Ninja Town Preview

23 Jun 2008 at 14:14:39 by

It’s been a while since something has come for the DS that has excited me, but Ninja Town, brought to us by SouthPeak did. It’s due for release sometime in Q4, but I had a chance to have a little bash at it while I was in London a couple of weeks ago.

For those of you that don’t know Ninja Town, then I suggest you go to the website. Shawn Smith, the creator of Shawnimals, has brought his crazy little ninja friends to the DS, and it’s a real time strategy that sees you trying to fend off baddy Wee Devils led by Mr Demon after the eruption of a volcano using an array of your own ground or air ninja’s.

I played an easier one-level game, one where the Wee Devils would only come in from one side of the screen, but don’t’ be fooled, this game will no doubt be extremely challenging in the later levels.

The point of the game is to select a plot on the screen to build your ninja schools for either your ground or airborne ninjas (depending on the enemies). These schools will then give you an option to select a specific kind of ninja and that’s it. Buildings can also be upgraded which make your ninja’s stronger. The ninjas will attack enemies automatically, so you don’t have to task them to do that, so chose which plot you put the school on wisely. There are various plots to chose from, but not all need to be filled. The enemy waves, however, could come from any angle, and if they get to the heart of your village, you’ve lost.

You move across the map with either the stylus or the D-pad, and because you’re viewing everything from a birds-eye view you can hardly miss something. The more enemies you defeat, the more your power meter fills up, and once this is full, you can call upon the Master Ninja and use his special skills to dispose of those pesky Wee Devils by either blowing them off the screen or touching them.

It sounds like a pretty simple game, and in fairness it is when you start, but once you have the different kinds of enemies making their way from every enterance, it turns into a completely different game.

With over 35 levels to play and 20 different enemies to defeat, as well as multiplayer and co-op games, Ninja Town has definitely got something for everyone. It’s due out in Q4, so not long now, and it’s certainly worth checking out.

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