Writings of Mass Deduction

“Star Ninja” is a delightful surprise. The name had me expecting something about a space-faring ninja, but in fact the “Star” in the title comes from throwing stars (ie. shuriken), not from anything cosmic. That’s not to say there’s no charm here, as you are fighting the ninja’s arch enemy: the European pirates.

So far that’s a description of a game going off the rails for me, but here’s where the ship gets righted: the gameplay is a physics puzzler where you have to figure out the angles to bounce your shuriken at either the pirates directly, or at things that can take them out (such as lighting explosives, flipping boats, and more).

There’s a lot here for someone who likes to replay levels looking for a perfect score. You are scored both on how much time is remaining, and how many shuriken are left in your aresenal. Using fewer throwing stars, more quickly and more accurately, significantly increases your total. Add to that four modes of play (campaign, Time Trial, Frenzy, and Focus). Some of the modes of play are fairly inventive, such as Frenzy where you have unlimited stars but instead have a limit of how many can be bouncing on screen at any one time. There’s a lot here for your 80 Microsoft Points, including PGR-style online leaderboards (individual ones for each level).

Here’s what the developer (Bounding Box Games LLC) has to say about the game:

“Star Ninja is a physics based puzzle/shooter where you bounce throwing stars around a level to knock all the pirates into flying ragdolls.”