Mini Ninjas sees the player controlling one of several diminutive ninjas as they sneak, explore, fight, rescue forest creatures and row their little ninja boat through an utterly charming feudal Japan. Unlike the rigid stealth of Tenchu or hack and slash of Ninja Gaiden, Mini Ninjas allows players to approach each situation with a degree of freedom, allowing the player to sneak or fight their way through an enemy fortress. This is an obvious choice as the audience for the game will inevitably be diverse, ranging from kids to adults, all at different gaming skill-levels. Einstein once said that "everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler". Saying that Mini Ninjas is simpleis not derogatory, the simplicity and ease of play is a welcome change of pace and, as players guide Hiro and his merry band of ninjas around the expansive levels, they might feel something they haven’t felt for a while with modern games: relaxed.

The story is typical Saturday morning cartoon fodder. An evil samurai warlord has used ancient arts to change innocent and adorable forest animals into an army of samurai and is looking to enslave the land. A number of ninjas were sent to investigate the warlord but never returned to their mountain village and so the old ninja master sends his two least experienced ninjas, Hiro and his rotund companion, Futo, to find out what has happened to them and to put a stop to the nefarious schemes of the samurai army.

The story unfolds over a large collection of levels, which themselves are fairly expansive. IO’s experience with the sandbox-style levels of Hitman is more than evident here and, while the levels may not offer the set pieces and opportunities that players of Agent 47’s missions may be used to, their open-plan design allows for well-rewarded exploring and the ability to sneak up on the marching samurai patrols. That being said, there is a good amount of variety in the levels, with the core stealth and combat mechanics being broken up by rafting and sledging sequences, as well as boss fights against the warlord’s lieutenants. Again, everything is kept simple, with the prime concern of the developer seemingly to keep the fun pure rather than adding unnecessary complications.

The entire game has a modern, minimalist style to it, with every landscape, character and interface clean and crisp. Whilst the characterisation doesn’t display the skill and adeptness of Valve’s Team Fortress vignettes, the ninjas are utterly charming and people that aren’t at least tempted to utter one ‘awww’ during the game probably list clubbing orphans as one of their past times. The enemies are also cute in an utterly evil way and their simple-minded babblings and battle cries add to the wonderful sense of light-hearted fun in the game.

The levels never astonish, but are consistently pleasing to the eye, with wonderfully green meadows, beautifully dusky rivers and mountainsides of crisp, pure, white snow. The player is encouraged to explore every nook and cranny of the levels to find the temples, shrines, caged animals, Jizo statues and coins that all yield rewards to ease the player’s progression through the game, such as new spells, item recipes, experience and money to buy shurikens and potions. The amount of collectibles and their frequency manages to walk the fine line between being too easy to find and frustratingly well hidden. They may never require a huge amount of effort to find but this fits in with the difficulty curve of the game.

The player will spend most of their time either charging into combat to slice and dice, or sneaking up behind enemies to dispose of a couple of them before the battle really breaks out. Without wishing to over use a single word in this review, the combat is incredibly simple, with simple combos, a block-breaker and spells making up the bulk of the fights. Certain enemies promote specific ninjas to combat them and the player is encouraged to swap between the cast of characters with a fair amount of regularity. This is where the game is perhaps too easy; in order to avoid frustration, any enemy can be defeated by any ninja with only a small amount of extra effort required, and so the extra ninjas feel somewhat tacked on. The game may encourage the use of Futo to defeat the larger enemies, but Hiro is more than capable of taking them on with a quick fireball blast.

The game features appropriately basic stealth, allowing the player to crouch and hide in long grass or sneak along roof tops and lines of strung up lanterns. Enemies can spot the ninjas fairly easily if the player isn’t careful, but evasion is easy and, even if they are cornered, the player is never under-powered in a combat situation, as is so often the case in stealth games. Nevertheless, taking control of a freed animal and sneaking up behind an enemy patrol before launching a surprise attack on the hapless samurai while their leader bellows marching orders at them often raises a smile. Upon death, every enemy disappears in a cloud of smoke and the poor animal imprisoned inside is allowed to run free in the level. It is an interesting mechanic clearly reminiscent of the Badniks in Sonic and is a perfect way of handling the concept of killing enemies in a kid’s game.

Mini Ninjas is an utterly cute and charming game that may not have the complexity and amount of content ‘hardcore’ gamers look for, but anyone who disparages Mini Ninjas for its simplicity is missing the point. The game may have some minor flaws and may not be amazingly compelling, but it provides well-realized, simple fun and is the perfect game to relax with and, at the very least, should act a palatecleanser before the upcoming slew of very serious men with guns that are about to be released.