How to play
It's a sandbox. There's no wrong way to live a life.
Way of the Ronin hands you a masterless sword and an open country — no quest arrow, no single path to the top. You decide what kind of life to lead and what kind of house to leave behind. This page is the short version: the loop, everything there is to do, and how to begin.
The rhythm
The core loop.
Time flows in real time, day by day, at one steady pace — a full day is about twenty-four minutes, with a day and night that turn as you play. You walk, you act, and the world (and your body) ages around you. To skip ahead, rest at an inn. That's the whole engine; the rest is what you choose to do with it.
1 · Walk the world
Move through castle-towns and hamlets, or cross Japan on the overworld. Walk up to a person or a door and press E (or tap) to act.
2 · Do the work
Train a skill, fight a duel, court a match, take paid work, gamble, pray, trade. Effortful acts spend energy, restored each season.
3 · Time passes
Days turn to seasons to years. Skills grow, wounds heal, children are born and age. Events find you on the season's turn.
4 · The house goes on
Marry, raise an heir, and when the head dies the heir takes up the name. Land, prestige, and a captured domain carry over. Play the bloodline, not one life.
Played, not rolled
Every action is a little game.
There are no hidden dice behind a menu. A duel is fought stroke by stroke; a persuasion is a real back-and-forth; even training and thieving are hands-on. Win or lose by your own timing and nerve.
The duel
Real-time high/mid/low swordplay — spar, fight to a yield, or to the death. Lose a lethal bout and your foe decides your fate: mercy or the blade.
Bamboo cutting
Fell as many stalks as you can against the clock — the sword drills of a kenjutsu school and your own training.
The parley
Read a mood, pick an approach, and win a conversation round by round — courtship, oaths, matches, and debts.
Infiltration
Steal across a guarded night courtyard — hold to move, freeze in shadow, and slip past the watch-lantern to your mark.
Tavern games
Chō-han dice, a real Gomoku board, and drinking contests — wager coin over the mat.
Discipline
The breath drill beneath a waterfall, the cutpurse's lift — timing games that temper body and nerve.
Your choice
What is there to do?
Pick any thread — or all of them, across a lifetime. Nothing here is required; every path feeds the same six abilities and the standing of your house.
The blade
- Real-time high/mid/low duels — spar, fight to a yield, or to the death
- Grand tournaments and named rivals
- Enter a sword school; earn its licence
- Train kenjutsu by cutting bamboo against the clock
The house
- Court and marry; raise children of your blood
- Train any kin — stats climb toward a 255 lifetime peak
- Arrange betrothals; take in an heir if you must
- Succession: die, and the line continues
The land
- Buy a plot from your lord; build it up, tier by tier
- Walk your estate with your family
- Farm your fields — sow seven crops and reap them
- Eat your harvest for energy, health, or a lasting buff
The tavern
- Chō-han — bet even or odd on the dealer's dice
- Gomoku — five-in-a-row against a patron
- Drinking contests — out-last a local for coin
- Hired steel: take mercenary work from the board
The shadows
- Be recruited into a shinobi network
- Take assassination contracts by stealth or steel
- Rise in rank; earn ninja gear
- A quieter road to coin — and infamy
The realm
- Swear service to a lord; rise through the ranks
- Win favour and timed commissions at court
- Muster levies and retainers under your banner
- Besiege a rival seat and rule a domain of your own
A seat of your own
From a rented room to a ruling house.
The long arc of the game is turning a masterless sword into a landed house. It comes in two stages: a home of your own, and then a domain.
Buy land & build an estate
- Earn a lord's favor, then buy a plot in his lands
- Build it up in tiers — a cottage → a proper house → a walled estate
- Walk your estate; your family lives there with you
- A built home is what lets you marry and raise heirs
- Farm the fields — grow crops, eat for energy, health, or a buff
- It's yours to rename, sell back, or pass on — the estate inherits with the house
Own & run a faction
- Rise to command; muster an army — retinue, retainers, and levies
- March on a rival lord's towns and take them one by one
- Your first captured city founds your own house-domain
- Every town you hold pays a rice tax each season — a real income
- Theoretically, take every city in the realm under your banner
- A domain is dynastic — it passes whole to your heir
First steps
Getting started.
- Make your ronin — spend points across the six skills, pick a couple of traits.
- Walk the castle-town. Press E at a building or a person to act.
- Train at the dojo and earn coin — gigs, the tavern, or the road.
- Petition a lord at the manor. Win his favour; take service.
- Buy a plot, build a home, and marry — then raise the heir who carries it on.
Controls: WASD / arrows or tap to move · E to speak or use · opening any menu pauses the world · saves are automatic.
