Venan Entertainment began their iPhone legacy in a grand manner with the highly impressive Space Miner. With their second title, how’d they do?

Ninjatown: Trees Of Doom! ($0.99)

I do understand that for iPhone games to sell well, they’d have to have an addicting factor to it. Venan however goes overboard with how addicting this game is I’d almost want Cupertino to send some police and raid their premises (ha!).

Presentation

The company went for some dark purple and orange colors for their debut iPhone game. Ninjatown however features bright colors to suit the funky groove it’s got going. The music is highly infectious, the enemies are kooky-ly designed and the powerup animations are just adorable.

Controls

In complete contrast to epic tilt games like Doodle Jump or simple one tap games, this game uses controls I don’t think I’ve ever seen used before. To jump and swing in between trees, you have to tap either the left or right edge of the screen to make him go in that direction.

Holding your hand on either edge of the screen creates a dash action so your ninja keeps climbing up the same tree. Tapping on the other side of the screen makes him jump. For tree branches, you can catapult out of these by dragging down the center of the screen and choosing the jump height of your choice.

Gameplay

The goal in Ninjatown: Trees of Doom! is of course to get to the highest feet possible. All you must do is jump in between trees, avoid enemies and pick up some kick butt powerups. While all these sounds too easy, you’re going to need some getting used to controls as this isn’t your average one tap game.

That being said, the enemies in the game vary from moving red devils in different directions to enemies that shoot purple cannon balls to even “un-husked” portion of the trees that make them slippery.

As for powerups, you get the superman, a tree branch skipping powerup, a mustache cloud and more. Thankfully, the game is Plus+ connected so you can shoot for lots of achievements AND compare your score to the rest of the world.

Suggestions

I’d like to see another leaderboard added through the game by adding coin pickups. Wouldn’t it be nice if there are coins floating all over and you get ranked based on the coins you gathered per one game?

Conclusion

I repeat, the controls might need some getting used to initially. Be patient because after you’ve mastered the controls, you’re going to have another problem: dropping the game to stop playing it.

Usually I’d tell people to wait for lite versions but this time I’m doing a full 180. Download the game if you have an extra $0.99. There’s a reason why this game is climbing the AppStore charts fast and I hope you listen.