Ninjatown

I recently bought Ninjatown for the DS, and I'm enjoying it immensely.

It's an RTS, very similar in mechanics to Desktop Tower Defence but it's far more than just a re-skin.

The basic idea is that wee devils (the bad guys) have invaded Ninja Town in order to steal the secret recipe for ninja cookies. You play a series of levels, each with entry points where the bad guys spawn, and exit points they'll try and reach (or an objective they'll try and attack). Your job is to stop them - let too many through and you fail the level. You stop them by placing and upgrading different types of ninja huts, each of which spawns two ninjas appropriate to the type of hut. Each type of ninja has different abilities (slow and powerful, faster and weedier, ranged attack, etc.), and will automatically attack any wee devil that comes near. Building and upgrading huts costs currency (ninja cookies), so you have to choose your combinations carefully. There doesn't appear to be much scope for recovering from wrong decisions within each level, but restarting is fairly painless unless you've got most of the way through (each level taking about 15 minutes).

I don't want to write an in-depth review, but the mechanics are simple and solid. The real charm comes from the humour. The progression of the story is pleasingly silly and there are more humourous touches than I care to count. From the different types of ninja (anti-ninja, business ninja and sniper ninja to name a few), to the special powers (including ninja baby and ninja droppings), and the characters in the story - all are charmingly ludicrous. I'm totally loving it.

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