The Ninja Blog

While we love making and playing our Tower Defense and Zombie games, for the house that Bloons built puzzlers are always going to be near and dear to our hearts. But in true Ninja Kiwi style we want more from our puzzlers. We want the skill-based, predictive play expected from any good puzzle game, but when do we get the truckload of powerups for tactical richness, a hint of aiming and twitch play, and some enemies to actually and push us to make smart, fast decisions under pressure. Bring on Brilliant Crystals, a simple color match shooter on the surface, but with all the depth we’d want to see beyond that.

Brilliant Crystals starts off easily enough – match 3 or more like colors to clear patches of Crystal Leaves. As these crystals shatter, they fill up your potion bottles, each of which will activate a power-up when full. These power-ups fire automatically on your next shot, and several can fire at once if the potions all filled at the same time, creating some amazing power-up combos. To finish each level, you have to clear crystals all the way to the edge of the puzzle to cause new Crystal Leaves to grow in, and when they do, they bring the Brilliant Crystal closer. These Brilliant Crystals are the goal of the game, since invaders called Creepers swarmed the Crystal Forest and drained the Brilliant Crystals of their power. Your job as Who the Owl is to find these diamond-like crystals and hit them once with each color available, restoring their energy and power.

This all starts out simple enough when there are only 3 colors and one Brilliant Crystal to restore. But as the game progresses you get up to 7 colors in the puzzle, which gives you more potions and power-ups but also makes matches rarer and smaller, and you have to restore multiple Brilliant Crystals within the allotted time. On top of that, the Creepers start to make an appearance – gray crystals covered in parasitic vines that will drain surrounding crystals of their color, further reducing your match possibilities. Spiked Creepers are even tougher, and then Void Spirits fly directly at you and can shield themselves with a ring of crystals. These enemies have to be “islanded” by destroying the crystals that connect them to the rest of the puzzle or hit with power-ups.

Fortunately, there are tons of power-ups – 20 to be exact – and they range from crystal clearing pyrotechnics to ones that reorder the whole puzzle to ones that add time or increase your score (all detailed in the How To Play option on the main menu). And while designed to be played in auto-activate mode, a whole new strategic layer unfolds when you begin stoppering the potion bottles with a click and reserving power-ups for when you want to use them. In true Mario Kart-style fashion, though, you don’t get anything new if you hold on to the ones you have, so it’s a fun, delicate balance. But all you need is one taste of a well aimed Multi-Shot stacked with a Giant’s Fist and a Forked Lightning to understand just how much awesome you can cram into one shot.

Enough reading, give Brilliant Crystals a play here, and as always let us know what you think.

We just launched a new mode for SAS3, Purge.

Purge requires you and your team (it’s MP only) to quickly eliminate all the nests before the flow of Zombies becomes truly overwhelming. It’s tight, high risk and high fun. As mentioned this is only available on Multiplayer and you’ll see it in the regular map rotation. This weekend only we have an XP bonus for playing Purge so get in and rank up people!

Enjoy!

Chris

The Spike Factory is the 2nd new tower added for this year’s updates to the game. The tower works by generating road spikes (or ‘tacks’ as some call them) on the track nearby the tower. This tower is unique in that it isn’t controlled by you – like the mortar tower or the dartling gun, nor is it ‘intelligent’ like the other towers. That means it doesn’t target bloons directly, instead just going about its work quietly by filling up the spaces around it with super sharp piles of road spikes. Careful placement will have this tower work really well for you.

Its level 5 super upgrade is the Spike Storm – which fills the WHOLE TRACK with loads of short lived, but extra powerful road spikes. Once you have a critical mass of these cranking away, there isn’t much the bloons can do. Beware though that the storm only bursts every 15 seconds or so, and multiple towers will be on their own timer which starts when the upgrade is purchased (during the round) or when the round starts (if purchased between rounds). You will want to stagger your spike storms so that they burst at different times to maximise their poppage potential.

Have fun with the new tower!

This is the third episode in the 1112 series. 1112 is a ‘point and click’ style adventure. This genre is going through a renaissance on touch devices, and 1112 is a great example of this new generation of adventure puzzle games.

The setting is the contemporary world, seen through the surreal, mixed up lens of our mentally unstable protagonist, Louis. He appears to be experiencing some kind of mental breakdown, and keeps teleporting, losing time, and getting involved with unusual characters who are as imbalanced as he is.

Episode three finds Louis transported back to his home town, Jalonsville, which is populated by characters that would be at home in an episode of Northern Exposure or Twin Peaks.

The first thing that stands out about 1112 is the art style. The art is very detailed and lifelike, and has been rendered with great attention to detail. It has the look of rotoscoped art, but retains a humanistic, hand painted feel.

The game makes use of iOS touch gestures such as multi touch interaction ( for example, using two fingers to rotate a safe’s dial ) and a three finger tap to bring up direction arrows you use to navigate through the environments.

The main character, Louis, has a dry and slightly cynical sense of humour. Many objects are red herrings, and Louis often has some witty crack to make about his surroundings as you investigate and examine things.

The narrative unfolds as you reach various milestones. One thing that makes the puzzles difficult is that various settings subtly change at different times in the story. The verbal reactions of certain characters will change to fit a new opportunity or accomplishment, so you find yourself re-visiting the same places over and over, looking for updates and changes. This makes the game both richer and more frustrating. Very often a subtle detail that at first appears to have no role in the game will come back into play and suddenly be interactive in a way is was not before, so it’s important to take note of every object you encounter, just in case you need it later.

Overall, 1112 is very successful at creating a well-realised mood and engaging the player. The sound effects and music have been given as much attention as the artwork, and the combination of great art, sound, and story, produces a rich and immerse experience. This episode is bigger in scope, and more difficult than the earlier episodes, which will please hardcore adventure game fans, and challenge newcomers to the genre.

Get 1112 episode 3 here

Our fourth and final game from the 2011 Game Slam is Awesome Ghosts vs Stupid Zombies by Josh Catt and Tamihana Greaves.

The game plays like a strategy type board game. Taking turns you deploy your ghosts onto the play area in an effort to destroy your opponents tombstones. The key to the game like many strategy games is territory. More territory give you more options for unit deployment but also the more of the graveyard you control, the faster your downed units regenerate. Using this technique, it is possible to entirely choke your opponent out of the game.

As the campaign progresses you’ll be introduced to bigger and more powerful unit types

Understandably, Death is a beefy fellow indeed.

In addition to the 12 levels of campaign, you can also play 2 player skirmishes that will pit you against a friend. To me this is seriously fun and allows for much jumping around yelling “in your face” followed by an extensive victory dance.

Play Awesome Ghosts vs Stupid Zombies now!

We pushed this quietly live last week but wanted to hold off announcing until we knew it was all working well.

Basically after you’ve clicked on the “Private Match” button you can now either start a new lobby or join an existing one:

If you know the lobby ID of a game a friend has set up then you can enter it in here. You can theoretically create your own lobby number by typing in any number you like into the join box and sharing that. This also means you can  reuse the same number over and over again…

Failing joining a lobby just hit create new and

copy that number to your clipboard and share is anywhere you like to get friends to join you.

Enjoy!

Play SAS: Zombie Assault 3 now!

To blow off a little steam post game slam and have a bit of competitive fun, today we went Karting.

The winning team was Chad and Phil, fastest lap and fastest average lap also going to Chad, pictured below being relentlessly hunted down by ScottAlways bad to crash out right in front of the photographer…

To play the games 4 teams made during the 3 week Game Slam:

Flur by Chad and Derek

Battle Blocks Defense by Tosh and Warwick

Hunt or Die by Lee and Simon

Awesome Ghosts vs Stupid Zombies (Coming soon) by Josh and Tamihana

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