Everybody loves combinations. Would you rather eat a peanut butter sandwich? Or would you rather put some jelly on that baby and really go to town? Mmmm. Mmmm. Yeah, you're diggin' it. We can tell. Everything is better with a partner, and so this week at Jay is Games we've brought you only the finest in unholy unions represented here for you in glorious gaming format. Because we couldn't figure out a way to actually send you a fantastical conglomeration of penguin-ninja-UFO that wouldn't result in having to explain ourselves to the proper authorities. Which reminds me. If anyone asks, we were at your place last night, okay? No, no reason.
Must Pop Words - Bart Bonte and word puzzles. Hmm, maybe not that unusual. How about... with a penguin?! Are your minds sufficiently blown now? We hope not, because you've got to type words out of the falling balloons before they reach the top of the screen and something unpleasant happens! Like maybe JIG gets taken over by a flock of angry penguin. Probably not. But maybe.
Ninjufo - Holy unlikely plot device, JIG Fans! He was just your ordinary ninja, until the bite of a radioactive UFO turned him into your friendly neighbourhood... Ninjufo! But with great shurikens, there must also come stealth gameplay, and so Ninjufo will need to infiltrate the evil alien base and make off with fifty cases of secret evidence. It is nature's way.
Dig Droid - Robots and manual labor may not seem unusual... until you remember that robots are typically intent on being our iron-fisted overlords! No, Jay, let go! I won't be silenced any longer! They have to help stop the menace! They have to keep this little droid busy digging a path through Mars in this puzzle game or he'll enslave us all! 
Kinpira - ... what? You think there's something suspicious about this little Mario-esque game about tiny samurai children and massive property damage, don't you? There certainly aren't any subliminal messages hidden in the sinisterly catchy music, if that's what you're implying!!... oh, you weren't implying that? Uh, nevermind. No, relax, enjoy the game. (JIGISTHEBESTLOVEJIGJIGJIG)
Semantic Wars - There is nothing strange about combining Hangman with medieval warfare. No, don't try to change my mind. Guessing themed words to earn money to deploy troops and losing money when you miss a letter? That's how they do it in the real world, my friend! Sheesh, crack a newspaper sometime. No, not that one, this one I just printed up. Yeah, all the facts in there are straight. Especially the one about the new cotton candy tax.
Kinpira is A LOT like a game that was posted here awhile ago. I can't remember what the game was called.
Sentokun?
https://jayisgames.com/archives/2009/04/sentokun_in_kamakura.php
Yep, that's it! Thanks Jay.
You're right. The two games are pretty much alike. However, Kinpira has more levels and is mostly in English.
The game looks like Wind Waker, plays a little like Katamari, and is a fun little time waster.
Kinpira is the game that Japanese developer Hyohyohyo has been working on for a long time. This is a 3-level "lite" version. We don't know how far along the final game is.
Sentokun in Kamakura was kind of a joke, where they took one of the levels from Kinpira and replaced some of the characters with rival mascots who were in the news at the time. And then released that level as a teaser for Kinpira.
So this is actually the second teaser for Kinpira. We'll be sure to cover the full game when it's finally complete.
Didn't even get to Kinpira, streaming video ads? No thanks. Not sure if it was Mochi or not, but that is too much.
Ah, that would be the one. I knew I'd played something very similar before. Must remember to come back and play Kinpira again...
Semantic Wars was kinda fun. Hangman was engrossing, to the point where I occasionally forgot to make units and the enemies were attacking my castle. Also, some of the words were misspelled (e.g. "bananna").
Kinpira seems more Goemon then Mario.... The only two problems with it I have is the same music over and over again in every level and that a new advertisement would load every 2 minutes which totally threw off the rhythm
"Semantic Wars" is a decent idea with terrible, terrible execution. For one thing, I found it nearly impossible not to stock up on money at an almost alarming rate: even pressing letters at random tended to increase rather than decrease my money supply, thanks to the +6/-4 pattern. For a six-letter word, for instance, you get $36 by the time you get it right; any fewer than 9 wrong guesses and you've made money. For a 12-letter word, that doubles to 18 wrong letters, and there may not be 18 wrong letters to guess. (And that's at the "hard" level. At the easy level, it's +8/-3.)
Add to that the fact that there's practically no strategy (just keep pressing keys), there's no resource management (just keep making little warriors), there's practically no skill. And: making money is easy; spending it is hard, because you can't use the money while the gateway is busy; which means you can't run out of money without some genuine effort. Plus of course the misspelled words like "darkgray" and "burittos". All in all, what you've got is, frankly, a total mess.
Kinpira: It has video ads which made it nearly impossible for me to get into -.-, Ninjufo: Great game, but why do the shuriken fly a little way forwards, then fly back? You might as well be using a knife :3, Semantic Wars: FAR TOO EASY!, Dig Droid: An alrightish game, Must Pop Words:....I dont know what to say, except Bart Bonte, You Have Done It Again. Thats my mini-review, I wish you all a good day.
I'm having quite a problem with Kinpira. Items with a weight greater than your power require you to press z repeatedly. But i found this to be incredibly unresponsive. I have about the power equal to the days in a year, and i can't manage to lift a tree of 1000. I pulled this off easily in Sentokun in Kamakura. What's the problem? Lag?
Anyone managed to pick up Mt Fuji on Kinpira yet?
Yay! Ever since I played sentokun I've always wanted more, and here it is! It's a nice thing that you can go back to previous levels to get more power, otherwise picking up Mt. Fuji would have been impossible.
Dig Droid is cute, too bad it's so short.
Ninjufo has a nice execution too, fun gameplay. Didn't get very far on this one though.
Kinipira is great, but too short.
I'm not sure what ads are you talking about. I finished the game, and haven't seen any.
Wyndclaw, that was actually one of the main complaints we had with Ninjufo. I would liked to have seen more weapons (after all, the first thing I would do is mod out my UFO), and vary the gameplay a bit beyond "Shuriken, followed by Black Corridor, and Son Of Black Corridor".
I still think it's really clever. It just could have been awesome, too.
@Toni: They're not in the game. They're on the side and change every 30 freakin' seconds! DX
Finally managed to lift Mt. Fuji! Had to do the last level 3 times to rack up enough power.
I have to agree with the others who've griped about the refreshing ads next to Kinpira. It's frustrating to be in the middle of lifting something when an ad all of a sudden refreshes and takes you out of the game. You needlessly end up losing health because of it.
Fun game, bad idea in terms of ad placement.
i was able to pick up Mt. Fuji by
getting my power up to 9 million and killing myself on the spikes enough to go into dragon mode. Poor Mt. Fuji then got picked up, spun around, and thrown of into the horizon.
There's more to Dig Droid than meets the eye. Being only 6 levels, at first I thought it was too short. But when I went back to beat my score (which is time-based), all the levels were different. I played 10 more times and every time the maze was unique (I did screen shots to keep track). So there are at least 60 different levels. For all I know, there could be hundreds.
Here's what I see as the problem: What exactly is the designer going for here in terms of gameplay? Many players (myself included) replay games to better their scores. That doesn't apply here since it seems one never plays the same set of mazes. While not everyone enjoys these types of games, I do like them. But to play again simply for an endless supply of mazes? Even those who like it would get bored.
My only guess for repeated play would be the feature to play an opponent. Otherwise, I think they really missed the boat by not giving the player a defined set of goals for a sense of completion. Unless I'm missing something...
Ninjufo reminded me of the Jig find the gems game. albiet less items needed to win, and stealth and puzzle elements added.
I had so many problems with Kinpira that I tried Sentokun in Kamakura. It was so much easier and less buggy.
Apart from what other people have said about the ads, I found that the game messed with my macbook's volume. I had it quite low, but every time I died and the game reloaded or I was at the level selection screen, it set my volume to full and nearly deafened me and making my partner jump out their skin.
Also I saved three times during play, but when I died and the game reloaded it said I had no saved games. Are they deleted if you die, making you start all over again? If so, what is the point of having a save system in the first place?
I liked Kinpira so much that I went and tried out Sentokun. One thing that got me is that in Sentokun if you throw things and they hit coins, you get the coins which was my only complaint about Kinpira (other than performance).
Can't wait to see more levels.
I have decided that it is in fact, completely impossible to get Mt. Fuji up in the air in one playthrough... Not sure if that was the intent, but I think going through the levels again and again to get enough power is kinda lame and there should be some reward for trying every single possibility the first time you play a level.
I love the effect a Link Dump Friday has on me. My sister is on one computer, I'm on the other. My sister is quietly browsing her anime/ manga, and I suddenly throw my hands up in the air and yel "WOO! IT'S LINK DUMP FRIIIIDDDAYYYY!!!".
Semantic Wars was, as others have pointed out, a strategic mess, yet I enjoyed it all the same. That said, "ITALIAN FOD" [sic]?
I agree with Tahnan about Semantic Wars. The other thing I didn't like was that, when the battle's lost and won, if you're in the middle of working on a word, it just vanishes. I want to know what the word was, dangit!
Please go on a writing course. Your blogs make no sense. I mean, what the heck does this mean?
"Because we couldn't figure out a way to actually send you a fantastical conglomoration of penguin-ninja-UFO that wouldn't result in having to explain ourselves to the proper authorities."
And you spell it conglomeration btw.
[Edit: The entry made perfect sense to me (maybe try re-reading it?). Thanks for pointing out the typo. -Jay]
The Semantic Wars characters look a lot like (if not the same as) Patapon, that makes the game looses its originality.
Kinpira is cute! I only played for 5 minutes now and already addicted ^^
Thanks for the review!
I also found Kinpira to be buggy. It doesn't register your Z presses if you do them faster than it can take it. Also, the bigger the item you're lifting, and the more things it has to knock into, the slower it goes. If it gets slow enough, Firefox just crashes. I'm using a fairly new Macbook and not running any other taxing programs. So yeah, hope he works on that for the next release.
Kinpira:
For Mt. Fuji:
Don't forget that you can pick up the scenery. By the time you get to Mt. Fuji, you should be perfectly capable of throwing the surrounding mountains around, which will further boost your strength. By the time you get to Mt. Fuji itself, having picked the level clean, you should have somewhere around 5 million strength.
And don't forget that if you go down to 1 HP, you go into Dragon Mode, where your strength points are worth double.
I do wish the game crashed less (though that could be Shockwave Player) and let me mute the music and not just the sound. Other than that, I enjoyed it and want more.
Sorry you're having problems deciphering things, Lewis. And I do (yes, honestly) apologize for the typo. Clearly I should have proofread more closely. Maybe then I could have turned that frown of yours upside-down! :)
I have to agree with the remarks about "Semantic Wars". It's kind of a fun idea but the game is an abomination. Why do the little characters move only one frame every ten seconds? Why the stupid delay after guessing a letter before I can guess another one? Who the heck chose the "category" identifiers? Why is it so terminally easy??
FITE ILITARSY EVERYWEAR!!
How to get the third treasure in Kinpira? It looks to be in the
center of the pagoda which is the goal
but I can't seem to get to it, and can't find anything to throw at it to get it out of my way.
The power of posting strikes again. I found it, wasn't where I thought it was after all, don't know why I didn't see it any of the other half a dozen times I destroyed all the neighboring scenery....
Okay, Mt. Fuji is killing me. My power is at ~15 million, but the mountain is 120 million, even with dragon power I can't lift the stupid thing unless I keep playing the level over and over to accumulate more power. Very annoying.
On Kinpira:
Why do some programmers think it's necessary to automatically max the volume before the game starts? I had my headphones in and I got my ears blasted. It really hurt!
Not cool.
Kinpira - I don't get it.
So I run around picking up things then throwing them. That's the game?!?! What's the sequel gonna be? New colors for the things to be thrown?
Am I missing something here??
AaronzDad: You get stronger as you pick things up or win battles. The gateways and enemies get stronger as you go through the level, so your goal is to get strong enough to pass them. It's basically Katamari Damacy with a samurai.
Can anyone tell me what "get treasure" means in Kinpira? I notice that when it says it, my character is surrounded by white ripples for a while. Are the ripples indicating a power-up or something?
On a different note, This is a great game, and I think also the first 3D game I've ever played in my browser, which I think is neat-o also.
Sorry about the double post. Looks like the ripples were because I was standing in water when I got that particular treasure. /facepalm
Yeah Psi-tron I got that part.
So I pick things up and throw them so I can pick up more things and throw them in order to be able to pick up other things and throw them???
That's it?
O_O I have the sudden urge to love JIG.
AaronzDad: That's it in a nutshell. The best part of the game for me was staccato crunching of twenty other things after I threw part of the landscape through them.
Now that I've found all the secrets, I'll happily never play the game again until its next iteration on JiG, probably.
Not all games need complex mechanics or plot. Add too much of either, and eventually they cease to be casual games.
Psi-Tron agree with Twee.
That's it, I'm done with Kinpira. I have over 20 million power now, and still can't lift Mt. Fuji...how is 20 million (or 40 million in dragon mode) supposed to overcome 120 million?!? I've endured the continually refreshing screen for the last time, as much as I wanted to check this game off as finished I just don't see it happening. Bummer.
there is kinpira 2!!!
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