Bokken: Ghost Fire
Climb a haunted mountain pass in old Japan with a wooden sword and a torch, in a 2D physics game where every object is carved from pixels.
Links go to the official store or developer page. Last verified Nov 4, 2026.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- View demo on itch.ioitch.ioDemo · Listed as “Prototype” on itch.io; version 0.2.0Free
Plays in the browser on itch.io. No download.
Browser (no download) · Desktop · Mobile · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Bokken: Ghost Fire
A 2D side-scrolling physics game set on a haunted mountain pass in old Japan. There was a battle in the pass, and every night since, its dead rise in armour and fight until dawn; you climb with nothing but a wooden sword, a torch and your own reasons, to light the sending fire at the summit shrine. The climb runs in three legs from the road at midnight to the summit in a storm. At dusk the ochimusha (fallen warriors) rise and the gaki (hungry dead) come for your warmth; no blade touches the gaki, but fire does. You wrap cloth on sticks to make torches, keep them lit against the cold and the dark, rest at places of refuge the dead do not enter, and face your mentor and your former lord. You control your arms directly to swing and thrust, in a physics engine built on weight, balance, momentum and sharpness, and a pixel-level crafting system from the earlier prototype lets you carve, hone and join weapons and tools. After the story there is an Endless mode with one life. Stuart Weiss (Plinth Cybernetics) designed it, wrote the story text and tuned it by hand; Claude Code wrote all of the code, authored every object as a text grid that drives the physics, built the sound synthesizer and translated the game into Japanese, and Grok Build wrote a few last-day fixes. It was made for AI Browser Game Jam 5 (theme: Torch) and is free in the browser, including on phones in landscape, with name-your-own-price Windows and Linux downloads; itch.io lists it as a prototype.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe jam submission says Claude Code (Claude Opus), running as three coordinating agents (two building, one shaping the work with the developer), wrote all the code, authored every object as text-grid “material code” that drives the physics, built the sound synthesizer and drafted the Japanese. The itch.io page adds that it wrote the design documents from the developer's notes, the tools and the tests, and drew the fighters, the world, the sky and the dead in code; there is no image generation in the game. Grok Build (xAI), a tool we do not track, wrote a few of the last day's fixes from briefs Claude wrote, and Claude reviewed each change; the cover was made with Grok Imagine. The developer designed the game, set its rules, wrote the story text, hints and credits, and judged every feel, look and sound by hand. Four sounds are recordings.
- Developeritch.io credits: “Code, sound synthesis, graphics, tooling, integration, project management, documentation, and the Japanese translation by Claude (Anthropic). A few of the last fixes by Grok (xAI).” — itch.io
- OfficialJam rules: development must be heavily AI-assisted, with the majority of the game AI-generated; continuing an existing project is allowed if most of the submission is new. — itch.io (Focaccai)
Made in Godot 4.7.2 by one person with AI tools over about two weeks. The first week went into the foundation prototype, Bokken: Carve Your Own Legend, submitted to Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 2; in the second week the developer took it in a new direction around the torch theme. Claude Code ran in three windows at once, two building the game and one shaping the work with the developer. Every object is a text grid in the game's own material language, written by Claude Code and reviewed by the developer, and the sound comes from a synthesizer Claude Code wrote, with several sounds tuned against recordings the developer supplied. No AI runs in the game; weapon names come from a hand-written procedural namer.
- Engine / framework
- Godot 4.7.2
- Languages
- Not disclosed
- Team size
- 1 (solo)Developer Reporteditch.io
- Development time
- 2 weeksDeveloper Reporteditch.io
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- ~100% of shipped codeDeveloper Reporteditch.io (AI Browser Game Jam 5, hosted by Focaccai)
“No AI runs in the game.”Verification notes: Story, mechanics, modes, controls, credits and AI usage from the developer's itch.io page (published 31 Oct 2026, 02:08 UTC; updated 1 Nov 2026, 06:56 UTC; status Prototype; HTML5, Windows and Linux, version 0.2.0) and the AI Tools Used answer on the official AI Browser Game Jam 5 submission page, both re-read on 4 Nov 2026. The developer is the same Stuart Weiss (Plinth Cybernetics, itch.io user plinth) who made Ikuta '73; the credits read “Designed, written and directed by Stuart Weiss, Plinth Cybernetics”, so team size is recorded as one. The 100% AI code share reflects “wrote all the code”, with Grok Build's few last-day fixes also AI-written. The two-week development time covers the one-week foundation prototype and one week on Ghost Fire, as the page describes; the jam allows continuing an existing project if most of the submission is new. The sibling prototype Bokken: Carve Your Own Legend (Jamference: AI Game Jam Hack 2) is a separate itch.io game and is not covered here. The page says the Japanese is Claude's translation, not reviewed by a native speaker; we did not check how much of the interface is translated. Japanese folklore terms (onibi, ochimusha, gaki) come from the developer's page. Voting was still in progress on 4 Nov 2026 (it ends on 7 Nov), so no placement is recorded; the submission page showed 7 jam ratings (observed; not recorded as a metric). The Godot build was checked for calls to AI services and none were found. itch.io shows no public rating and no download counts. We did not play the game.
Development history
Published on itch.io (02:08 UTC) and submitted to AI Browser Game Jam 5 (theme: Torch) about 45 minutes before the deadline; the jam's submissions closed the same day.
The itch.io page is updated (06:56 UTC); the downloads are version 0.2.0. Jam voting was still in progress on 4 Nov 2026.
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
itch.io
Free in the browser (best in landscape on phones); the Windows and Linux downloads are name your own price.
Not publicly available: itch.io rating, Gross revenue.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bokken: Ghost Fire by plinth itch.io | Store page | Oct 31, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Rate Bokken: Ghost Fire for AI Browser Game Jam 5 itch.io (AI Browser Game Jam 5, hosted by Focaccai) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| AI Browser Game Jam 5 itch.io (Focaccai) | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
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