Venan Entertainment (the developers of Space Miner: Space Ore Bust) have teamed up with the design studio Shawnimals to create a new, rather stylish, casual game. In Ninjatown you must guide the Wee Ninja up the trees of doom to try and impress Ol’ Master Ninja. This is expectedly far from easy since the trees are covered in a variety of dangers that will test how agile your ninja can be. Simple touch gestures are used to control your ninja: tap to jump from tree to tree, touch and hold to climb, and slide down and release to fire from an overhanging branch. These controls are incredibly easy to use and become reasonably precise with practice.

The dangers you have to flip and jump past are pretty bizarre to say the least. Lethal dark purple syrup oozes from gaps in the tree trunks, devils fly in the space between, and slippery stripped bark makes jumping unavoidable. These hazards are placed to try and catch you out, and one false jump can lose your session. However no Doodle Jump style game is complete without power ups, and Ninjatown has a few. You can blow giant bubble gum shields, become Super Ninja and rocket through the air, teleport with smoke bombs, hitch a ride on a giant moustache and slow down time. You can also bounce off protruding mushrooms and propel your ninja into the sky using the tree branches. Watch our gameplay video below to see the game in action:

Shawnimals have done a fantastic job with the game’s graphics and it’s definitely the sheer eccentricity of the characters that makes it stand out. The visuals are vibrant, stylish and easy on the eyes which is very important when a game is this addictive. The animations look stunning and the background is constantly changing with ninjas flying with scorecards, and the time visually switching from day to night. The soundtrack also changes depending on how far you’ve climbed which is another small feature that makes this game so polished.

Since Ninjatown is an endless score-focussed game, leaderboards are vital. Plus+ is the chosen social gaming network included and there are scoreboards and a plentiful amount of achievements to unlock. The game also lets you view stats so you can see typical data like how many times you’ve played the game, and more obscure things like how many branches you’ve grabbed and how many smoke bombs you’ve collected. The highscore boards are integrated into the game instead of using the Plus+ interface which creates a more consistent feel.

Ninjatown is highly addictive, so make sure you spend that £1.19 wisely. If you can afford to lose large chunks of time to the game then we recommend you go for it!

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Space Miner: Space Ore Bust, A

Review by Ben Briggs, February 26, 2010

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