I think all young people today have vivid, poignant memories of their final ninja academy exams. Who could forget those bittersweet moments while scaling the infinite training caves, leaping over skeletons, inferno bats, and dart gargoyles; and realizing that this would be the last time you would ascend the consecrated caverns as a student? Or ever again, in some cases. Those ninja training caves could be brutal. Chubby Ninja lets you relive those nostalgic days when you ceased being a young student in a gray catsuit and truly became, for the first time, a ninja.
Skirt about the training cavern using the left and right [arrow] keys. Jump by tapping [up] or [A], and double-tap to double-jump. You can also use various ninja powers, including a speedy dash-attack with the [D] or [X] keys, and flight (!) with the [space] bar or [S] keys. These powers take up Spirit, which can be replenished with blue spirit-filled vials. You can also collect hearts to replenish life, ninja powder to be invisible, and various other power-ups to increase your score.
Your main task is to climb and climb and climb, making sure not to fall or get gobbled up by the forced upward scrolling. You also want to avoid getting beaten up by various training-cave-dwelling bad guys. Certain bad guys will appear only once per game, and their defeat constitutes a successful "challenge" (read: "achievement"). Other challenges include reaching a certain altitude, killing a certain number of bad guys, and collecting certain items. Victory seems to be a function of endurance and the completion of challenges, without any actual endpoint. The high score, not the finish line, is your goal.
Gameplay goes pretty quickly, and even though the platforming isn't too tricky, the forced scrolling keeps the pressure on, so you might find yourself dying before you expect it. But since the levels are randomly, infinitely generated, and since there are always challenges to complete, you will be glad to try playing again. The cute design also encourages replay: skeletons and other villains bop along in a not-so-villainous way, and the protagonist looks like a little baby ninja in a little gray onesie.
Chubby Ninja is great for little snack-sized bits of platforming without ever feeling stale or repetitive. Plus it may help you remember bygone days at the ninja dojo. Try not to get too misty-eyed with nostalgia, or you'll miss that double-jump.
Have to admit that after dying in the first 10 seconds I thought: "Why bother?".
Gave it another chance and still thought the same thing. After a third try it just mustn't be my kind of thing.
It might look enticing but the gameplay is lacking.
Three complaints: you can't control your jump height, you can't move down through platforms, and attacking frequently requires you take damage. I also think the difficulty ramps up too fast when
The bats appear.
Furthermore, as far as I can tell
There aren't any shortcuts--you always start from the beginning. I'm getting bored with running through what I've already done a few times...
I was of the same opinion as kc at first however once I realised that the keys are just arrow keys & s/d it made it easier to take on board (the intro screen makes it seem far more complicated than it should be) and the game grew on me. It's basically a doodlejump style game for those who played that.
There's some nice stuff in there and it's obviously had a lot of love. However for my personal tastes I would've preferred a game mechanic that didn't have the auto-scroll of death (or perhaps just had phases of it instead) or perhaps the same game but made into a side-scrolling/or puzzle platformer instead.
Woo-ee! Now that was addicting, and exciting. I've thus far only achieved 6842 points, but I'm definitely favorite-ing this. Fantastic.
I think the scrolling screen of death takes away a lot of potential fun. Randomly generated platforms and an instant death timer are not a good combination.
This game reminded me a lot of Tower Climb, which was featured in a Weekend Download. That game was more entertaining because it was about observing the situation and conserving resources so you didn't end up trapped or unable to keep climbing.
I still see myself playing this at work.
One thing it took me a few games to figure out is that you can double-jump. It becomes much less of a resource-conservation game once you know that.
I enjoyed this a lot. Not quite as much as Tower of Greed, but it was similarly pleasant.
The ability to double jump and fly removes almost any possibility of not being to jump to a new platform before the scroll catches up.
Note that you can double jump after you do a dash, even if you already double jumped already. Sometimes this will be better than flying.
Bats are annoying. And besides the first few tries, most of my death were due to long stretches of no blue vials, but still had a good time.
For some reason, I've come back to this game three times today. it's almost as addicting as dungeon in the sky. In fact, it's preventing me from working on that game. *fumes*
I would agree with JIGuest above me that sometimes, a dash-jump is more useful, but
remember that it uses more energy. I spent most of a game using it, then I ran into a low-refill zone. I've only used it for emergency screen-crosses only since. use flying to reach a just out of reach ledge.
Sorry for the double post but,
Hey! Watch out! Listen!
Around the 1000 foot mark, watch out for the bearded man. It's
Chuck Norris
and he will instantly kill you if you attack him. Hitting him gives you an challenge, though, so if you really need one, you could give up your progress for it.
I had completed six challenges before it happened to me, and I still had time for more. *fumes again*
I don't know if it's because I run a Mac, use Chrome, or some unholy combination of the two, but this game isn't receiving any keyboard input. I can click the buttons just fine with my mouse, but it won't respond to any input from the keyboard. This makes me a very sad panda :(
However, Safari seems to work OK. Weirdness.
[I'm using a Mac, and the keyboard functions properly for me in the latest versions of Chrome and Firefox. -Jay]
This game is awesome! So fun and challenging... I love all the whacky challenges and how you approach every retry a different way depending on what challenge you're tackling. It's kind of like a combination between Achievement Unlocked and awesome classic platforming fun. Plus when I get bored/frustrated, I just come back to it later and its just as fun.
I still have to get:
Albino bat challenge (has anyone seen this bat yet? I don't think I have)
Moses challenge (I definitely don't think i've seen moses, unless I mistook him for Chuck Norris)
15000 gold challenge. SO HARD
and obviously, overachiever challenge.
Has anyone seen the albino bat? That's the last achievement I need. I was able to get to about 2700ft before literally no more energy drinks spawned and I couldn't ascend further.
This is definitely a slow burner - after playing it a few times and thinking it's alright...I've now found myself coming back to play it and again; sign of a good game in my book!
I've never liked a game that features Falling Off The Bottom. I refer to this as FOTB, and it's in my top 5 computer game sins, along with mazes, and pixel-hunting.
Predictably, I didn't like this either.
Albino bat - I finally got this one after trying over and over (last challenge I needed too). As far as I can tell it's random - I got it at 1,263 feet. Good luck!
Was having the same issue as dotcomlarry. Updated Flash to 10.1 for OSX and all is working now.
Update