Ninja Village

Genre: Management Simulation / RPG / Strategy

Players: 1

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Review:

Without a doubt the most prolific developer and publisher of Management Simulation games on Nintendo Switch is Kairosoft, who specializes in games with a retro-style isometric pixel art style, often with the word “Story” in the title. As of this writing, Kairosoft has released 59 games on Nintendo Switch, most of them Management Simulations.

After their earlier games, Kairosoft had established a few templates for their Simulation games that later games would largely follow. Game Dev Story established a Simulation-style game more focused on managing employee time and focus, Hot Springs Story established a Simulation style in line with Theme Park Simulators where you try to cater to guests’ tastes to maximize attendance and income, and Epic Astro Story established a Simulation style akin to games like Sim City, where you’re building out a town or settlement.

Ninja Village originally released on mobile devices in 2013, then saw a port to Nintendo Switch in 2019, then to PlayStation 4 in 2020, PC in 2022, and Xbox One in 2024. And of the above templates, this game sees to stick fairly closest to the formula laid out in Epic Astro Story, with players managing the growth of their village, both to keep it productive, but also to be attractive to visitors looking to spend money in your town’s restaurants and shops, your most consistent way to earn added funds in the game.

However, much as with Epic Astro Story, this is really only a part of the gameplay formula here, as you’ll also be training and equipping a portion of your townsfolk to take on local bandits and invaders, with gameplay elements somewhat like an RPG. And as if that wasn’t enough, you’ll also be growing your growing empire by taking on neighboring hostile states, which requires building up your own army’s different types of troops.

Keep in mind that all of these different elements are fairly simplified – you won’t be doing much micromanaging of your village beyond controlling its overall layout, what shops are selling, and what new technologies you’ll be researching. You’ll also have minimal control over your RPG-style party, able to spend money to buy them equipment and train them but doing very little to direct them in combat. The Strategy elements are extremely minimal too, with players simply buying up the extra troops they want and deciding on a few of your townsfolk will lead the army.

Judged on any one of these criteria on its own, this game would be mediocre at best, and it definitely doesn’t help that this game suffers from Kairosoft’s frequent problem of not making information readily available to the player (for example, you can only guess if your attack force’s chances against an enemy are good or not, as the numerical measurements of your respective strengths can be absurdly misleading). Yet despite all of these issues, Ninja Village remains surprisingly enjoyable, giving players plenty of different ways to improve their growing kingdom and control its development.

As I mentioned above, this game makes use of Kairosoft’s signature presentation style using simple retro-styled pixel art visuals, paired with repetitive chiptune music and sound effects. Apart from the forgettable synthesized music, everything about this presentation is really endearing, though by this point we’ve seen more or less the same thing in numerous other Kairosoft games.

Overall, Ninja Village has quite a lot of shortcomings, yet still manages to be a fun and satisfying Management Simulation. All of its individual components are underdeveloped and flawed, yet as a whole they combine to something that gives players plenty of options and variety, resulting in a game that’s fairly unique for the genre, and one worth checking out.

tl;dr – Ninja Village is a Management Simulation with RPG and Strategy elements where players manage the growth of a town expanding to become a kingdom. Each of its individual elements is underdeveloped, and the game has plenty of issues, yet despite this it’s an enjoyable experience overall with a lot of variety. Fans of Management Simulations may want to give this one a look.

Grade: B-

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