Ninjin: Clash of Carrots is a unique marriage of a phone-style runner game and traditional 2D beat-em-up, and there’s no denying that it does a lot of things really well—there are lots of equipment upgrades to find and buy that can help you to overcome specific stage elements, the difficulty is quickly cranked up to provide a significant challenge, and the story’s ubiquitous sense of humor keeps things lighthearted even as stages prove themselves to be rage-inducing. However, the later stages’ penchant for locking your abilities and pitting you against invincible Enemies who have to be outlasted or avoided undermines a huge amount of the fun by undercutting your preferred play style, and there are numerous other niggling issues like unclear hitboxes and awkward stamina management that make it difficult to recommend Ninjin: Clash of Carrots at the moment. I’m very much on the fence about this one, admittedly, as buying new equipment that allows you to effortlessly carve through waves upon waves of enemies can be incredibly rewarding, and a lot of the underlying ideas here are solid. The execution just trips up often enough that Ninjin: Clash of Carrots‘ attempts at variance start to feel like unfair gimmicks.

Bizarre characters make the story worthwhile

At its core, Ninjin: Clash of Carrots‘ story is the same as that in, say, Donkey Kong Country—an anthropomorphic animal has their stash of preferred food pilfered, leading them to pursue the thieves. In this case, however, it’s an entire village of rabbits that have their carrots stolen by an eye patch-wearing mole piloting a Dr. Robotnik-style hovercraft on behalf of his shogun dad. You play as either a male rabbit ninja or a female fox ninja (the dialogue even changes slightly to reflect who you’re using, which is nice), and you can freely switch which of the two you’re using between stages. Equipment is shared between both, so there’s no penalty for swapping back and forth. Both playable characters are entirely mute, and most of the “good guys” don’t have much to say outside of the early tutorial stages, so the villains are the real standout of Ninjin: Clash of Carrots. Every new enemy type who shows up receives an intro sequence and some dialogue to highlight their personality, and dialogue bubbles often appear mid-stage as they express disdain that their plans to stop you aren’t working. That’s to say nothing of the mole in the hovercraft, Moe Jr., whose hot-headed tirades are always amusing, and other boss enemies are similarly enjoyable. The story here may be by-the-numbers, but the bizarre cast of characters ensures that it’s an enjoyably weird ride regardless.

The Oni TV Show is an endless mode through which you can unlock special items.

Basic Ninjin: Clash of Carrots gameplay stuff

The best way of describing Ninjin: Clash of Carrots‘ gameplay is to say that it plays like a weapon-based beat-em-up (think something in the vein of Wulverblade) that takes place on a treadmill, with items that land on the ground rapidly moving to the left of the screen as you run past them. Different items move at different speeds; the carrots that are used as Ninjin: Clash of Carrots‘ currency bounce along at a fairly fast pace, ensuring that there’s plenty of time to get to them before they’re lost to the left screen edge, while enemy bombs and projectiles pretty much remain where they land and are quickly scrolled past. Stages consist of 5-13 waves of enemies who come at you in various patterns and configurations, with new enemies and gimmicks frequently being introduced to keep things fresh, and you have to take them all down using your default melee attack, a dash, a dashing attack, and ninja stars. There are also three different screen-clearing special attacks, though these are automatically triggered once your melee attacks fill up a bar instead of being the kind of thing you can save for a special occasion. That makes them helpful, but only rarely tactical.

There’s a surprisingly heavy focus on loot

Ninjin: Clash of Carrots has 101 different swords, 40 different types of ninja stars, 32 accessories (masks, basically), and 28 artifacts that provide passive bonuses. You can equip one sword, projectile, and accessory at a time, while you’re given three slots for artifacts. Swords and ninja stars can vary wildly, very often being neither swords nor ninja stars—you can equip a piranha plant or lamp post as a melee weapon, for example—but they break down into a handful of different types. Different swords have different damage outputs, attack speeds, reaches, and secondary effects (such as electricity that arcs between enemies or fire that inflicts damage over time), while projectiles are differentiated mostly by their type (caltrops, ninja star, boomerang, etcetera), damage output, and stamina cost. One of the best things about finding and buying new weapons is the way they pay homage to other games and series. Beyond the piranha plant sword, there are also Final Fantasy VII and Adventure Time swords, and those are just the ones I remember off-hand. And many others like ship anchors and explosive plushies exist simply to be weird.

New equipment can make a huge difference

If you’re having trouble taking out a large group of enemies in a tight formation, equipping a weapon that damages everyone in proximity to the enemy you hit can help you to finish them off without a problem. If you’re continually dying, equipping something that raises your max health might help, just as it might be effective to equip an artifact that restores a point of health after a certain number of enemies are defeated and another that increases the speed with which your special attack triggers. Especially since special attacks spawn a huge number of weak enemies to defeat, making that a great way of getting a mid-stage health restore. If you’re having trouble keeping your stamina up, there are some artifacts to speed up its regeneration, and it might also be worthwhile to look into a sword that doesn’t have a stamina-depleting secondary effect. Mixing and matching pieces of equipment to attack a stage as optimally as possible is one of Ninjin: Clash of Carrots‘ best points.

Boss stages have a bad habit of being heavily scripted, leaving them warping around unpredictably or becoming invincible, but are bearable for the most part.

That makes the railroading frustrating

Your special meter is only raised by melee attacks, and it gradually depletes when you aren’t attacking, so investing in equipment that emphasizes special attacks right before the game arbitrarily locks your ability to attack can be incredibly frustrating. All of the game’s enemies have their own quirks and unique attacks, and one of the late-game enemies has the ability to disable either your melee attack, your projectile attack, or your ability to dash. Sometimes three show up at once to disable everything, leaving you with no choice but to outlast a barrage of enemy attacks. While I can appreciate the attempt at keeping Ninjin: Clash of Carrots‘ stages unique and fresh, giving the player a bunch of options that are then restricted ensures that the last few stages are more irritating than challenging. The same goes for the invincible enemies who begin showing up; throwing a ton of enemies at the player is a great way of inflating the difficulty, but throwing magical invincibility powder onto one or more of them so that they can irritate the player through an entire stage isn’t.

I’m not a huge fan of the stamina

Another complaint I have revolves around stamina, which I found myself consistently running out of. Dashing and dash-attacking quickly eats up your stamina, as do most kinds of ninja stars, and this becomes a problem given how many things you end up having to dodge and attack from afar. If you run out of stamina and confuse the empty blue bar above your character’s head for the full bar that’s a slightly different color of blue (an easy mistake to make amid the chaos of 15 attacking enemies), you can find yourself walking right into an enemy’s attack as your dash fails to work. This becomes even more of an issue when using a weapon with a secondary effect since these drain your stamina with each attack. These secondary effects are only rarely worth that tradeoff, and even then, only in very specific circumstances. I could live with the stamina drain of dashing and using ninja stars if it was more obvious when it ran out, but there’s no reason for weapons to eat through it so quickly.

Locking your abilities can mean not being able to build up your special attack, or unknowingly locking your ninja stars before a bunch of explosive enemies show up.

Hitboxes aren’t always obvious

If you’ve ever played a 2D beat-em-up, you’ve probably encountered a situation before where your attack goes right through an enemy because they’re slightly above or below you, and that’s something that Ninjin: Clash of Carrots inherits. It can be a bit groan-inducing using a giant sword, only for it not to damage an enemy running right next to you. I mean, isn’t that the entire point of large swords? There are also enemy projectiles that dance around unpredictably while glowing, making it difficult to judge where the hurtboxes inside of that glow are while the screen is cluttered by enemies, and later stages take an ill-advised step into bullet hell territory. It’s not as simple as “projectiles you can see touching the visible parts of your character damages you”; bullets can hide behind enemies because of that inaccurate beat-em-up perspective, and you’ll similarly escape apparent hits while taking damage from things you didn’t think should have connected. It’s not so bad that you’ll never get used to it, but the hit detection is intermittently uncomfortable.

The visuals and music have pluses and minuses

I really wish I used decimals in my scoring system, as Ninjin: Clash of Carrots‘ graphics and music are both closer to a 1.5/2 than either 1 or 2. For example, the visuals are fantastic, consisting of high-res art that retains the colorful expressiveness of sprite art while mostly avoiding the blockiness, but it’s hard enough to follow the action without a mess of sparkles, snowflakes, or leaves flying across the screen at all times. The character designs give them oodles of personality, though, and the game even uses semi-transparent foreground objects to avoid enemies being unfairly hidden. Then there’s the music, which reminds me of the music for something else, though I never managed to place it. The tracks are bouncy and catchy for the most part, which suits the game perfectly, with the only real downside being the way one of the tracks hitches slightly as it loops awkwardly.

Story: 2/3 Gameplay: 1/3 Visuals: 1/2 Music: 2/2 ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ – 6/10
*Click here and scroll to the bottom for a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean

*A Steam key was provided for the purpose of this Ninjin: Clash of Carrots review

The post Ninjin: Clash of Carrots Review – Fun until invincible enemies show up appeared first on Killa Penguin.