The Ninja Blog

Time for the third installment from Game Slam 2011 – Hunt or Die!, by Lee Grey and Simon Armstrong. This little package of pixel-art adventure exploration awesomeness stayed very true to Lee and Simon’s original vision for a tight, clean run-jump-shoot game about a prehistoric hunter gathering food.

Prehistory was hard times, and in Hunt or Die it’s very much a kill-or-be-killed kind of world. You don’t have to venture far from your home fire to meet your first animals. And by meet we mean meat. Cursed by a destructively high metabolism, you must shoot the animals you see in order to maintain your health. Fortunately you’re rolling pre-agrarian style, so there’s an endless supply of wood for your infinite arrows. At first the critters just try to get the heck away from you, and right about then you meet your first cougar or killer bee and they bring the fight back to you. Keep your eyes sharp if a fight takes you into nightfall, as you’ll have to take down any predators by picking out their silhouettes. Tunnels and rock towers take you to strange, wonderful places where you can find secrets and help fill up the ample achievements that come from successful hunting. Keep an eye out for ostriches, as they haven’t devolved their wings quite yet and can help explore the high places. Checkpoint shrines frequent the landscape and help you pick up where you left off if you catch the wrong end of a giant mantis. Grab your bow and jumping feet – there is much fun and exploration to be had in this clever, richly 8-bit world.

Play Hunt or Die! now only on Ninja Kiwi.

Revealing the second of the four games created during Ninja Kiwi’s Game Slam 2011 – Battle Blocks, by Tosh Baird and Warwick Urquhart. This idea had been simmering in Tosh’s brain for some time, and Game Slam provided the outlet – creating a hybrid of classic puzzle-piece gameplay with hold-the-line tower defense mechanics.

Puzzle pieces get generated in four containers, then those pieces are placed on the grid as mini-towers that provide rocket attacks, shield walls, or energy. Combine these together on the grid in a complete 3×3 and they become a mega tower, juicing up their abilities in a big way. Waves of relentless attackers swarm your defenses over ever increasing attack lanes, but you also have repair options and superweapons to help smack them down. And about midway through the 5o waves you start seeing purple pieces entering the mix – you can’t use energy to create that color but a purple mega beam tower that both slows and damages attackers is precious to have. It might seem like a manageable number of tactics, but you’ll be amazed how much is going on in this excellent puzzle/defense hybrid. The game saves every five levels, so you’ll have a bit of a cushion to fall back on. See if you’re up to the challenge of all 50 waves.

Play Battle Blocks now only on Ninja Kiwi.

Yeah we know, match -3 games have been done to death. Or have they? That’s what we thought before we checked this game out. It’s kind of like Puzzle Quest or Montezuma only with a more contemporary and fun theme. Lots of abilities, upgrades, gear to get. We highly recommend playing this game.

BioGems, a new Puzzle Game on Ninja Kiwi

This weeks Game Slam release is Flur, by Chad Edwards and Derek Wu. In their words “Flur aims to be a progressive casual adventure with engaging and nonthreatening gameplay.”

Flur is an original arcadey/sandy-boxy floaty sort of dream game. You control a fairy of the same name floating through a boundless space collecting spritelings that come in a variety of increasingly trippy formations. In the beginning, you’re flying around grabbing singles, doubles, the odd little cluster but things start to ramp up when the red spritelings appear, these can kill you (although death is temporary and of relatively small consequence) if they are connected in formation to a green spriteling. The way to tackle these is to carefully harvest the greens off and once the red is no longer connected it bursts into a little shower of greens, and if you are lucky a special power.

All movement and power activation is controlled by the mouse, and the execution is really tight. This is a game I think many of you will find yourselves melting into as time starts to wash over you.

Play Flur now only on Ninja Kiwi.

Game Slam is something that has become an annual event here. No particular time of year but it does seem to fall in the winter where we are, something to break up the sometimes mammoth projects guys can find themselves buried in for months on end. The format last year was 3 teams of 2 given two weeks to produce an original new game of their own design. Last year from 3 teams 2 managed to complete games, Megan the Fox and Beatstreak 3000. This year the ante has been upped all around with 5 teams of 2 given 3 weeks with a little pre-planning time. This year one team was struck down by flu but we’ve ended up with four games, each is pretty unique and all are fun. As usual we’ll release one game each week for people to enjoy and comment on. This week it’s Flur…

Step 1 – Rob Bank

Step 2 – Leap into stolen getaway car

Step 3 – Tear it up down the highway with windows wide open so that money flies all over the show

Step 4 – Avoid the suicidal police and get to the end of the stage

Reckless Getaway is a pretty crazy play experience. On the one hand it’s tremendously fun. The controls are a little iffy but the whole driving fast and smashing things is always going to be a laugh.

Ok so the video speaks for itself. The one thing that really, really, really really irritated me about it was the level progression. Each level has the objective not only of reaching the end, but collecting points. Points are earned in a ton of different ways (such as smashing other cars) but the all important coins are vital, and this is where it gets me. Simply getting to the end will unlock the next level but only to a point. You will be required to perfect those levels in order to unlock the next set. The bar is set pretty high for a pick-up-and-put-down sort of game experience. In Reckless Getaway you need to play the first 4 levels quite a lot in order to get to the next lot. The bar is set so high here that I needed to play each level literally dozens of times in order to get to the next bunch.

But, this is the thing. I still persevered.  I shouldn’t have, I was angry with the game for being so hard. I wanted to see what was next. It’s mean and unfair waaaaah. But I still kept on going.

Get Reckless Getaway, tremendously annoying hard fun.

For those of you who are fans of the BTD4 iPhone app, you’ll already be playing challenge modes. For those who haven’t, we have updated the web version of the game with a new game mode in the new tab called challenges. Each challenge restricts your play in some way to force you to play in new and interesting ways. Some challenges will restrict your tower choices, others will limit your lives more, and others will change the game in even bigger ways. Stay posted for more challenges regularly. Play the first 2 challenges now.

Game: Solipskier

Price: $0.99USD (Universal App)

Reason I bought it: Played around briefly with the flash version, wanted to see how it worked on iOS.

What I knew of it in advance: A bit, not much more to it than that actually.

Overview – This is a weird play experience for me. The game is super awesome cool for the first 10-20 seconds. You draw a line that a guy skis along while rock music plays. You the objective is to get as many points as you can. There are hoops to ski through although this isn’t particularly challenging, the reward is not missing them as your score multiplies with each successive hoop. There are also “Tunnels” which are a series of Blue hoops, and give you many, many points.

Tunnels give many points

Everything is going awesome but then I have this weird feeling. I don’t care about the score. I don’t care about the game, and I can’t imagine how many times I’ve opened the game to show somebody the neat mechanic. I just don’t feel like finishing a game. It’s sort of like the whole game is a bonus stage. Immensely fun but ultimately unfulfilling if that’s all there is to it. Can you imagine if there was a Streetfighter game that was just the car smashing stage over and over again?

Unfulfilling.

Still, it’s a damn fun time, albeit briefly. Over and over again…

Summary – Neat but don’t expect to play for more than a minute or so.

If you want it, grab a copy here –>

Chris