NinjaLA's Got Game (March 25, 2010)

[ChrisReid]

Prolific Wingnut artist NinjaLA has released his second game for the XBox 360. World War Toon is available now in the XBox Live Marketplace for 240 Microsoft points, or about $3. Ninja did the artwork, and his partner Brian S. was responsible for the coding and construction of the game. Development was made possible by the XNA 'indie platform'. On a tangential note, one of the Microsoft leaders responsible for XNA is Origin vet Frank Savage. Check out the WWT demo or grab the full game (sent to your 360 via the web interface) here. Ninja's first game was No Frills Sudoku.

​

World War Toon is a quick-paced turn-based strategy game. Much like Risk, it has territories that the player fights for control of. However, instead of the flat board that Risk is played on, World War Toon spans a globe with randomly generated territories. This makes for a nearly infinite number of unique games, no two are ever the same.

Where Risk had a basic concept of units, with the only difference between them cosmetic, World War Toon has three distinct unit types: Infantry, Tank & Rocket Launcher. Each type has an advantage against one other type when in battle. This makes for a new level of strategy as players try to maneuver their units to allow for the greatest advantage in future battles.

Also separating World War Toon apart is the concept of Reinforcement Dice. Where Risk rewarded you by allowing you to place more units into your territories, World War Toon allows you to add more dice to any battle. Rather than stacking huge numbers of units onto a territory, you can call up your reserves whenever you need them, even on your opponent's turn!

To quicken the pace of the game further still, the player can choose from traditional setup or quick play. In traditional setup, each territory is picked by the players before the game begins, much like in Risk. Quick play allows the player to skip that setup phase and gets straight to the action of battle.

--
Original update published on March 25, 2010

 

[NuAngel]

Holy crap! What are the odds? I only browse the Indie games every now and then, but sometimes the folks over at http://www.xblaratings.com/ give me a free code and ask me to a review a game for them. I've also chipped in reviews of other games I bought.

Well, it just so happens that today I was asked to do a review of World War Toon. I looked at some of the screenshots, read the description, and agreed to it. The game is sitting in my download queue right now, and I'll probably get to it tomorrow - but I just so happened to pull up WCNews today, and what do I see???

I had no idea this was your work, NinjaLA!! Very excited!! I'm quite the honest reviewer, but I really hope the game clicks for me, I'd love to give you a high score! Can't wait to try it, I'm much more excited knowing that it's someone from THIS community!

Nu

 

[NinjaLA]

hehe.. don't feel bad if you can't give us a high score.. I promise I won't hold it against you its neat that you review stuff for xblaratings.com.. I go there pretty often.

The point of World War Toon wasn't really to make the greatest game of all time (it is just a two person effort) but really to test and see if there is a market for simple strategy games on consoles. We aren't keeping our hopes set too high since we know this is outside the normal range of games for the platform.

This will by no means be our last offering though.. we are already planning other projects to follow up with!

 

[Ironduke]

Wow, congratulations, NinjaLA! When I saw you online all the time, busy with XNA, I already guessed you were up to something... Actually, I was very close to buying the full version of World War Toon - liked the demo a lot! Now that I know you've been involved with the development, that's an extra incentive to do so once I get me some more M$ points.

If you care to get some feedback - there's only two gripes I had with the game: A missing feature to switch back and forth between units I haven't used in a given turn (possibly using the LB/RB shoulder buttons), and being unable to simply move a unit to an adjacent empty (friendly) "square." Although the latter might be part of the game design, I found it a bit strange. Other than that, great work - keep it up! I liked how polished the overall style was, and it's always good to see some more turn-based strategic games.