added a sparring partner system in Tameshigiri Dojo, the partner is unlocked through My Ryu.
OneBoringDad
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25 skills, 5 bosses, leaderboards, single html5 file
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Buy low, sell high, and build a used car empire in 1998 Australia — with 1,200+ makes and models.
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Recent community posts
armour sets earned from the shogun and emperor tournaments now grant bonus mastery experience earned.
The bonus increases with higher grade armour (you want to beat the emperor tournament 16× for the top bonus mastery experience)
This is an necessary addition to keep mastery levels able to be continuously grinded without spending hundreds of hours in the dojo (figured nobody wants to do that)
Daily log in bonuses added.
Thanks again to the people playing.
visual overhaul completed for shogun/emperor tournaments, tameshigiri dojo is now a dojo (not an outdoor map), added more life to every map with better designed backgrounds and moving animals.
More visual polishing to come in the future, this is a slow build project.
Thanks to all of you playing, youre why I do this.
a few hundred more kanji/romanji (plus a report any wrong words for japanese players to PLEASE correct)
A voice to help the English speakers pronounce romanji correctly (if your phone hasn't got it at standard its absolutely downloadable)
Nothing has changed about the gameplay itself, or bonuses or gains, all new features are a small addition.
=== 1. START HERE: how to get a flying start ===
This is the route I'd take if I was starting fresh. It's not the only way, but it gives you a solid foundation to build on while you hunt masters.
Step 1: Smash tatami and bamboo with the bokken
Go to Fight > Training and use the Tameshigiri Dojo. Switch the weapon to Bokken first. Free cut or Three heights, your choice. No day passes, nothing is at stake, so you can do it as long as you like. Aim for level 15 - 20 in High, Mid and Low stances.
Step 2: Bokken Gauntlet, aim for round 24 - 30
It's held by day. Keep fighting and when you're happy hit Walk Away & Collect. If you get knocked down you only keep half, so walk away while you're ahead. Rough payouts if you walk away:
- Round 10: about 305 gold, 115 stat points
- Round 20: about 910 gold, 330 stat points
- Round 24: about 1,216 gold, 428 stat points, 4 renown
- Round 30: about 1,815 gold, 645 stat points, 6 renown
Your best streak also unlocks the Gauntlet fighting styles (more on that in the Gauntlet guide).
Step 3: Open your own school
You need 3 renown and 300 gold. Create your own style, arts and blade, equip them all, then go back to training and raise your arts to mastery 15 - 30. Check the My Ryu guide for how it works.
Step 4: Spend smart
- Save your gold for Saturday. Dojo training is 30% off.
- Spend the stat points from the Gauntlet on your base stats.
- Base stats get boosted by masteries + gear on top.
Step 5: Hunt the masters
Every mission, tournament and Gauntlet run has a rolling chance to hear a rumour of a master. Fight them as much as you can. Only tatami and bamboo don't use up a day, so use those for long stretches when you want huge results.
From there, do whatever your heart desires.
=== 2. How a duel works (High, Mid, Low and your Ki) ===
Every fight is one on one. You stand in High, Mid or Low, and that's the height of your sword. Watch the lit bar beside your foe, it shows where their sword is. One clean hit hurts.
Buttons
- ATTACK strikes at your stance height. Costs 6 Ki.
- ART uses a learned technique. Costs more Ki, hits harder.
- GUARD (hold) blocks. It only works on attacks at the same height as your stance.
- Back away to dodge a swing.
The Ki bar
The blue/gold bar under your HP is your energy and stamina. The number in it tells you two things.
1. How much of your damage you'll actually do. The zones are:
- Above 90%: x1.1 damage (the bar goes gold)
- 76 - 90%: x1.0
- 51 - 75%: x0.85
- 26 - 50%: x0.5
- 25% or under: x0.25
2. While it's gold, you also have a 10% chance to crit (x1.5 damage). Some stances and bonuses add to this.
Swinging empties your Ki, and Ki fills back up over time. It fills slower while you're guarding. So don't mash. Wait for the gold, then swing.
Experience bonus
You also earn +25% mastery exp on everything when you attack in golden Ki. Each zone lower earns less, down to a quarter at the bottom. Button mashing barely teaches anything.
=== 3. Block, Parry, Counter and Evasion (they're all different!) ===
There's a big difference between these four, and each one trains its own mastery.
Parry
The bright white crescent that shows up for a split second. As the height of the attack changes to gold and an oval appears, tap guard to land a parry. A perfect parry staggers the enemy, gives you Ki back (14), and leaves them wide open. The window starts short and grows with your Senses stat, Parry and Agility mastery, some stances, and the weather.
Block
The dark grey crescent that appears once the parry window is gone. Hold guard and match the height. You can change stance while holding guard and still block on any stance. You take only a little chip damage, but each block costs you 16 Ki. If your Ki runs out, your guard breaks and you're staggered.
Counter
Attacking while they're attacking you. That same parry window can be treated as an attack first window. Hit them while they're winding up and you do extra damage (x1.3 base, more with Counter mastery and some stances).
Evasion
Step back before the blade touches you. If their swing falls short it whiffs, and it raises your evasion.
These all tie into agility, endurance, strength, block, counter, parry and evasion masteries, all of which boost you overall. Every action has a reaction in life, and my game teaches this to you.
=== 4. Masteries: what each one does and how to level it ===
Open Train > Mastery to see your combat numbers. Levels get harder to earn the higher you go, but they never stop growing.
Combat masteries
- High / Mid / Low Stance: attack or block in that stance. More damage and faster swings from it.
- Counter: hit an enemy mid-swing. Bigger counter damage.
- Parry: land perfect parries. Wider parry window.
- Block: block strikes. Blocks cost less Ki and chip damage shrinks.
- Evasion: step out of range so a swing whiffs. More move speed.
- Strength: land hits, counters and heavy arts. More attack power, health and counter damage.
- Endurance: spend Ki, block and take punishment. Bigger Ki pool, faster Ki regen, cheaper blocks.
- Agility: move, dodge and parry. More move speed, attack speed and parry window.
Gear mastery
Every sword, stance and art levels up with use too. Arts never stop growing. Bokken has its own mastery, which you only raise by using the bokken.
Tip: swing in golden Ki. It's +25% exp on all of it.
=== 5. Day, night, weather and the calendar ===
Day and night
- By day: bokken bouts. Wooden swords, nothing at risk.
- By night: real steel. Blood, stakes and pay.
- Every fight passes half a day. Hit Rest until dusk / dawn if you want to skip ahead.
- Tatami / bamboo training does not use up a day.
The week
- Saturday is Sale Day: dojo training costs 30% less.
- Sunday is Festival Day: Bokken Gauntlet gold +25%.
Weather changes every fight and it matters:
- Clear: parry window +8%
- Rain: parry window +10%, but Ki regen -12%, move -6%, and lunges slide further
- Snow: move -10%, attack speed -7%, but +8% health from winter padding. Stand still too long and the snow settles on you
- Fog: you can barely read your foe until they're close. Strikes +10% damage, parry window -8%
- Wind: the arrow on screen shows the direction. With the wind: move +12%, strikes +8%. Against it: -12% and -8%
Fog is a bit more common at night.
=== 6. Training your stats ===
Fight > Training, then Train > Stats. Dojo training never uses up a day.
The five stats
- Strength: sword damage
- Speed: move and attack speed
- Vitality: max health
- Focus: Ki pool and Ki regen
- Senses: parry and block timing window
Two ways to raise them
- Gold: each point costs a bit more than the last (about 3 gold plus a tenth of your current stat). Buy x1, x10 or x100. On Saturday it's 30% off, so save up.
- Stat points: earned from the Bokken Gauntlet. Spend them on whatever you need.
Schools (ryu)
Join a school and the points you train in its disciplines earn bonus points. Your rank goes up to 5 as you train and raises the bonus. One at a time. Leaving is free, and so is going back to one you've already paid for.
- Tetsuken-ryu (Strength, some Vitality): 200 gold
- Kaze no Michi (Speed, some Senses): 200 gold
- Yamabushi-ryu (Vitality, some Focus): 3 renown, 500 gold
- Mizu no Kokoro (Focus, some Senses): 3 renown, 500 gold
- Hayabusa-ryu (Senses, some Speed): 6 renown, 1,000 gold
- Tenka Itto-ryu (a bit of everything): 12 renown, 3,000 gold
=== 7. Missions, the Bokken Gauntlet and tournaments ===
Missions (Fight > Missions)
New ones arrive every morning. Contracts are real steel at night, bokken bouts are safe and by day. Better ones unlock as your renown goes up. HP carries between fights, with a little restored.
Bokken Gauntlet
Endless wooden-sword bouts, by day. Every 5th bout is an Arena Champion. After each win you choose Fight On or Walk Away & Collect. Fall in battle and you keep half.
Your best streak unlocks these styles, and they stay yours:
- Streak 3: Way of the Heron (wider parry window, faster Ki regen)
- Streak 6: Tiger Style (every strike hits harder)
- Streak 10: Willow Step (faster movement and swings)
- Streak 14: Mountain Stance (more health, blocked hits barely hurt)
- Streak 18: Crane Arts (arts cost less Ki and hit harder)
- Streak 24: Dragon Fury (counter hits are brutal)
Time Attack
Real steel, by night. Survive wave after wave of foes. You get 12 gold per foe beaten.
Tournaments
Each one needs some renown and your stance mastery (the average of High, Mid and Low).
- Village Bokken Cup: 5 rounds, bokken. Easy start.
- Dojo Open: 7 rounds, bokken.
- Governor's Tournament: 6 rounds, real steel. The final champion wears armour.
- Shogun's Tournament: 10 rounds, real steel. The Shogun gifts you a piece of armour for every win.
- Imperial Bokken Championship: 12 rounds, bokken.
- Emperor's Grand Tournament: 14 rounds, real steel. Needs 8 Shogun wins. The final four wear legendary armour, and the Emperor rewards champions with a second line of armour.
Bokken tournaments risk nothing. Real steel ones are far deadlier and pay well. Check the requirements on each card, it tells you exactly what you're missing.
=== 8. The Twenty Masters ===
Masters never advertise. Word of them reaches you after missions, tournaments and Gauntlet runs, with a rolling chance each time.
Rumour chances
- Missions: 5%, climbing to 20% as your renown rises
- Bokken tournaments: 10%
- Real steel tournaments: 20%
- Gauntlet: 5%, climbing to 20% as your streak gets towards 20
Each master teaches in five duels
1. Their stance
2. Their High art
3. Their Mid art
4. Their Low art
5. Their sword
The first four are friendly bokken bouts with nothing at stake. The last one is a real sword duel, and you put up a stake of gold. Lose it and the stake is gone. Win and you get it back plus a prize. Some masters only fight by day, some only at night. The card tells you which.
Requirements
They climb the further you go. Every master wants renown, stance mastery, days lived, victories and a stat. Later ones also want you to have beaten earlier masters and have Strength / Endurance / Agility mastery. Examples:
- Master 1: 2 renown, stance mastery 3, 6 victories, Strength 40, 50 gold stake
- Master 10: about 25 renown, stance mastery 26, 132 victories, Senses 535, about 1,580 gold stake
- Master 20: about 63 renown, stance mastery 52, 432 victories, Senses 1,600, about 8,900 gold stake
Don't panic about the big numbers, you grow into them. The card on each master lists exactly what you have and what you're missing.
=== 9. Your own school (My Ryu) ===
At 3 renown and 300 gold you can found your own school. Go to Train > My Ryu.
What you get to make
- A stance with your own footwork, sword angles and bonuses
- Arts blended from the visuals you've collected
- A blade: your own steel, guard, grip and edge
- All named with the Name Forge (see the Name Forge guide)
Ranking up
Your school goes up to rank 8. To rank up you need three things:
- School score: the levels of your own stance, blade and arts added together
- Renown
- Masters mastered
- Rank 2: school score 12, renown 10, 1 master mastered
- Rank 3: school score 40, renown 25, 3 masters mastered
- Rank 4: school score 90, renown 50, 6 masters mastered
- Rank 5: school score 170, renown 90, 10 masters mastered
- Rank 6: school score 290, renown 150, 14 masters mastered
- Rank 7: school score 460, renown 250, 18 masters mastered
- Rank 8: school score 700, renown 400, 20 masters mastered
Each rank unlocks more choices, more bonuses and stronger options. You start with 3 art slots, and the rest open up at rank 4.
=== 10. The Name Forge ===
Name your samurai, school, stance, arts and blade in a Japanese style without needing to know Japanese.
Look for the Name forge button next to any name. Pick English words and it builds a Japanese-style name with the romaji, the kanji, and a short meaning. About 575 words across 11 categories (nature, creatures, colour, feeling, people, things, body, action, places, time, quality). You can add an ending like -ryu (school), -ha, -kai, -do, -gumi. Search for a word or filter by category.
The meaning sticks with the name for the rest of your career. So "Kiri Ryu" is not just a name, it's the Mist Dragon School.
=== 11. Saving your game (please read this one) ===
Your progress saves in your browser. If you clear your browser data / cookies, it's gone.
Back it up
Go to the main menu and open Settings > Save data. From there you can:
- Download a save file
- Copy a save code
- Restore from a file or paste in a code
Do it every now and then, and always before clearing cookies. After a reset, import it and you're back where you left off. You control it entirely.
The game also keeps a backup copy in the browser and asks the browser to protect your save, but an export is the only thing that's truly safe.
=== 12. Controls ===
Touch (phone)
On-screen buttons: Back / Forward, High / Mid / Low, Guard, Art, Attack.
Keyboard
- A / D (or arrows): move
- 1 / 2 / 3: stance (W / S shifts stance up and down)
- J or Space: attack
- L: art
- K or G: guard
- Esc or P: pause
Controller
Plug it in or pair it and press a button. It's detected automatically. Remap everything under Settings > Controls.
Other settings worth knowing
- Difficulty: Easy, Medium or Hard. Harder gives more gold and mastery exp.
- Attack tell: turns the enemy's attack warning on and off.
- Blood: adjust how much you see.
Enhance and Godlike mode (level 800 required) added.
Enhance is only available once you have equipped a legendary item, any extra lower tier item you get can then be used to either be used instantly to enhance your equipped legendary, or fused together for a higher enhancement bonus.
Godlike mode is 50× score, 20× experience, 1 in 50 pet drop odds and plays roughly 4% faster/more dense than Enlightened mode. (Expect to see millions of experience for a 20 second run)
Today brings a completely reworked items tab layout, to keep things more organised while reducing the need to scroll endlessly.
Bossing outfits! 5 set pieces per boss, a full set adds +20% attack and reduces incoming damage by +20% (you can literally just tank certain bosses now, forget about defending!)
Skilling outfits! 5 set pieces per skill, per category, they can be found via doing the skill (15% drop rate for common, 10% for uncommon, 5% for rare, and yes they can be fused into legendary!)
The bonus per complete set, in order of lowest to highest grade is: 5%, 10% 25% 75% exp/score
This stacks with pets, charms, lamps and consumables! Be strategic with your items and make the most of high score rounds!
fishing and parry reaction windows lengthened.
Log chop gravity is more forgiving and rocks no longer spawn inside of logs.
Timing needle for forge has been slowed down on grandmaster/ascended/enlightened modes to make them more playable.
Pet drop rates have been made 10× more common, standard now sits at 1 in 1000, enlightened is 1 in 100.
Lich King boss fights have been rebalanced for tiers 2 > 5, theyre now much easier to do.
I won't be making any additions to the game, only balancing/tweaks over the coming days/weeks. This is not forever, just for a little while. Thank you to all still viewing/playing the game.
PS: im looking into making lute/bard boss a 4 lane mini-game, but this is not guaranteed as of yet (if i cant make the ratios nice on every screen size, im not doing it)
!FIXED FREEZING BUG FOR NEW PLAYERS!
Enormous visual overhaul for every skill and boss fight
Level 300 mode added (Enlightened), it is 20× score BUT 1/2 the xp of Ascended, with a 10× better pet drop rate (1 in 1000 — think of this mode as the ultra-challenge + pet drop fodder)
Many of the skills have been rebalanced/nerfed/buffed, keeping a balance of fast/medium/slow skills is half the challenge!
Still working on the newest category/skills/boss fights, there is more to come in the future
Huge THANK YOU to anyone playing my game (analytics says I have dozens of players, yet only 17 of us are ranked)
Please report any issues you find/have, please also feel free to leave any suggestions/feedback regarding the game.
All the best,
OneBoringDad
Further fixes have been implemented regarding safety nets/auto-purges of save data.
New timed modes added (60/120 second), small level requirements before theyre able to be used.
Leaderboard now updates every 2 minutes (was 30 minutes, this was a de-sync issue on its own)
If you leave the game pre-2minutes, all your exp/lvls/boss kc etc is auto-purged/filled to the leaderboards (no more waiting 30 mins to rank, im sorry im new to this whole system, bear with me)
More to come in the future, currently looking into a level 200 - 300 mode (above ascended), more bosses and more skills (maybe even a new category? Not sure yet.)
First of all, thank you to everyone of you playing 20 Second RPG, an even bigger thank you to those helping find bugs and refine the game (you know who you are, you asked not to be mentioned!)
Anyway, here's a list of the changes/fixes ive made over the past 3 days of this game being active:
Bosses & difficulty
Bosses now scale meaningfully harder per tier (T1→T5): HP, note/attack speed, and hit-window size all increase with tier instead of tier just being a reskin.
Fixed Rival Bard (Presence boss) being weaker than its own base skill (Lute) — gave it fully custom per-tier difficulty to match.
Tightened up Lute's insane top-end speeds on Master/Grandmaster/Ascended; added more notes at Grandmaster/Ascended after playtester feedback. (Thank you 000)
Increased Fishing's bite-window across all modes (+0.1s starting window, better floors: 0.35/0.34/0.32/0.30s) — it was compounding with the level speed-up to become unreasonably fast.
Raised Fanfare's base tempo so Standard mode isn't stuck feeling sluggish, and made its speed-up continue ramping through the full 20s instead of plateauing after ~8 rounds.
Softened the level-based "tempo creep" globally (per-level speed gain reduced ~30-40%, soft-cap tightened) — Master/Grandmaster/Ascended stay playable for non-hardcore players much deeper into their level brackets (biggest gains at level 100+).
Pets, items, XP economy
Pets: +40% XP / ×1.5 score bonus (up from +15%), drop chance improved 1-in-20,000 → 1-in-10,000.
Added boss-specific pet drop odds, better per tier (T1 1-in-7,500 up to T5 1-in-2,500) — extra incentive to boss-fight.
Softened the per-kill boss XP decay curve so repeat boss kills aren't nearly worthless by the 5th kill.
Added a permanent per-boss-kill XP bonus (0.1–0.5%/kill scaling by tier, capped at 100 kills/tier — up to +150% total).
Items menu: fixed a flicker bug when scrolling/sitting in the tab (was rebuilding the whole tab + replaying animations every 15s).
Added charm fusing (2 common→uncommon, 4 uncommon→rare, 8 rare→legendary, legendary only obtainable this way, +25% bonus).
Reworked food buffs: 5-minute duration, tiers stack additively, but eating multiples of the same tier only extends the timer (no more stacking exploit).
Added pet fusing mirroring charms (common pets can now drop repeatedly; fuse up to legendary at +125%/×3).
Added Total Boss Kills and Total Level leaderboards.
Fixed a leaderboard sync outage caused by a Firestore rules field-name mismatch (renamed the field client-side, no console changes needed).
Minigame fixes & redesigns
Fixed a visual bug in Fanfare where the correct-hit glow flickered from a circle into a square on some Android GPUs (was a shadowBlur artifact — switched to the game's sprite-based glow).
Redesigned Bluff: added a genuine "tell" during the peek instead of it being a blind 1-in-4 guess; retuned peek times per mode (1.0/0.75/0.5/0.25s).
Rebuilt Turn Undead from the ground up: real drag-to-aim (touch position actually matters now), 4 undead types (Wisp/Ghoul/Wight/Revenant, 1–4 hits), threat telegraphing (warning cue + danger ring), marble-bag spawn system (4 five-second "bags" that skew harder toward the end for a real "push, it's almost over" finish).
Zoomed the Turn Undead camera out so incoming undead are actually visible on the sides on portrait phones, and fixed the purify/hit explosion effects firing at the wrong (pre-zoom) position.
Fully rebuilt Intimidate as "Staredown" — press-and-hold, ignore the monster's fake lunges, release only on the genuine "crack" cue. Replaced the old left/right tap-the-lit-zone game after feedback that a first pass (Flinch War) was too similar to the original.
Rebalanced Intimidate's scoring after the rebuild — it was more fun but paying out ~2.7x less than the old game; scaled per-hit reward back up to match old best scores.
Plenty more fixes/changes to come (im open to the idea of changing some of the mini-games in skills, NOT LUTE, thats set in stone, but many others could certainly use some work)
If there is any game that you dont like, cant enjoy, cant get a decent score on, please let me know so I can work on it, guided by your comments/suggestions.
Thank you again to all you regulars, you're what makes me keep going!
Overhauled sprite system to work with new sprites (theyre a WIP)
Reduced sprite sizes to make room for more tracks
Added a bunch of loops for metal lovers (currently looking into more genre's)
Added, polished and correct 1v1/PvP
Added 12 digit player save codes (you can take your data to any device, this code is found in the 1v1/PvP tab)
Added fully functioning leaderboards for every game mode.
Added an enormous point cap for those that want to set the bar on endless modes.
Added INSANE! (As per request from an OSU! Pro), fine tweaked to be playable on mouse/keyboard/mobile/tablet (use two hands if you need too, and keyboard+mouse hybrid play is 100% acceptable)
Added GOLD RUSH! to give players a taste of insane speeds without the death penalty, no hard score unlock required.
Swapped from weighted RNG system, to a marble/shuffle bag RNG system, using 3 seperate bags to define difficulty/RNG during the 20 second modes (endless just stays on the final bag/difficulty, constantly emptying/refilling the bag)
Fixed, broke, fixed, broke and fixed the hit boxes 😆 what a pain that was! (Please DM me or even reply in here if you have any strange occurrences)
Huge THANK YOU to https://virtual-nomad.itch.io/ for helping me find all the early development quirks/bugs/issues, and amazing suggestions!
The THANK YOU extends to all of you that are playing/testing/coming back daily, there's more to come, so bear with me!
Weather & Events — new system
Every day now has a chance of weather and/or a random event, revealed in a new "start of day" popup before you make any decisions
6 weather types: Normal (most common), Nice Day, Perfect Day, Overcast, Stormy, Heatwave — each shifts how willing customers are to bargain, some speed up or slow down how often customers show up
9 random events on top of weather — 4 bad (Mouse Plague, Locust Plague, a flock of cockatoos, Magpie Season) and 5 good (a local car show, press coverage, a stranger detailing a car for free, tourist season, a generous trade-in day)
Two special "combo" events that can only happen on their matching weather — Bushfire only on a Heatwave day, Hailstorm only during a Storm — so they never show up somewhere that wouldn't make sense
Weather and events are drawn from separate pools so they can land together — good days, bad days, and the occasional mixed day where one's good and one's bad
Uses a shuffle-bag system under the hood rather than pure random chance each day, so the odds you're told are the odds you actually get over time, not just an average that could still string together a run of bad luck
First week of a new game is always calm — no rough weather or events while you're still learning the ropes
Tap the little weather/event icons in the header any time to see the day's conditions again.