an artist team to finish the game mere chance and credited the artists with motivating him to finish. Stander focused on attention to detail and said adding a single mechanic, such as a gun turret, would require him to alter many different systems, such as the lighting, to maintain cohesion. Production value was important, as Stander wanted the engine to feel flawless. He said this meant "no bugs. Everything needs to feel like an extension of the player. When you play it, you should always feel like this is exactly what I wanted to do and that is what the character did." When developing small freeware games, he could scrutinize minute details, which would result in him spending a year to make a short, 20–30 minute game. Adapting this mentality to a full-length commercial game contributed to the prolonged development; Stander originally expected development to last a year or two. His focus on particulars demoralized him, to the point he made little progress for a year. Writing Stander said telling a story was a large part of his motivation to develop Katana Zero, wanting to celebrate his favorite tropes and provide his own spin on them. The script is credited to Stander and Eric Shumaker, with additional writing by Sterling Nathaniel Brown and Ian Goldsmith Rooney. As Stander developed Katana Zero focusing on one element at a time, he only had a basic plot summary by the time he finished outlining all the levels. Elements Stander conceived early on included a protagonist who was "sort of trapped in their situation, because those always make for good main characters in action games", and a disagreeable psychiatrist who players would dislike. Katana Zero is a pastiche of the films Stander enjoyed. He was inspired by the Eastern culture of samurai cinema and wanted a vulnerable yet lethal protagonist similar to those from Korean revenge thrillers. Film influences included Oldboy (2003) Sin City (2005), Drive (2011), and John Wick for their "invincible-yet-human" protagonists and "stylistic violence set over a dark, grimy, neon coated setting", as well as Seven Samurai (1954) and the films of Quentin Tarantino. The story structure was inspired by Hotline Miami, in which the player character is directed to kill by mysterious phone calls, and its themes include drug addiction and mental health. Stander hesitated to deal with such topics as they had never affected him, but after some research,