The game was widely compared to Splatoon due to its style and gameplay. Ninjala centers upon an eponymous tournament being held by the World Ninja Association , which developed bubblegum that could be used to allow people with the DNA of a ninja to perform ninjutsu. Their power can be increased by destroying...
The game was widely compared to Splatoon due to its style and gameplay. Ninjala centers upon an eponymous tournament being held by the World Ninja Association , which developed bubblegum that could be used to allow people with the DNA of a ninja to perform ninjutsu. Their power can be increased by destroying drones that periodically spawn on the map, allowing the player to craft a larger melee weapon when fully-charged. Each match lasts four minutes and the player or team that scores the most points when the timer runs out wins. There are eight playable characters in Ninjala, who despite having common stats and abilities, each of them has a unique backstory that was explored in the game's supplementary media, such as the Ninjala 2D Cartoon Anime videos and Ninjala Episode 0 CGI short. GungHo CEO Kazuki Morishita explained that Ninjala was inspired by his childhood memories of ninja and sports chanbara, having envisioned Ninjala as being a mixture of both. He stated that the main goal was to develop create a multiplayer action game that both children and adults could enjoy. A series of time-limited multiplayer beta sessions were held on April 28 and 29, which were affected by various server issues. On August 24, 2020, a collaboration with video game franchise Sonic the Hedgehog was announced for season 2. On April 9, 2020, a collaboration with smartphone game Puzzle & Dragons was announced. On June 19, 2021, there has been an announcement on the official PlayNinjala YouTube Channel that there will be a collaboration with the popular manga and anime series Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. On March 10, 2022, a collaboration with the popular manga and anime series Jujutsu Kaisen began. An anime television series adaptation by OLM premiered on January 8, 2022 on TV Tokyo. Jordan Devore of Destructoid felt that Ninjala was hard to judge based on its early multiplayer demo at E3, noting the lack of playable weapons beyond baseball bats , a need to improve the "flow and feel" of its gameplay, and the lack of "good" lock-on targeting functionality. He argued that alongside Splatoon, there was "plenty of room for more colorful, poppy, kid-friendly multiplayer games".IGN similarly noted that its concept felt like "Splatoon meets Arms", and that "if GungHo makes good on delivering creative weaponry and polishes up the combat, Ninjala might just have what it takes to beat Nintendo at its own game." Following the 2020 open beta, Connor Sheridan of GamesRadar+ noted that the game's fundamentals had an initial learning curve , but that "figuring out how to string attacks together for maximum points and minimum chance of reprisal" had a strategic depth similar to fighting games, and that he was "pleasantly surprised" by the number of character customization options. Siliconera described the game as "trying to appeal to the fans of its larger cousin without replacing it", noting that the drone mechanic added a "MOBA-like" progression that could potentially influence strategy among coordinated teams, but that the tutorial video provided by the beta was "not particularly effective at explaining the uses and advantages of each kind of attack" as opposed to an in-game tutorial, and the server capacity issues from the beta showed that there was "still significant work to do to build a stable environment for launch next month". Nintendo Life gave the game 7 of 10. They praised the art style, the overall gameplay, weapons, customisation options and gyro controls, but was critical of the story mode, tutorial mode, some notable gameplay aspects and single-use items.