Ninjatown

I love ninjas, you love ninjas, everyone (except pirates) loves ninjas. But the question is, do you love ninja strategy? Can you prepare yourself for oncoming relentless waves of blood thirsty demons? Can you organize your ninja army so that no demon can march down the street without losing some teeth? These are questions every black, green or yellow Ninjatown citizen asks themselves in the morning as they look at themselves in the mirror. Each and every day blood is spilled on the streets of Ninjatown, and the ninjas are not the one's bleeding.

Ninjatown is a licensed tower-defense strategy game. Don't let the cutesy, fluffy Shawnimal aesthetic fool you, this is serious, bad to the bone strategy. Gameplay consists of a series of levels that are essentially individual roadways that define the path of the oncoming enemy waves. Now the goal is to defeat the oncoming waves by building a series of ninja houses along the road to spawn armies of ninjas that battle the waves before the enemies reach the other end of the road. You'll face a variety of enemy types and will have to construct a variety of ninja houses to spawn ninjas that defeat specific enemy types most proficiently. Once a wave is defeated you’re given a short grace period to use your collected resources to build or upgrade ninja houses. NinjaTown, under the paint is the typical tower-defense fun bus, but under the hood, concealed under the headlights, is something much greater.

Let it be clear that NinjaTown isn't your typical tower-defense game. Ninjatown feels fresh and interesting because of its special commando ninja abilities. Initiate Commando abilities to give your army an edge over overwhelming odds. At the end of each level you’re shown a slot machine where you’re randomly given one of the four tokens that you can place on screen in game to change the dynamics of your army or the enemies in your favor. Placing a ninja droppings token on the street will cause all nearby enemies to slow their movement, giving your ninjas an advantage. Beware though: the availability of tokens is limited. So you can’t go around throwing things everywhere.

What really makes me enjoy tower-defense games is their brief game play. A Ninjatown level lasts an average of 15 minutes, so, as you’d expect, I ate it up. Within that short time frame you'll be challenged and engaged on the lower screen like you've never been before. Best of all, in its later levels Ninjatown requires constant attention, as it expands its gameplay by adding new abilities and enemy types.

Ninjatown brings a sense character to the tower defense genre. Instead of building a series of bland towers with mounted arrow guns or cannons, you’re creating a ninja army. Sure, it’s a re-skinning of the tower defense idea, but when you re-skin stationary towers with cute demon-killing ninjas and consistently introduce new concepts, you deserve a very honorable, very rare tip of a hat from yours truly.