Review: Ninjatown

Developer: Venan

Publisher: SouthPeak Games

A volcano erupts near Ninjatown, which brings along Mr Demon and his hordes of devils, who are bent on the destruction of the town.

Ninjatown is a tower defence game featuring ninja characters created by Shawnimals, available in all good sci-fi stores folks…and probably a few bad ones. You place your ninja houses on pre-designated square plots around the map, and must decide which ninja types you require. Do you go for the inexpensive bog standard fast-but-weak ninja or the slower anti-ninja who also packs a mean punch?

After defeating enemies you are rewarded with ninja cookies, which can be used to place more Ninja Huts or upgrade your current ninjas to be faster, stronger, harder, better (better stop that before StartGame get sued). You can also sell unwanted huts although this only gives you 75% of your cookie capital back. It’s a unique balancing act between mass attack or a few strong hits. If a Devil gets to the other side of the map you will lose a heart, lose all of them and Ninjatown is done for.

Let’s take a look at the ninja’s at your disposal. As mentioned before your bog standard ninjas are black suited, cheap and not that strong, whilst anti-ninjas are orange suited and pack a punch. Now, after these hand-to-hand experts you have your ranged ninjas who throw deadly freezing balls of ice cream that slow down the enemy demons, allowing you to get more hits in, although these ninjas are incredibly slow to start with. Your other choice is to recruit ninjas with peashooters who are faster but again not as powerful as the ice cream ninjas. Ranged ninjas are essential as your hand-to-hand ninjas cannot hit flying devils.

As for the enemies, they are just as varied: devils, fat devils, flying devils, shaman devils and StartGame’s personal favourite – zombie devils! These variations mean you never know what to plan for until you’ve played through the missions a few times.

Here’s a typical battle screen from one of the levels: your ninjas have a certain radius around their house which they will attack demons from. Above, the player is being attacked by both normal devils and zombie Devils (the green ones!). If your ninjas lose all their energy they will take a while to regenerate from their base hut. By this time the demon might be gone and, well, on its way to the other side of the screen to damage your health.

Aiding you in your quest from high up above the battlefield is ol’ master ninja himself. From up in his balloon he will aid your defense of Ninjatown using his special powers. As you defeat devils happiness power builds up in his gnarled old staff, a hickory cane, that gives you access to his devil-beating powers. The first power is double time and lets your ninjas move and attack at double speed. Next up is a power where you choose a direction and blow the devils backwards across the map. These powers can turn a very hard level on its head.

Other power-ups are earned when you complete a level. I won’t reveal all but a few power ups are; firstly, the ninja dropping which is a lump of dropping with a ninja face on it. The smell radiated by this poisonous faecal matter is enough to constantly sap the energy of the devils who pass in its range. Super Ninja can also be summoned to temporarily stun devils, again giving you time to re-organise defenses.

And you thought I’d made Ninja Droppings up!

So that’s Ol Master Ninja and Power-Ups covered, what else? Wel,l you also have special buildings, for example the Training Dojo which will increase the ninjas’ attack power when placed near Ninja Huts. Placing a Green Tea Bistro will increase your ninjas’ speed and placing an Infirmary will make your ninjas return to battle quicker if they lose all of their energy. However, if you place one of these buildings on your map that’s one less Ninja Hut so you really do have to weigh up the pros and cons. The missions are nicely linked together by humourous comic strip style banter between the ninjas and the Ol’ Master and it gave me a few chuckles.

It’s certainly worth picking this little gem of a tower defence game up. Replayability is lengthened with the inclusion of single-card multiplayer modes as well as multi-card play; it’s limited to two players but is a laugh. In the single player game you have the goal of getting all A-ranks on completed levels as well. I thoroughly enjoyed this tower defence game, and there’s even a fast forward button for the impatient amongst you.