Assume the role of a battle-hardened Holiday Ninja tasked with retrieving the stolen presents from Elf Mountain! Your weapon of choice? Bauble ornaments.
Released as part of the 2024 Pico-8 Advent Calendar, kindly organized by bikibird.
Basic Controls
Left/Right = Move left or right
X = Attack (ornament toss)
O = Jump
Gameplay Mechanics
The controls are inspired by games such as Ninja Gaiden and The Messenger, with a touch of generic Metroidvania.
- Wall Hang/Climb
- Jump Pads
Hard Mode Toggle
Picking up the the grim reaper will enable Hard Mode for the rest of the game. This makes the levels more difficult by introducing tougher game mechanics (more obstacles, stronger entities).
Credits
- Design, code, sprites, sounds, and music arrangements by keyboardonly
- Original Yeti sprites by hoyb.itch.io and used with permission
Wow - what an incredible cart. Lovely graphics and sound. Fun to play. You must have spent a great deal of time on this and there is a huge amount of polish. Thanks for the detailed explanation of climbing and the wall-hang - That was appreciated.
I have not completed this game, but I wonder if it needs a bit more balance. With the never-ending attack of "fairies" (??) I managed to level up at a ridiculously fast rate (I got to level 38 quite easily) and had bought all the power-ups. I was just selecting anything to make the pop-ups disappear, and this didn't seem to matter since the next upgrade simply came a few seconds later. But since these upgrade are all available on the title screen, maybe these aren't so important.
I also struggled on the first jumping section and it did get a bit frustrating. I will come back to this at a later time.
But I don't want to dwell on any negatives. This is a really, really, lovely cart. Bravo!
I greatly I appreciate the feedback! I know what you are talking about when it comes to upgrades. I was having a hard time tweaking the xp curve with the multiplier, and not having a multiplier was slowing down the lower levels too much, but maybe I’ll do some tweaking for the next release. The original aim was to have a single endless stage that got progressively more difficult until you literally couldn’t survive anymore, but I slightly pushed that to the side when I decided to have a few other stages.
I am curious to hear about your jumping difficulties. I have heard similar things from others (that’s why I went through the wall mechanics in such detail). I’m so used to the controls that I’m kind of blind to the quirks.
I am very happy that you enjoyed it even with its quirks. Thank you!
If you want to skip to the other levels, try this:
load #ninjaelf2024cave1
load #ninjaelf2024cave2
load #ninjaelf2024boss
My favorite stage is cave2. It’s short but a lot of fun on hard mode.
@keyboardonly I've played through the whole cart now having got a lot more comfortable with the controls. Regarding the jumping: I am using a keyboard and am not keen on Celeste type games, which some of the jumping feels like. I am not used to modern mechanics such as wall grabs and bouncing of walls, so I think it is definitely something that I am bringing to the cart. You can't please all players, all the time and I am happy that Celeste type games exist, but they are not for me. There are certain parts of the game such as the left-side of cave1 where you need to jump right and then mid-air come back to grab to the left and I really, really struggled with this. Which then leads on to the punishment of if you miss the higher jumps, you have to do the whole thing again!
Beautiful cart: cave1 and cave2 look really great. Love the wind effect and mechanics. Cave2 is a lot of fun.
I thought we might have a bit more shoot-jump action and that before the boss there would be a bit more of this. But this is a great cart. I see what you mean about cave2. That is nicely put together, but a bit short. Its also a bit too easy on normal mode.
Love this cart though. Really, really well put together. I hadn't seen your previous Ninja game cart, so am checking that out now.
Holy this is so good, i wish hard or easy was a setting at the start though, the difficulty was so incredible to see in comparison to other games on here but damn the yeti boss on hard mode kicked my ass
This game is a true indie game! I love how it recreates the retro gaming genre with pixel art, soothing music, and gameplay mechanics like Ninja Gaiden and The Messenger. The story is simple yet engaging, and I like that they included a Hard Mode to challenge hardcore players. The creators did a great job creating a gaming experience reminiscent of the 80s and 90s! bitlife
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