I recently downloaded and started playing a great little game called Clumsy Ninja. This game was actually released in November of 2013, so it isn’t brand new, but I have been having a lot of fun with it. Here is the skinny on this game.
For lack of a better category in which to place it, I have to call Clumsy Ninja an adventure game. The objective of the game is for the player to train an extremely clumsy ninja novice to jump, climb, run, and fight. The motion engine on the ninja character is incredibly lifelike for a free, downloadable app, and the training ground that is the game’s background is rendered in beautiful colors. This game is overall pretty to look at, and smooth to play.
The ninja is actually adorable. He has somewhat childlike proportions, and especially child like eyes. It is easy for the player to step into the role of trainer and feel responsibility for the little guy. It doesn’t hurt that the ninja runs up to the screen for a high five after each accomplishment.
Messing with the ninja is a lot of fun. In the first couple of levels, he is extremely clumsy, and can barely stay on his feet. In fact, he reminded me of the infamous running man game from years ago in which the greatest challenge was keeping the runner on his feet. Clumsy ninja is isn’t quite that bad, but he does require a lot of help, and falls down quite a bit. The player has full control over the ninja’s movements if he wants them, or can give simple commands that the ninja fulfills on his own (e.g. the player can drag the ninja around by the hand, or simply tap an area on the ground to make the ninja walk there). This can provide a lot of entertainment. I’ve spent quite a bit of game play time spinning the ninja round and round in circles.
Clumsy Ninja is free in the iTunes store and on Google Play. The good news is that the game is not running over with advertisements (I only see about one per hour). The bad news is that the game does want players to make in game purchases. Once the ninja has played with a toy, such as a trampoline or a rubber ball, there is a wait time to use the item again. Fortunately, there is no vital item that requires a real money purchase.
The worst part of this game is the fact that there is very little payoff. There is a small storyline at the beginning that seems to say that the ninja’s overarching mission is to rescue his friend Kira, but the game doesn’t talk about it much. He does get progressively less clumsy, but there isn’t a whole lot for him to do in the game. At level sixteen the ninja gets to travel to the mountain, which is a whole new training ground, but the ninja does the exact same training exercises there—it’s just a new background. This was pretty disappointing.
Overall, this is a fun game to play with just to mess with the ninja and admire current mobile game technology. There is little payoff, so I recommend just using it as a time filler instead of yet another tetris knockoff.
Therefore I Geek 