App Review: Ninja Camp 20

Do you have that Karate Kid inside you? Are you ready to train to defeat your foe and master the shuriken? You must maintain balance and harmony, but be quick as the rabbit, and quiet as the wind. In Ninja Camp you can become a ninja star able to slice wood in a single throw. 

Your eyes and reflexes my friend must be sharp. You must be one with the shuriken. As you can probably surmise we had fun playing this game. It's made by Caffeina Studios, the same developer who brought us Car Traffic Control. Ninja Camp is well made and fun, and yet can be quite challenging. We think the most important thing a developer wants to hear about a game they've created is that its addicting... and Ninja Camp fits that bill.

The graphics for Ninja Camp aren't hugely high-end, so the game instead embraces its cartoon aesthetic, completely with cheekily drawn ninja-in-training and a stylized mountaintop dojo background. The goal is pretty simple: stand up on your pole and destroy the targets flying at you by tossing shuriken (throwing stars, for those unintiated into the ways of the ninja). The game has two modes: a single round against the flying targets and a 'camp' mode.

As you might imagine, the single round mode doesn't contribute to your progress through the camp mode. It's a good place to practice and get the hang of the shuriken before heading over to The Camp. In camp mode you're hit with sequentially more difficult rounds. The better you do, the more credits you accumulate (but also the more likely you are to get hit by the targets instead of hitting them yourself, so ninja beware).

About those credits - you need them to get more shuriken. They're not boomerangs, they're not coming back after you throw them away, not that you'd want to try and catch them anyway. Two hundred credits are what you need to buy a fresh supply of stars, and if you accumulate 1,500 credits you can buy yourself a whole extra life for continued gameplay. Needless to say, that's a lot of targets you have to hit. Shuriken and lives can be purchased at the end of a round or from the start screen by tapping on the not-so-ninja shopping cart button.

We're suckers for simple but fun games, and Ninja Camp fits that bill. It's easy and entertaining for kids and adults alike, and the fact that it's free in the App Catalog is an added bonus. Could it be the perfect game for mastering your hand-eye coordination and also keeping your little karate kid occupied? Only ninja sensei knows...