Ninja360° – Review

Ninja360° has been released by DoereiGames (Bloom＊Block) to no fanfare whatsoever but is all kinds of amazing. Seriously. Think of a kind of amazing: that’s what kind of amazing it is.

You’re on a small level and have to collect all the coins to finish it. When you’re standing on the level, it rotates with you as you move, Mario Galaxy-style. When you’re jumping, the level is stationary and you can take advantage of this to get better times or mess up and fall off. If you fall off and die, you don’t lose, you just go back to the start or a checkpoint, with your collected coins still collected. You can sometimes exploit this for faster times.

The big addictive hook comes from trying to earn better times, which are rewarded with medals. It’s almost a puzzle trying to get gold medals, because the times are so difficult to achieve that you’ve gotta really think outside the box to achieve them. You can watch videos of a few levels at the start and I guarantee you’ll think: “wow, I’d never have thought to do that.” Also, if you achieve a silver medal it unlocks a video demonstration of how to achieve gold. And some are just so clever, and use the basic mechanics in such awesome ways, that it’s impossible not to love the game for its sneakiness.

It looks great, with humorously animated backgrounds that you can change at will. It also controls really well, for the most part. There are occasions where you’ll want to wall-jump and the ninja will open a parachute to glide, making you slip off the wall. These times aren’t that common, though, and the levels are so small that even if it happens, you’ll rarely lose more than ten seconds of progress.

And how much content is there? 99 levels. 99! And it costs only 80 points. Can’t really argue with value like this.