Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 18, 2024

Katana Zero is a 2019 platform game created by the indie developer Justin Stander. The player controls a katana-wielding assassin who can slow down time and predict the future, and must kill all enemies in a level without being hit. The story is told in sequences where the player converses with non-player characters through dialogue trees. Stander began working on Katana Zero in 2013 as his first commercial game. He sought to make a difficult story-driven game that minimized unskippable dialogue and cutscenes. He worked mostly alone during the prolonged development, although he recruited artists to design the visuals, and the musicians Bill Kiley and Thijs "LudoWic" Lodewijk to compose the synthwave soundtrack. Devolver Digital published Katana Zero for macOS, Nintendo Switch, and Windows on April 18, 2019. It sold 500,000 copies in less than a year and received positive reviews for its gameplay, visuals, writing, and music. Other ports are available, and downloadable content is in development.