You step into the ruined grounds without a sound. You close your eyes and take a deep breath, listening to the wind. The crickets chirp, then fall silent. Something disturbed them. You know what it is. It’s the reason you’re here.
Calmly, you reach for your blade as you hear the sound of otherworldly portals opening around you. Here they come—right on schedule. They think they have you surrounded. All it takes is a few flashes of the blade, a few splashes of green blood and the tentacled menace lies dead at your feet.
You lower yourself to the ground, sweeping the grass with your hand before it brushes against something soft. A single purple flower grows under the green. With a smile, you pluck it out of the ground and stand up.
Sensei will be pleased with this.
Mysterious as a Ninja
Developed by Spicy Sparks, Ninja Alien: Survival Arena is… difficult to define. On the surface, it’s a stage-based action-fighting game, but settling for that description would be doing the title a disservice. From the combo-based combat system through the material-gathering and crafting elements to the various ways the player tackles challenges, Ninja Alien manages to be both unique and intuitive.
Silent and Deadly
The way Ninja Alien: Survival Arena is presented could best be described as atmospheric. While the graphics aren’t necessarily anything special—for the most part, it looks like a standard flash-like mobile game—everything is clouded in dark, moody lighting, making the levels and the base camp feel very serene yet uneasy. Survival is at stake; cherish every calm moment because it never lasts. After all, the aliens are coming.
Nothing emphasizes this atmosphere better than the sound design, namely the soundtrack. The music in Ninja Alien is completely dynamic. It throws fast-paced drums at you in heated combat, but also fills the air with chirping crickets during calmer moments. It does more than just switch to combat music when there are enemies around, though. Ninja Alien’s music balances many factors—how many enemies are present, how close they are to the player, how many buttons the player is pressing and how fast—and adjusts the music accordingly to fit the player’s mood at all times.
Alien vs. Ninja
So, what’s Ninja Alien: Survival Arena actually about? The main gameplay loop is simple: venture out into dangerous, alien-controlled territories, gather crafting materials (gold, herbs, alien bits, robot parts, etc.), then head back to the ninja village to use your hard-earned spoils to craft potions, improve skills and overall get stronger for the next outing. There are, of course, ways to spend real-world currency to speed up this process by buying gold and gems, but it never felt like I had to. I could just venture out and gather that stuff myself.
It would be a correct conclusion to say that Ninja Alien lives or dies by the gameplay. If the gathering part of the game is not fun, the whole experience crumbles. Additionally, the game’s combat is based on a combo system. The ninja has three available actions: sword, ranged and dash attacks. By combining these actions into different sequences, the player can produce all kinds of different special moves, which are necessary to master as the enemies can only be finished off with these special moves, not normal sword attacks. This encourages experimentation and knowledge of combos—pressing random buttons in hopes of something good happening will definitely not work every time.
Tools of the Trade
Crafting is mostly centered around creating consumables that you can use before setting out on a stage. These generally grant you various increases in power: more health, more damage and more loot. In my experience, they aren’t necessary; rather, they are an alternative to grinding—you can either spend some time getting more gold to upgrade your ninja or use consumables to make up for the lower power level. This means getting stuck in progression is usually the player’s fault, as Ninja Alien gives them plenty of alternatives.
Leveling up your ninja’s skills opens up several approaches, which allow you to tailor your power level to your preferred playstyle. Sword combos? Ranged hit and run? Maximum mobility? Powerful single strikes? You can specialize in all of that, as long as you have enough materials. Whether these styles are balanced between each other is another question (I ended up maxing out ranged attacks because the backward jump that comes with them makes you basically invincible), but none of them feel outright weak.
Those Earthly Goods
Ninja Alien: Survival Arena is not a short game. Not because it artificially gates progression, in fact; it outright forgoes the stamina-based limitations that many other mobile games tend to utilize. Later stages do get exponentially harder, forcing you to go back and grind more materials. But since the gameplay itself is fun and engaging, it doesn’t feel like being stuck. It feels like getting more gameplay out of each stage (even if the stages themselves aren’t very distinct within a given world).
As I already mentioned above, monetization is modest at best. It never feels like Ninja Alien is forcing you to spend money or be condemned to hours of grinding. Beyond that, most of the purchasable items are cosmetic—masks, robes and swords—that are only available through real money transactions. But about half of all cosmetics are offered for in-game currency instead, so even if you don’t want to spend your dollars, you still have plenty of options to choose from.
Ninja Alien: Survival Arena is difficult to define. On the surface, it’s a stage-based action-fighting game, but settling for that description would be doing the title a disservice. Launching the title could be as brief as doing a few stages during a lunch break or as long as gauntleting through several stages in a row, enjoying the relaxed vibes of the ninja village in-between. In either case, it’s a worthwhile way to spend your time.
