Game Reviews

Ninja Up!

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iOS
| Ninja Up!
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Ninja Up!
|
iOS
| Ninja Up!

Gameloft games are sometimes guilty of being a little bloated. These are console-style titles squished down into a portable size, and sometimes it just doesn't quite work.

Ninja Up! feels like it's guilty of the opposite. It's a simple line-drawing Doodle Jump riff that for your first few bounces feels rather one-note.

But the higher you go, the more interesting the game gets. You're not just bouncing aimlessly, you're trying to miss girders and other ninja as well.

Bounce with me

The most original thing the game offers comes in the shape of your bouncing apparatus. Rather than hopping from platform to platform, you need to draw a new rope every time you want to spring upwards.

Longer ropes might make for a safer landing area, but they won't toss you that far into the air. Shorter ones have a lot more bounce, but there's a very real risk you'll miss them entirely and plummet to your death.

You can angle your jumps if you're clever, making your little ninja land at an angle so he springs off towards the edge of the screen.

This is a vital skill to learn, because as you bounce higher you'll be confronted with obstacles you need to avoid. Being able to quickly alter the course of your ninja is key to getting as high as you can.

The game looks perfectly acceptable, and the soundtrack and sound effects set off the package nicely.

Rope tricks

Yes, Ninja Up! suffers the same fate as most games in the genre and gets a bit dull after a couple of hours. But at least it tries to do something different before your attention starts to wander.

It's not perfect, but if you want something quick and challenging to pop on your phone or tablet then you could do a lot worse than checking this out.

Ninja Up!

A well put together, reasonably original arcade game. Ninja Up! won't hold your attention for long, but you'll have fun with it while it does
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.