Glowing Ninja competition review by Woody

Unholy War: Rincewind’s review, TheMI3’s review, Woody’s review
Glowing Ninja: Rincewind’s review, TheMI3’s review, Woody’s review
Killer Ninja: Rincewind’s review, TheMI3’s review, Woody’s review


Once when I was young and foolish I signed up for a class in calculus because some bureaucrat had made it a requirement for my major and I needed it to get into anything interesting. Math has never been my strong suit, but nothing prepared me for the total what-the-fuck feeling of being in that class and trying to parse what was coming out of the professor’s mouth twice a week. It was like trying to teach an ape to do taxes.

I get a similar feeling playing Ariel Yust’s and Eckolin’s Glowing Ninja. After puzzling over it for some time, I still haven’t managed to grasp much of the game with any confidence. I just sort of click random spots trying to figure out the right way to play, all while gazing wistfully at the Glowing Ninja folder, devoid of a handy readme.txt.

Through talking with Ecko I’ve figured out that by clicking a large fenced area, then clicking and dragging a serene Asian man’s head to the right side of the slider bar he rests upon, I can adjust some numbers. It seems to change my food... stores? needs? somewhat when I advance my turn, and bringing it to the right seems to make some of the people mining and farming around (mine?) disappear.

Clicking a fenced building I seem to own manifests a sidebar button of a soldierly-looking fellow with a sword icon beside him. Could it be? My heart beat faster upon making this discovery, thinking I had finally come across the military part of the game, but my excitement was short-lived, for I seem to not be worthy of making an army – the button doesn’t work. Beside the small icons of pissed off people are numbers which I’ve taken to be prices, though what currency they represent and whether I have enough is still unknown. Clicking the buttons does nothing, and without any feedback I’m unable to figure out how to remedy the situation.

That’s the problem with this game – it’s lacking crucial feedback. I don’t know what anything does past a few basic TBS staples like clicking on buildings to access their controls and advancing my turn, and there’s not much I can do to puzzle it out when I’m not given any information. So while the enemy from strange foreign lands cultivates amber waves of grain as far as the eye can see before invariably crushing my town like a confused cockroach, I’m left madly clicking the soldier icon, wailing lamentations at the sky, and questioning a God that by all appearances has left us to figure out his strange contraption on our own.

But damn, those are some nice graphics.