- Lord of Kensai game page is now up - 8 July 2026
Good morning all!A quick note to say that we have not forgotten the next Shinobi Rising, but in the meantime, a separate team in India has been working on our first big game title - Lord of Kensai.Its a live service free to play city builder, that is starting out as a paid early access for a short time whlie we perfect simulation logic and gameplay.Please join us here:
- Shinobi Rising 2 - Plans, timeline and how it matters to you - 9 July 2025
Greetings community!As I have mentioned before, WRKS Games was going through trying times while we were finalizing and releasing Shinobi Rising. The result of this were that the game did not meet our ambition for this and also did not land well with players. I have always felt that the situation low balled what this could have been and wanted to wait for a time to figure out how to respond to it.Since then, and our consequential move to Singapore that we orchestrated, we are back in good swing and growing rapidly with multiple new releases across tabletop games and video games. However, our focus is not Steam for those.After much pondering on what to do and a follow up discussion with Valve, the plan is now to forge ahead with Shinobi Rising 2 (name not yet confirmed). We are going to up the budget and the ambition and do a real co-op and single player version of this game the way it wa…
- Shinobi Rising Status Update - 29 April 2025
Good morning community As you may have noticed from our last update in 2023, after the launch of this game and realising that we had not hit our goals or vision for this game - a major update was announced. Soon after that, due to the volatility of the game industry being what it was then, we were forced to close down the London team that worked on this game. We have survived the madness of the game industry over the last few years due to a strong tabletop game production pipeline in the game company. We have rebuilt the game dev team now and the company has relocated to Singapore and is now back in action and with several new games under development for PC/Console and mobile. Shinobi Rising is being reviewed to find a way to bring back into our development pipeline as either a major new update to this game or a full remastered version that will add all the missing elements we wanted fr…
- Publisher changes, RTX and DLSS additions and more! - 12 October 2023
Good afternoon community! Due to the ongoing volatility of the game industry sadly, W.R.K.S Games has shuttered its development and publishing operations as a company as of October 1st. We are not in dire straits, but we do think that the mid-market of the game industry is no longer viable for self-funded self-published indies in the current and near-term future of the industry. All the full-time staff was outplaced to new jobs and the shutdown is graceful. W.R.K.S Games is going to continue to exist as a company that licenses its IP to third parties to continue development and fan engagement. For video games like Shinobi Rising, as the original Founder of W.R.K.S Games, I will own the license to continue the development of the games on my own label Kos Games and you will see this reflected on the Steam page as of now. The game will continue its development and the fan base will continu…
- Major Update In the Works - 5 October 2023
Good morning community! Apologies to start with, for the long radio silence. I am having a turbulent time these days between work and a home move that is hitting more hurdles than expected. I have been listening to the feedback I have been getting on Steam, as well as our Korea and Japan launch that has now concluded. I see that the actual experience of the game fell short of what I intended for this at the launch version of the game. In the last few months I have been poking around when possible to see areas of improvement and taking in feedback and there is now clarity on the path ahead. A very comprehensive overhaul and update to the game is now afoot and I hope to complete by December end. I will be updating locomotion and movement, combat, adding new combat options, adding verticality, and adding more story and investigation elements into the game. I will also be overhauling the ga…
- Steam Summer Sale is on - 50% discount on Shinobi Rising - 29 June 2023
The Steam Summer Sale is afoot and we are participating! Get Shinobi Rising for a one-time only 50% discount on Steam now. Check out our new Summer Sale trailer below. Enjoy!
- Hotfix Patch 1.12 - The Visibility Fix - 16 June 2023
Good afternoon all Updated Buildings now correctly fade out when the camera is blocked by them. Trees are still pending the same treatment, but buildings were the main issue. This mainly applies to people playing with controllers.
- Patch Notes for Update 1.1: The Community Feedback Patch - 4 June 2023
Good morning all! Happy Sunday to the community and welcome to Update 1.1: The Community Feedback Patch Our goal with this patch is to polish the launch build and improve the core gaming experience. No new features were added in this patch, but the overall game experience should now feel more polished, less random weirdness occurring, and better paced. Nearly all the changes today are from community and player feedback - so thank you for that! Control System The primary recommended method for playing the game continues to be a mouse and keyboard. Controller functionality is fully implemented and improved in this patch. In the controller version, the camera is fixed. Camera rotation or "look around" has been implemented but when you move the camera will realign to its designated location. To not set the camera would be a tad weird for a top-down angle game. A note on Game Difficulty The…
- Shinobi Rising : the 2023 roadmap - 22 May 2023
Good afternoon all! Here is the roadmap for the year for continued development: June 2023 - Patch 1.1: The community feedback patch We have had some excellent feedback from curators, reviewers, and gamers. Much of the feedback contained common themes about better difficulty management for the game and feedback on the level design. I felt the quality of the feedback loops in May were things that led to significant improvement ideas. We will be incorporating much of this in this patch. The goal is not to add new content but to refine and polish further what is already there. September 2023 - Patch 2.0: The Killer Among the Reeds The first content patch launches, free to all that own the game. This patch introduces the second chapter in the series featuring Jin the Shinobi. This time, an outdoor mission to attack a convoy of illicit goods making their way across open land to their destinat…
- Patch 1.1 - The Quality of LIfe Patch - 3 May 2023
Good afternoon all! Thank you for the quick feedback looks following the launch last week. We have managed to sort out a patch relatively fast to address the major quality of life issues that people wanted, here is the full patch notes: Features Full Controller Support - more improvements are still needed on this. Everything works with a controller, however, due to the fact that the character and the camera operate independently - in parts of the map this still causes issues. We will continue to iterate on that in upcoming patches. Mouse and Keyboard still is the most seamless way to play the game for now. Steam Deck Support - Now that controller support is implemented, you can play on a Steam Deck. Steam Cloud Saves - Steam now saves your save game to the cloud. New difficulty levels added - We noticed that many people were having difficulty getting past the tutorial mini-boss. Three d…
- Launch, Hype and the Your First Run of the Game - 25 April 2023
Good morning all! We are there at last. Shinobi Rising launches at 5pm UK time today and whew. The game has received quite a bit of hype and coverage on PR and YouTube. Before you take your first crack at the game keep this in mind: Getting Started The game is hard. It is designed to be. Death is punishing but a necessary learning experience. Do NOT try to rush through the game at speed, you will get destroyed. This is supposed to be a Shinobi simulation, giving you a real ninja experience as your stealth into unknown territory. Tread softly. Reviews and Bugs The game features a lot of randomization and AI - to give you replayability and a challenge. This means we cannot test out every combo or situation in the game. This is a polished completed experience, but that does not mean you will not encounter unique issues. The review system on Steam is not a bug reporting tool, We have create…
- Shinobi Rising Release and Post Launch Plans - 24 April 2023
Good afternoon all! Shinobi Rising will release tomorrow at the following times: UK: 5 pm CET: 4 pm Mountain Time: 10 am Central Time: 11am Pacific Time: 12 noon Beijing: Midnight Japan : 1 am Following the launch, I will give it a week to see the first feedback round from players on how everyone is taking it and the reveal of any bugs or issues we may have missed in QA and Testing. In the first week of May, we will do the first post-launch patch to address any issues if any are found. In the last week of May, the Game+ mode will be released with Steam achievements and game feature updates. I will detail what will be available in that first free content patch a couple of weeks before launch. Enjoy the game, and looking forward to the feedback!
- The Great Gameplay Reveal is Here! - 13 April 2023
Good morning all! Enjoy a 9min gameplay trailer of the game.
- Exclusive Early Access to Previews on Discord - 31 March 2023
Greetings community! We are now 20 days away from launching and counting. During the next 3 weeks leading to the launch, exclusive early access previews/screenshots will be provided on our Discord. You can join us here WRKS Games Discord There is a nice following and wishlist building for the game on Steam and I am pleased to see the interest since I was building this as a solo side project last year in my free time while the rest of the team was working on our more significant releases for this year. I am on Discord all the time and happy to answer any questions that you might have about it. See you there! best regards Kosala "Kos" Ubayasekara Founder and CEO WRKS Games
- New Video and Screenshots Added - 18 March 2023
Happy Weekend All! I have added a few new screenshots and a video of basic combat in the game to the store page. Hope you enjoy this first beta preview of the game in action. More coming regularly now till the April 20th launch date! Enjoy!
