The Ninja Blog

A while ago I played a neat game called Pacxon, which involved piloting a pac character around a screen, capturing screen area and avoiding baddies. It was a classic and did extremely well.

LightFlight takes the same idea, bolts on a story and sweet graphics and mouse-controlled goodness. I have to say I really enjoyed the mechanic, particularly the change to mouse controls which allows for completely free-form “cutting”.

There are a vast number of baddies that have beautiful patterns and synchronous movement. If you play one game today, play LightFlight

Play LightFlight here, now!

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Further to my previous post  here, here is the first game to be released as a result of the Ninja Kiwi in-house game design competition, 1-Up.

As a reminder this game was built from scratch with no pre-planning in 2 weeks of standard working days.

Megan the Fox is a single screen panicky action platformer where you play Megan, the unassuming (:P) Fox. She only has one thing on her mind, SURVIVAL. The cute beasties are relentless, vicious and undeserving of their cute, harmless looks. Scoring is hilariously low, but see if you can beat my 389

Play Megan the Fox now!

For more info on Ninja Kiwi Games follow us on twitter here –>

We’ve come to the end of our competition and it’s played out almost like a cruel psychological experiment in some ways One team had ambitious plans only to implode despite tremendous effort.

Meet the teams

Chad(Lead coder on Bloons Supermonkey and Destructo Truck) and Jim (lead artist on Knight Elite and Destructo Truck among others) were building a musical puzzle game that was extremely difficult to pull off.  Two weeks is actually a very short time to complete a finished game as they learned.

Next team were Derek (Boombot, Powerpool, Power Pinball, SAS) and Josh (Potion Panic 2, Purebred). They got the long straw and chose “Platform”, and finished just on the 830am whistle. Check out the post on their game here.

Finally, the third team was Jo (SAS, SAS2, Knight Elite, Meeblings) and Simon (Bloons Monkey iPhone port). They built a crazy musical defense game we’ll release next week

Voting will take place on Newgrounds 1 week from the date the game is released. Scores will be finalised 1 week after they go live on Newgrounds and will be posted back here.

Check out Megan the Fox!

For more info on Ninja Kiwi Games follow us on twitter here —>

In the beginning, Ninja Kiwi made small flash games. This was a necessity we thought because we wanted frequent game releases that were traffic drivers to the Ninja Kiwi site. Several of our early games (Straight Dice, Keypad Kaos, Tabuto to name a few) were made in a single day. Just me and Stephen working 8-10 hours on a single game concept and releasing it at the end of the day. Even “bigger” games like our tremendously popular “Bloons” only took us around a month or so and that was part-time. It wasn’t really until SAS: Zombie Assault 2 that design scopes and timeframes started really stretching out, and these days most games are 3-4 months with 1.5-2 people full time on them. Knight Elite took around 12 man-months. Add to that the multiple major projects we have on now and the rather bloated pipeline of yet more big time-intensive projects we have on the to-do and I thought we needed a periodical change-up.

Wary of losing the skill of the “short-game” as well as tiring ourselves out on long, complicated, and sometimes mentally exhausting projects I thought it might be good to start up a regular in-house competition.

1-Up is the result.

1-Up splits our team into pairs and they are given 2 weeks to complete an entire game. In this, our inaugural comp, Stephen and I had the teams draw straws for a genre, and from Platform, Defense and Puzzle, they set off with the goal of making the best game.

At this point we’re just past the halfway point. Games are due to be handed in completed on Wednesday 9th of June at 830am (Wellington time) and things are going well. At this point everything needs to be (and is) in the final stages as there are always a bunch of last minute bugs and polish needed.

Keep an eye on this blog or our twitter for releases and more info on the 1-Up competition.

Chris

Castle Wars was a tremendously popular flash strategy game released a couple of years ago. It’s had tens of millions of plays and has a large following. A few weeks back we wrote about the beta launch, and the developer has been working hard on finishing this beautiful sequel and we’re finally there!

Castle Wars 2 offers a pretty unique game experience. The objective is to use your cards (dealt to your hand from a customisable deck) to either destroy your opponent, or be the first to build your castle up to 100. There is a very clever mixture of cards that allow for a variety of strategies. There will be occasions where you can bring your opponent to the brink of death only to have them play “Babylon” (which gives you +30 to you castle) as the last minute. These last minute saves really make the game for me. In Castle Wars 2, it really isn’t over ’til it’s over.

I won’t be around that much but if you see @Chris in the lobby, that’s me

Play Castle Wars 2 now!

For more info on Ninja Kiwi Games follow us on twitter here —>

Gold of Pirate Bay is our latest sponsored game. In this beautiful gem of a game it’s you’re objective to collect all the gold, easy right?

Well you have to contend with some nasty fish (one particularly evil twin of Nemo) and also avoid running out of air, which, you know, is kind of sucky in a submarine

Enjoy Gold of Pirate Bay!

For more info on Ninja Kiwi Games follow us on twitter here —>

Taking a giant leap from our last outing (Knight Elite) we bring you Destructo Truck.

Playing a truck driving maniac with a penchant for suburban destruction you embark on a mission of simple clarity: Destroy everything, salvage wreckage for money to upgrade your beasty truck, rinse and repeat.

We’ve kept the mechanic dead simple. Time your launch with the right arrow key and try to sync it up with the green “Go” light. Your timing will affect your ramp acceleration speed and as a consequence the distance you can travel/wreckage you can cause. Every now and then you’ll have salvaged enough scrap to pay for upgrades to your truck and ramp enabling you to go further and wreak more havoc.

My favourite thing about the game are the “smash streaks”. These are rewards that get unlocked as you hit certain score milestones and are activated by the spacebar. The friendly mammoth is every bit as awesome as it sounds.

Play Destructo Truck now!

For more info on Ninja Kiwi games follow us on twitter here —>

Hi all, we’re a couple of weeks out now from testing our first Facebook game. It’s not going to be in it’s finished state but the bulk of the gameplay will be there and I’m putting out the call to see if anyone would like to be part of the trial. Given it’s a Facebook game you’ll need a Facebook account, and in order to do that you need to be aged 13+ (this is part of the Facebook terms and conditions).

We’ve got a signup page here –>. When the Beta is ready we’ll send you an invite and you’ll be able to play the game.

The game is about horse racing. That said, it’s not a horse racing game. Purebred is about gaining wealth through building a stable of champion horses, and more importantly champion bloodlines. You breed new horses, from your own horses or from friends and through training and racing refine your bloodlines to develop stronger and faster horses. It’s extremely fun

Keep your eyes peeled here and on our Twitter for the “beta-is-live” announcement. Shouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks away.

Traverse is a very clever sliding puzzle game we’ve sponsored and I’m very pleased to now share it with you all.

The mechanic is fairly simple, you need to get to the exit. Using the arrow keys you slide yourself around the screen being careful not to fly off the edges. While the mechanic itself isn’t unique there are a number of level design elements that are and they can turn the rudimentary into the tricky, tricky

Enjoy Traverse!

For more info on Ninja Kiwi games follow us on Twitter here —>

Well, you know we love Monkeys right? So when Monkey Manic came up for sponsorship it was hard to say no.

This game continues our theme of pixelly games of  late. Monkey Manic is a beautifully simplified platformer that I found deceptively tricky. All you need to do is find, and navigate your way to the banana. Simple, right?

Apparently not. I think what is required is a slightly different brain than mine. I’d often die 3 times before realising that I was going about it all the wrong way. PS, play with volume on, it’s a very simple but shake-a-riffic soundtrack!

Care to take the Monkey Manic challenge?

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