Seven Years On, the Katana ZERO DLC Has Grown Into a Sequel

Katana ZERO characters on a rooftop overlooking the city at night

Justin Stander, founder of Askiisoft, posted on X on October 22, 2026 that he is still working on the Katana ZERO DLC. In his words, the team "made it bigger": the expansion is now the size of a full sequel and comes with a soundtrack of more than 30 new songs. There is still no release date.

A teaser with very little action

The post came with a 17-second gameplay clip. Nothing much happens in it: the camera holds on a calm jungle scene by a stream. What matters is that this location does not exist in the original game, which suggests real new content rather than another promise. Stander added that more updates are coming, without giving a timeline.

How a DLC turned into a sequel

The expansion was first announced in April 2019, the same month Katana ZERO launched. Every check-in since then has made it larger:

Date	What the developer said
April 2019	DLC announced for owners of the base game
February 2020	Scope tripled compared with the original plan
March 2021	Longer than half the base game, closer to "Katana 1.5" than a typical DLC
April 2025	New teaser, development "nearing completion", almost as big as the original
October 2026	Size of a full sequel, 30+ new tracks

For a project led by a single developer, that kind of scope growth explains most of the wait.

Will it still come at no extra cost?

That is the open question. The DLC was originally promised to Katana ZERO owners at no additional charge, and Askiisoft repeated that plan in spring 2025. The latest post does not mention pricing at all, so it is unclear whether the original promise still holds now that the content has grown to sequel scale.

About the game

Katana ZERO is a neo-noir 2D action platformer developed by Askiisoft and published by Devolver Digital. It came out on April 18, 2019 on PC (Steam and GOG) and Nintendo Switch, reached Xbox One and the Microsoft Store in 2020, and arrived on iOS and Android for Netflix subscribers in spring 2024. You play a sword-wielding assassin who dies in one hit and kills in one hit, so each level becomes a puzzle you replay until the run is clean. Time slowdown, bullet deflection and a twisting plot are why it is often mentioned alongside Hotline Miami.

Katana ZERO protagonist fighting with a sword in a neon-lit hallway

Hardware check

You do not need a high-end gaming PC for this one. According to the Steam store page, the recommended Windows spec is an Intel Core i3-3240, 2 GB of RAM and a GeForce 8800 GTS, with about 200 MB of storage. Practically any current desktop or laptop will run it with plenty of headroom. Askiisoft has not published requirements for the DLC, but a pixel-art platformer is unlikely to raise the bar much.