Ninjahtic Mind Tricks Reviews

I just can't imagine spending time playing this. it's hard to tell foreground and background elements apart, the controls are stiff, collision detection is not great, etc etc

Tags: Platformer - Metroidvania Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Libary TLDR: Charm quickly wore off leaving me with an audiovisually poor, repetitive slog, through levels that I kept having to trial and error my way through. 8 bit parkour oriented Keeping this one short, the tutorial for the controls and straightforward level design with some parkour thrown in and more foe sprites initially got me hooked compared to the original Ninjahtic. But soon enough I started running in levels that had very tight timing requirements to navigate successfully. There are only so many times you can die, spawn back at beginning while hearing the same notes being looped over and over again. The envinroments felt like they switched up on the player a little more than the original ninjahtic but the variation was just a recolor with another short music sample most often. The foes sprites were not very well animated and some of them only looked like amorphous blobs and were not very convincing. The chtulu style monster presence was not really well explained and the game felt rather contrived. All in all this is mostly exactly like any other games from this dev in this engine, has the same strong points and weaknesses and I come to the same conclusion that it just is not a good investment of time for the average player that has built a decent library.

When I voted on Greenlight, I was excited to see if this would make it to Steam. I loved the footage and the idea, forgot about it for a while, and months later, it is now available. The game's graphics are 8-bit awesomeness, the controls are smooth, and the platforming and combat feels natural to pull off. It's not so simplistic you get bored with it, but it's not so complicated that it's difficult to master. Basically you need to empty the rooms of enemies in order to move on to the next, and you can accomplish this quicker with smart playing such as using the kick options to either kick an enemy up in the air to take them out at the same time as a flying enemy, OR to kick a flying enemy down to the ground to deal with them with groundwellers. The only thing I would change about the game is maybe having different music for the levels. I'm not too far into it, so I don't know if the music ever does change or if it's continuously the same track. If it never changes, I want an option to turn it off so I can listen to my music when I play, otherwise, I hope further levels change it up.

Ninjahtic Mind Tricks is yet another of literally thousands of 2D retro platformers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. It's essentially a sequel to Ninjahtic, which is apt because it pretty much seems like a copy + paste + reskin of that game. There's an urban theme instead of the traditional jungle/cave imagery from the last game, but a pixel blob is a pixel blob. There are some changes, but not much. The theme is still very much parkour platforming with some hack and slash. The game was received even worse than the original, and it has all the same defects. One important note is that even though this is an amateur project, it does seem to be sincerely and genuinely made. I couldn't find any flipped assets, plagiarism or any other kind of insincere actions from the developer, but unfortunately genuine intentions alone are not enough to produce a brilliant PC gaming experience. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The controls and game handling are notably very clunky and unsmooth here. It's janky and unsatisfying to play... and any experienced gamer will tell you, the handling, responsiveness and general gameplay feel of the control scheme must be well polished for this kind of game to succeed. Unfortunately, this is something the developer seems to have phoned in, with little to no apparent gameplay testing. They dropped the ball on this one. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. To make matters worse, there's no mouse input, despite this being sold on PC as if it were a PC game. This is unacceptable and somewhat insulting to PC gamers. It's a good demonstration of the poor attitude the developer has towards PC gamers, and this attitude has resulted in yet another defect in this game. Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs. A strong argument can be made that construction kits like GameMaker Studio should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", Blaze Epic has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. You don't have to take my word about how bad the game is, we can measure the interest in a game by how much people bothered to play it. Ninjahtic Mind Tricks has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the game absolutely failed to capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for finishing the first level, trivial to achieve, but less than 1 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the game. That's a tiny, tiny proportion of gamers who even bothered with this. Ouch. Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this game was with players reveals a surprise... there's a modest spike in player counts for the game. But this only happened once, and isn't consistent with the achievement stats, that show less than 1 percent of players bothered playing the game for any reasonable amount of time. How is it possible for this game to have so many concurrent players who didn't bother engaging with this game? Trading cards. People will use card idling software to collect the cards and sell them, but this won't trigger any achievements in-game. That tells us people only really bought this game for trading cards, and that's a damning indictment of the woeful quality. A closer look at the numbers shows the game just has a couple of players every week running up the game and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many games like this, with little merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards. Ninjahtic Mind Tricks is relatively cheap at $2 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 11,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.

Another fun little ninja platformer with plenty of wall jumping, sliding, and stealth kills. Some nice improvements from the last game. The art style is neat and the stages were even better than the last game. It's also a bit short but cheap. The controls were a little frustrating from time to time but otherwise I ran into no problems and had a good time with this one. Simple fun!

If you've played a Blaze Epic game, then you're likely familiar with the common elements of their brand DNA. You're going to run, jump, and take on hordes of enemies in a screen-at-a-time retro platformer world straight out of a third-gen-console's heyday. You're going to encounter some interesting freerunning, wall-rebounding and midair mechanics, as there are notes of flight to be found in every game. Some people just don't get along with gravity, and I sense with every new Blaze Epic title that Blaze himself -- coder/musician Larry Stover -- dreams of momentum as an expression of will and spirit, and of horizontal surfaces as just a little boring, frankly. Some people just want to run, gravity be damned, and if you're one of them, I think you're going to like Ninjahtic Mind Tricks. Its predecessor Ninjahtic featured some splendid conservation-of-motion wall jumps, and introduced to the Blaze Epic game stable simple but significant stealth elements -- enemies spot the protagonist, wait for a clear shot, and take it, when in range. Careful planning of timing, sneaking up behind enemies, yielded easier kills with less risk, and careful timing of jumps even allowed our hero to springboard off of "stomped" enemies and gain extra air time. Ninjahtic Mind Tricks sees our hero return with expanded parkour chops, now able to run up vertical surfaces, double-jump, dash, and execute two types of attacks -- both offering slightly different strategic advantages, and best explored carefully during the introductory test battle. The action's springier, wilder, and twitchtastic -- the game regularly moves at speeds that require one to commit sequences to muscle memory, and those "unlimited lives" will come in handy -- as will the opportunity to sit at screen's entrance on many levels, study the enemies, and plan one's attack carefully. Once you commit to act, once you leave the safety of being unseen and leap out to strike, to travel, to act, you will need to execute exactly what you committed to muscle memory. The game is magnificently unforgiving of indecision from its player, of pausing to think, mid-leap. Think first. When you act, act with a polished inner mirror, its surface free of dust. It's really rather uncanny, how quickly this game pulls you into that headspace, forces you to think and react like the ninja you're playing. While Ninjahtic Mind Tricks has superficial resemblence to other Blaze Epic titles, this isn't the sublime swordsmanship and crowd-brawl tactics of Shin Samurai Jazz, nor is it the weighty, meaty, Prince of Persia-esque freerun-and-fight of Way of the Pixelated Fist. It's even quite different from the first Ninjahtic, faster, twitchier, wilder, even more anchored in plan-then-execute clarity. Going back to Ninjahtic after playing it, I feel heavy, and a little slow. The game's static level-screens don't scroll, and you'll be glad for that -- you can see all the action at once, track all the obstacles, enemies, and environmental variables at once. You'll also be glad for that life bar; it makes mistakes a touch more forgiving, but you'll likely soon aim for no-damage runs through each stage. (That ranges from plausible to hair-tearingly hard, in places.) Of the stable of Blaze Epic games, this one's the fastest-moving, requires the most planning per stage, and once you enter its zone and commit its moveset to twitch-memory, conveys the sense of impossible, breakneck flowing motion and GO GO GO GO GO like none of its siblings. This game is, I think, Blaze Epic's current masterpiece, even if my personal favorite remains Shin Samurai Jazz. I love Jazz for its atmosphere, particularly evocative soundtrack, and curious juxtaposition of noir and late Tokugawa/early Meiji ronin stories. It was a thematic masterpiece and a solid game besides, but Ninjahtic Mind Tricks features a solid narrative and a downright masterfully tuned game that, I believe, commands even greater attention. It's a joy to play, and the feeling of guiding our protagonist at speed, translating plans to finger-twitches, and executing them in a moment of hyperattention followed by a gasp of "I'm...still alive, wow!" -- well, it really captures a bit of that breakneck ninja experience. How many games can we say that about, really? Many game immerse us, yes, and present challenge, but how often does a game successfully translate the experience of being its protagonist to the player? This is no first-person shooter; this is a tiny retro platformer with chunky graphics. That it manages to convey something meaningful about the world it depicts, that it's immersive at all, to any degree, is quite an achievement. This is quite possibly the best expression of the ninja platformer I've ever played, and I'm really blown away by how much nuance is crammed into such a tiny game with such a straightforward, finite move set. This isn't a genre I realized was lacking anything, mind you, until Blaze Epic came along and started writing new games. I didn't think there was anything left unsaid by the many historical titles past. Ninjahtic Mind Tricks isn't just a great ninja platformer, it's a reason to revisit the entire genre of ninja platformer games, because there's more to say about 'em, and Blaze Epic just said it. This is absolutely worth the two bucks, and a one-man game shop who's this devoted to bespoke, mastercraft little platformers like this is worth watching very closely.

Really cool game. (TLDR fix is at the bottom of the page) It's like ninja gaiden on NES but improved by a lot combat and movment wise. You jump from wall to wall, dash through tight spaces ( or to reach long distances) attack enemis on ground and in the air. You can use a heavy attack to even send enemies flyin up, down and forward. You can one shoot kil enemis form behind, jump on there head so they fall in to a pit/spike and etc. For it's price this game is without a doubt worth it. It's somewhat short, but verry satesfying game...to bad there is not much to it after you beat the game. I feel like this game coudl expand and evolve in to somethign beautiful and fun. Though, there is one problem and that is the boss battels. There not that great. There patterns is so ridicolusly easy to exploite. The strategy is pretty much the same for all bosses to. If I where to make a cross examination, take the game "volgarr the viking". All the bosses have diferent patterns and you have to use all the space around you and your knowlage to avoid the bosses attacks. In this game all you do for prety much all the bosses is "touch him really quick and go". Then there a few minor issues. Evert time you enter a room you have to kill all the eneims, I'm fine with this, but when you accidentally enter a room and have to kill all eneimes again it can be a bit annoying. Another thing is the way you progress dialog. Sins you can continue the dialog just by hittng your movment buttons/keys, you can by accident skip some of the conversation. The dev should have just made it the jump button. Here is the TLDR version: Get this game, it's short and there is not much to it other then to go straight forward (no collectibles and etc) But it's definently worth it for it's price. It is rough around the edges, but it's a really solid hack and slash platformer

A less than mediocre ripoff of Ninja Gaiden Platforming: 6/10 Nothing intuitive, with quirky controls Combat: 2/10: A slap fight with terrible AI and only 2 attacks Boss fights 0/10: Imagine Mega Man where the bosses have only 2 attacks, which cover the screen with projectiles or cover the boss itself in an almost inpenetrible shield... Without a ranged attack, where the boss has a ludicrous ammount of speed. No need for strategy, just hit and run away for the counter... rinse and repeat Overall: 3/10 Not even worth the sale price

Such a good game! I have been following its development for quite a bit. Backed it on Greenlight as well. I'm super happy with the release! The controls are a dream, they couldn't be more solid. The graphics look so damn fine. I myself as a pixel artist, am sort of jealous of how good it looks. The gameplay is so good, but there are a couple problems I could name off. - Having to kill enemies to open doors is somewhat flawed. As I can accidentally enter a door and go back, then I need to cycle the room a couple times to clear the enemies. This is the largest flaw, but it's really not that tremendous, it just adds 10% more frustration. - Backtracking. I don't seriously think it hinders the experience, but it would be nice to know exactly where I can't go before needing to spend an extra 5 minutes to find the key. These tiny flaws don't really do much, though. The game is really good. It is hard, and like a Ninja-Gaiden type of hard. You just have to learn the patterns, then it's a breeze. 9/10 from me!

Didn't like it. This game tests your patience, not skill. To progress, you have to kill every monster in the screen, which is tedious rather than fun, and not challenging at all. The fact that the game forces you to go through almost every screen twice just doubles the tediousness and completely ruins the game's flow. Oh, and did you accidentally fall to a previous screen? Congratulations, you have to go through it all over again to go back! Can't say much about level design either. All screens seem pretty much the same thing over again. Very easy to forget whether you've been in a particular screen already or not. Not much monster variety either. And worst of all, the game isn't even hard, just time-consuming. Beating the final boss is just stand slightly in front, press z, press x four times, repeat. Would not recommend.