Hidden Blades: Ninjas Enter the Dojo

 Hidden Blades is the next expansion coming to Hidden Path Dojo, and it does something none of the other modes on the site have done yet: it adds a truly hidden piece to the board.

The expansion centers on the Ninja, a piece that moves in secret, can share spaces with other hidden Ninjas, and can sometimes win or lose the game on a single well-timed guess. Hidden Blades is still in active development and early testing on the site, but the core rules are already working well enough to talk about what it brings to the digital dojo.

This post is an overview of the expansion and the Shadow Duel game mode that showcases it.

What Hidden Blades adds

At its core, Hidden Blades keeps the main structure of the system:

  • Players still control a Sensei and Disciples.

  • Movement still comes from a small shared set of rotating cards.

  • Victory still comes from capturing the opposing Sensei or reaching the Shrine with your own.

The expansion layers the Ninja on top of that familiar foundation.

The Ninja:

  • Starts the game hidden.

  • Uses the same movement cards as other pieces.

  • Can move after a normal move, using the same card.

  • Can coexist with another hidden Ninja on the same square.

  • Can be captured by a Sensei or Disciple that moves onto its square, whether it is hidden or revealed.

  • Can capture by stepping onto an enemy piece, or by guessing the square where an enemy Ninja is hiding.

From a player’s perspective, the board suddenly has two levels: the visible layout of Sensei and Disciples that everyone can see, and a shadow layer where Ninjas are moving that only their owners know about.

Shadow Duel: a first look

Shadow Duel is the first mode on Hidden Path Dojo that uses Hidden Blades.

It takes place on the familiar Shrine board from the Master's Path, with a slightly different setup:

  • Each player has 1 Sensei on their Shrine.

  • Each player has 2 Disciples, starting in the far corners of their back rank.

  • Each player has 1 Ninja, which begins hidden on a random square adjacent to their Sensei.

So there are fewer visible pieces, but more going on than it first appears.

Play flows much like Master’s Path. On your turn, you:

  1. Choose a movement card.

  2. Move one of your visible pieces using that card (if any legal move exists).

  3. Then decide whether to move your Ninja using the same card.

If the Ninja moves onto an enemy piece, it captures and becomes revealed until the start of your next turn. If the enemy Ninja is still hidden, you can also attempt a capture by selecting your Ninja and clicking the square where you think theirs is standing. If you are right, you take their Ninja. If you are wrong, nothing happens except that your Ninja has stepped into the light.

Ninjas start hidden and hide again at the start of their owner’s turn, so the information on the board is always shifting. Two hidden Ninjas can share a square, which means even “safe” looking spaces can be a little suspect.

In practice, Shadow Duel feels like a tighter, tenser Master’s Path with a paranoia layer. The visible tactics still matter, but every sensible plan now has to survive questions like:

  • “If their Ninja has been quietly following this card pattern, am I about to walk my Sensei into it?”

  • “If I reveal my Ninja to grab this piece, how much trouble will I be in next turn?”

Why it fits Hidden Path Dojo

Hidden Path Dojo has always been about a few core ideas:

  • Small piece counts and clear goals.

  • Rotating movement cards that both players share.

  • Boards that are readable enough that you can look back and understand what happened.

Hidden Blades keeps those ideas and adds just enough uncertainty to change the feel of a game without replacing it. Ninjas give players a way to create pressure without adding more visible clutter to the board. The hidden layer invites bluffing, second-guessing, and “I know that you know that I know” moments, while the visible play still has to make sense on its own.

On the digital side, this expansion also takes advantage of things that are simply easier online:

  • The site can track hidden positions cleanly for each player.

  • The interface can handle revealing and re-hiding Ninjas automatically at the right times.

  • The AI can be taught to respect hidden information without cheating, so it feels like a real opponent even when it cannot see everything.

All of that makes Hidden Blades a natural fit for the dojo.

How often you will see Shadow Duel

Because Hidden Blades changes the feel of a game quite a bit, it is not planned as an “every game” default.

The current plan for when it joins Quick Play looks like this:

  • A small percentage of games on the site will be Shadow Duel games that use Hidden Blades.

  • In your settings, you will be able to force the expansion on if you want every game to include Ninjas.

  • You will also be able to disable the expansion entirely if you prefer to play only with visible pieces.

The idea is to let people meet it in the wild, decide whether it matches their taste, and then adjust how often they see it.

What’s next

Hidden Blades is still in development, but the basics are in place:

  • Ninjas move with the normal cards after your main move.

  • Hidden and revealed states behave correctly.

  • Captures, guesses, and stacked hidden Ninjas all work.

  • Shadow Duel is already playable and gives a very different texture to the usual Shrine board.

Next up will be more tuning, more UI polish, and more writing about what it feels like to actually play Shadow Duel well: how to use your Ninja, how to avoid losing your Sensei to one, and how the mind games change once both sides know a blade might be lurking two squares away.

For now, this is the headline: Hidden Blades is on its way into Hidden Path Dojo, and Ninjas are joining the fight.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mastering the Master’s Path

Master’s Path is the core of Hidden Path Dojo: a Sensei, four Disciples, five movement cards, and just enough room to hang yourself if you don’t respect the system. Sensei and Shrine: don’t forget either Every position has two pressure points: Your Sensei Their Shrine You lose when your Sensei dies or when their Sensei reaches your Shrine. Most disasters come from forgetting one of those for exactly one turn. On every move, quickly check: “Is my Sensei safe if they use their best card?” “If their Sensei steps forward here, do I still have a clean way to stop a Shrine run later?” If a capture or flashy tactic fails those tests, it’s probably not worth it. The real timing of the cards The most important thing people get wrong: the move you play now becomes their tool later, not immediately. When you play a card: It leaves your hand and sits in the middle. Your opponent takes their turn with their current cards. Only then does your card enter their hand...
Read more

Quickplay Matchmaking, Friend Challenges, and Reconnects

The biggest recent step for Hidden Path Dojo is something simple that changes everything about how you play here. We now have a Quickplay matchmaker . You and another person can just be on the site at the same time, click Quickplay, and the server will pair you into a game. No manual room codes, no sharing URLs, no setup screens. Just queue and play. You also do not need to be logged in to use Quickplay. It takes you straight into the queue using the current Quickplay server settings. Current Quickplay defaults Right now, the Quickplay queue runs with a specific default ruleset. You can think of it as the “standard ladder” for the site. The current Quickplay defaults are: All cards are enabled The mode is always Master’s Path The Spirit’s Breath air elemental is enabled 25% of the time If the air elemental is present, there is a random number of wind cards between 0 and 5 These numbers and choices will probably evolve as more people play, but this gives us a cons...
Read more

Welcome to Hidden Path Dojo

Hidden Path Dojo really started with a single idea that was not mine at all. I fell in love with the rotating movement card system from Shimpei Sato’s game Onitama . The board is simple, the pieces are simple, but the way a small shared set of movement cards rotates through both players’ hands turns every game into a little tactical puzzle. You never have access to everything. You are always planning with what you have now, what you are about to hand over, and what you expect to see again later. That rotating movement card mechanic is what I think of as the Hidden Path system . Hidden Path Dojo exists to explore that system in as many ways as possible. New games, new variants, new modes - all built on that shared, rotating pool of movement cards. Looking for a place to play The next part is very practical. Two player abstract strategy games are not the easiest thing to get to the table. They are intense, they are not always friendly to mismatched skill levels, and a lot of peop...
Read more