Yeah, this one was interesting. It did a lot of things way wrong and a lot of things way right. Let's get started.
First, I have to talk about the sound direction. There is no sound whatsoever in the menu screen, so I thought this was gonna be another one of those no-sound games (side note: Blogger recognizes "gonna" as a word, but not "gameplay"). I was slightly delighted to hear music start playing once I started the game, but the song that plays is so bad, so ear-twistingly awful, that I had to mute my computer. Proper sound direction does not a good game make, but bad sound direction can really sour the experience.
Alright, now that we've covered that, let me bring up a word that hasn't been used here for a while: conveyance. For the most part, this game does a pretty good job of explaining itself, but I do have a minor complaint about the fireball. It's by far the coolest attack in the game, so naturally you'd want to use it, but the game doesn't adequately tell you how. I had to access the "how to play" screen (which, as far as I'm concerned, means the game's conveyance is inadequate) to find out that you fire them with "F." Okay, you got me. "F" for "fireball," I should have seen that, but come on. On the hierarchy of buttons that perform actions in a shooter game, "f" is pretty low on the list. It should have been RMB, which just makes your character punch, an utterly useless attack (if it's even an attack; I never attempted to use it on an enemy) because you have an unlimited supply of shuriken to throw. Even if you wanted to keep it as "F," you gotta give me some kind of clue; but a little "F" on the fireball icon or something, jeez.
Next up, visual design. I could talk about how the characters look like pre-packaged models from Blender or how the level is literally composed only of rectangles, but I was never a graphics-oriented gamer. My main concern is something that can't be answered by citing the number of polygons in a given model. I just want to know whether it looks good. In the case of this game...eh, I wasn't bothered by it but I can certainly see why other people might be. There's certainly nothing to praise.
As unimpressive as the stage might look, I certainly think it was designed well. certain walls are just tall enough that you can't clear them with one jump, which is a good way to indicate to the player "hey, you should totally try double-jumping to get on top of this wall and get the drop on the enemy." See that? That's how you convey things!
Overall, this came was nothing amazing, but I had fun with it. If you can put up with minimalist visual design and piss-poor sound direction, then I recommend playing around with this one for a bit.
That's all I got for now. Until next time, stay deadly
Links
Ninjas kill each other: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=421
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