First Thirty: Ninjatown (DS)

By Joe Fourhman | November 29, 2008

Yes, that’s a happy ninja dropping… part of the charm of Ninjatown, an unexpected third-party ray of sunshine on your DS. And here’s my First Thirty.

Ninjatown is a tower defense game, so the first level is the necessary tutorial. As such, it’s a bit more talky than I anticipate for the rest of the game. It seems that a tribe of little red devil characters is storming into the ninja village on a mad bender for the ninjas’ secret cookie recipe. The ineffectual mayor of the town looks to you, playing the role of the Master Ninja, to set up the best defense and repel the hellishly cute invaders.

It’s all stylus control. In a clever meta twist, your stylus represents the staff of the elderly Master Ninja. The game even animates Ol’ Master Ninja floating high above the town in a hot-air balloon, representing your top-down view of the DS screen. You click on empty zones of land and choose a particular breed of Ninja Hut to build. Regular ninjas are well-rounded fighters, but specialized types focus on various combos of strengths and weaknesses. Some are stronger but slower. Some are weaker but have a ranged attack. Etc. You get it.

There’s also plenty of funny-silly dialogue, which shows some solid attention was paid to the writing.

The early levels only take five to ten minutes to complete, but the game (at least for me) is to make sure that I finish with a perfect clear. That means absolutely no devils make it through my defenses.

So far, it’s really good. I’m looking forward to seeing what other crazy chibi ninja characters show up.