your seat. Katana starts you off with a basic set of abilities and these don't change throughout the entire game. You are always working within the confines of counter, roll, throw or slow down time - which is fine because that adds a clockwork rhythm to a lot of the encounters, but it also means that each room has a more-or-less correct way to solve it.

@humanity: Yup, that too. For me that was actually a plus, since I definitely played Hotline Miamis as puzzle-games (which is also why I wasn't as hot on Hotline Miami 2).

Another game I was sort of reminded by was Gunpoint, although that game was way more stealthy than Katana Zero.

I actually just played and finished this last week on Switch. When it was first doing the rounds I was like "oh cool Devolver game that's a side-scrolling Hotline Miami. I'll get around to it". I never once heard about the bonkers storyline that unfolds within. It's not the most amazing writing but it's so effective and just really unexpected. I loved it!

I also really love that ending where you can choose to die and you just get the end credits. I really wasn't expecting that and almost considered putting the game down and just accepting that as the canonical end.

I agree! Definitely give it a look if you like those action games. It's nice and short too. Took me roughly 5 hours.