Ninja Master Toru Review

Ninja Master Toru tells the story of the the master of stealth, the titular character Toru, who’s on a mission to defeat the King of Undead who unleashed a curse that transforms the dead into living corpses. Multiple armies of soldiers attempted to take down the king, but were slaughtered instead. It’s all up to Toru to save the day.

Ninja Master Toru is a 2D action platformer where players, armed with limited shurikens, will need to defeat a set number of enemies in order to progress to the next level. Amidst the battles, you can collect coins for collecting purposes. Our little hero can also jump, double jump and wall jump to avoid treacherous obstacles.

As you progress through levels, the level of complexity will increase. Given that you have limited munition in terms of shuriken, you need to be mindful in your usage. Some enemies cannot be taken on head-on. Some early levels won’t have extra shurikens lying around, so if you run out, you need to voluntarily lose a life.

The game has a classic Game Boy green-ish color palette; while it’s a nice throwback to old school gaming, it offers a limited variety in terms of visuals. The problem with a limited color palette is that sometimes damaging obstacles can get lost in the background. Enemy design is extremely limited; the same enemies are seen across the whole game, but as you progress through the game, they only get harder to kill. The soundtrack is a nice chiptune score that adds more depth than your typical Game Boy soundtrack.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with Ninja Master Toru except for the lack of gameplay variety. Bite size levels with no depth of combat or exploration feels a bit shallow considering other similar pixelated experiences offer more depth and variety. Once you clear the levels, it culminates to probably the easiest boss battle of all time. If you’re careful, you can kill him without moving.

Ninja Master Toru is a very simplistic, easy game without any depth in terms of gameplay or content. It can be completed under 30 minutes, quicker if you don’t die. This feels like a glorified demo of what could’ve been. Also the easiest final boss ever conceived; meaning the whole doesn’t offer much of a challenge. Once you grasp the concept of limited ammo and master the jumpings, it’s easy. I liked it, but it’s harder justifying spending more than 5$ (CAD) for something that can completed so quick.