Who would have thought that such snuggly little ninja could be so dangerous?

Southpeak Games’ Ninjatown is a welcome addition to the Nintendo DS’s line-up with its tower defense-style play mechanic and extremely adorable art style.

For those of you out of the loop, Ninjatown stars the cute little ninja characters from the Shawnimals toy and plush lines. Things were going fine in Ninjatown until the nefarious Mr. Demon and his wee devil minions started to invade and terrorize the town’s residents. Now, it’s up to the wit and wisdom of the Ol’ Master Ninja to overcome the odds and keep Ninjatown safe.

Players are charged with building Ninja hut after Ninja hut in order to stop the oncoming waves of wee devils. At the outset, the player has the ability to build two types of Ninja, both of which specialize in hand-to-hand combat. As the game progresses, new types of troops are incorporated into the mix.

When I began playing Ninjatown, I could barely see any kind of strategy being used, and I was arbitrarily building Ninja huts to kill off the enemies. As different types of Ninja became available for use, I found the strategic elements of the game fall into place. Each map was approachable in various ways and breathed fresh air into what felt repetitious.

Like other tower defense games before it, being able to build certain types of troops means the player will also be assaulted by enemies with particular weaknesses: the snowball throwing “Ice-cream” Ninja can slow the fast devils down, the Sniper Ninja takes down the flying devils, and the fast-moving Business Ninja is ideally equipped to fight the slower moving devils. However, once the player realizes the patterns and what-hurts-what play style, each encounter can be easily overcome.

As the player defeats enemies, they are rewarded with cookies that can be used to upgrade the Ninja huts, giving the Ninja of that hut more power. Sadly, there is little to no visual indication that a hut is already upgraded or needs upgraded without tapping the hut with the stylus. Having the tap each hut individually while being attacked became a stressful procedure that could have been easily overcome with some kind of visual clue.

The game itself is broken up with the main action and user input handled on the bottom touch screen and the zoomed out map of the playfield on the top. My main complaint with the map screen was the fact that the developer only used half of the screen for the map. The other half is used to show the Ol’ Master Ninja floating high above Ninjatown in his hot-air balloon. It’s a pretty neat graphic, but I feel that space could have been better suited as an expanded stats and map visual.

For the most part, user input is handled well with the stylus. Picking the appropriate Ninja hut to build, choosing which huts to upgrade, and selecting the Ol’ Master Ninja powers work seamlessly with the stylus, but I found moving the camera around the battle field felt clumsy and slow. Sometimes, as I placed the stylus on the screen for camera movement, the camera would not react as fast as I needed it to, resulting in a few more dead ninja on my conscience. Luckily, the d-pad is usable for camera movement as well.

If you are the type of gamer that has no time for this holiday’s blockbuster console games, then I recommend you pick up a copy of Ninjatown, sit down for about an hour a night, and enjoy the cuteness levels beaming from this solid, tower defense game.

That’s right, I said it – cuteness levels.

Gamers spoke, and SouthPeak Games listened to every word they had to say. In addition to a playable demo that will be hitting XBL tomorrow, the crew at SouthPeak has been hard at work on an update to address the feedback they received from players. We have been told that the update will be available soon, and when it comes down to it, you really can’t ask for much more than that.

Below is a list of some of the improvements that players can expect to see in the update.

Both platforms (PC and Xbox 360)
- Horse steering has been improved
- Character development curve not as steep over level 25
- HP regeneration slower for max values above 2000
- Death strike skill – executable by strike button while in sneak mode
- Critical hit skill fixed
- Damage is now allowed over 32000
- There is a cap on damage and armor at 99999
- Necromancer spells have been balanced
- Magical boosters – effect restricted to 5 boosters
- Stacking potions with different statistics – fixed
- Objects stacking – objects can’t be stacked up if result has higher level requirements than current player level
- Equipment Class cap on 50
- When killing in towns – after you leave the town and go back guards will ask you to pay instead of immediately attacking you
- NPC’s in towns don’t resurrect
- Tweaked hi- level monster balance
- Wing Membrane ingredient added to Helllord
- Dragons strike not breakable by player hit
- Bomb traps attached to some chests and wardrobes
- Balanced number of lock picks in chests and wardrobes
- Walking under water and not dying has been fixed
- Inaccessible Cave north of Ashos has been fixed
- Multiplayer Lag issues have been improved
- Multiplayer too many skill points generated due to combat stats has been fixed
- Friendly fire disabled in RPG mode (players cannot damage each other)
- Resurrect spell on players has been disabled
- Experience points for killing players has been removed
- Disarming skill disabled against other players
- Freezing/stopping spells disabled against other players
- Multiplayer RPG quests given to all, reward splitter between players
- Team assault – main monuments 50 times stronger
- Barbarian – berserk skill in PvP reduced to 5
- Chest and wardrobe lock levels improved in multiplayer
PC specific:
- Issue of moving money between servers has been fixed
- Maps D2,E4,F4, Multiplayer Tharbakin – missing triangles or flying objects have been fixed
- Enter opens console in single player
- Horse steering – stopping horse by back key changed
- Cloning character when logging on new WarNet server is fixed
- Boosters disappearing in Arena modes
- Atmosoheric fog for multiplayer towns added
- Chat over open dialogs possible (by F11 chat dialog)
- All PVP arenas unlocked from beginning

Xbox 360 specific:
- Improved single player framerate
- Interface – repeat changes selection left stick hold added
- Game HDD cache cleaning possibility – RB + A + B during game launch
- Achievements for 5 elements is fixed
- Map interface improvements – only one open quest at the time, quests selection box better visibility, hero location on map better visibility, quest name on tooltip
- Hit info fonts larger
- “BACK – Show Instruction” text disappears
- Double saving multiplayer characters to protect character lost from power-off or hard-locks
- Interface – no controls after “server refused connection” is fixed
- Doubling gold in multiplayer is fixed
- Doubling objects in multiplayer is fixed