Where Nintendo's DS excels in comparison with its Sony PSP counterpart is with games that sit perfectly on the system. Developers have innovative controls to play with (e.g. the touch screen, stylus, and microphone), which offer gameplay opportunities that appeal to the console's casual market. Far too many PSP games, on the other hand, are from multi-format releases that offer the same basic experience as the home console versions, only with considerably less charming visuals and more simplistic gameplay dynamics. With this in mind, we're pleased to introduce a new title for the DS that looks set to fit the handheld's needs with a charming snugness - Ninjatown.

Based upon the world of Shawnimals (created by EGM editor, Shawn Smith), Ninjatown's gameplay is actually taken from an age old format: Tower Defence style strategy. The basic principle is stopping Wee Devils from getting across a bridge at the bottom of the game map. The attacks come in waves from various points at the top of the map and you must assemble Wee Ninja armies before placing them wisely across the map to stop the Wee Devils from advancing across the bridge.

Simple But Effective

It's a simple concept at its core, played out across a 2D map with various paths across it that the Wee Devils move along. Aside these paths are plots of land where you can build various units such as Wee Ninja Huts (that house your oh-so-cute minions), as well as structures that boost their stats when placed adjacently to these huts (e.g. Ninja Temples). As you might expect, the key to success is placing your units wisely so that they deal with oncoming waves of Wee Devils at peak efficiency. In order to spice up the gameplay in this area, there are various Wee Ninja units that offer pros and cons that offset against various types of Wee Devil.

Once a certain number of Wee Devils (20 in our demo) have crossed the bridge it's game over. The waves of them come thicker and faster (16 waves in total during our hands on) the further you progress through a level and each time you kill a Wee Devil you're awarded Star Cookies, which are the currency in the game. You can purchase more units and buildings with these cookies, although there are a limited number of land plots to place them on, so you have to choose carefully.

This all may seem fairly bland and quite derivative, but it's the finely tuned balance of Ninjatown's gameplay and the thought put into the game's units and basic layout that really impressed us. We've been told that there will be a total of 20 different enemy types to deal with in the final game, which certainly makes sense as the demo level that we played featured a fair handful. Of this handful, the key factor with each one was whether they were winged beasts or devils on foot, which determines which types of Ninja you should put in their way.

SouthPeak assures us that eight different playable Ninja characters will be available in the full game and, once again, this seemed likely as we played with five different characters in the demo alone. The first few waves of Wee Devils we saw off were on foot, so we opted for the Wee Ninja and Anti-Ninja to defend against them. Wee Ninja's are the poster boys of Shawnimals' Ninjatown; all dressed in black, these Ninjas sacrifice strength with lightning speed. Anti-Ninja's, on the other hand, perfectly compliment the Wee Ninjas' fighting style - these orange Ninjas aren't quite as quick but pack a powerful wallop.

As the waves came in thicker and faster, airborne Wee Devils started appearing which fly just above the ground like the Spruce Goose. The units that were available to fend off these nasties were the Sniper Ninja (armed with a long range peashooter), Forest Ninja (that fires armour piercing arrows), and the White Ninja (which freezes enemy's by firing snowballs at them). As the descriptions of their various skills suggest, these Ninjas really are incredibly cute, so much so that their various personalities actually form a large part of the game's appeal.

Each of these Ninja units lives in a hut, which can be placed on specific plots of land on the map. On the map we played there were two roads that the Wee Devils travelled down that joined just before the bridge, so the land plot areas were sensibly placed at the top of each road and where they joined. Once we'd bolstered our defences at these junctures with plenty of Ninjas, it was then a wise idea to take advantage of some of the building units on offer. Our options were the Training Dojo, which bolsters the stats of Ninja's in adjacent land plots and the Ninja Temple, which increases the Ol' Master Ninja's powers.

The Ol' Master Ninja

So, exactly who is this Ol' Master Ninja? Sporting the traditional accoutrements of a wise old dude (a long beard and a walking or 'hickory' stick), the Ol' Master Ninja is the man with the plan in Ninjatown. He has special powers that can be called upon during the game whenever the influx of Wee Devils gets a bit too hot to handle. The amount of energy you have to use these powers is denoted by a Hickory Stick icon in the top left of the DS's bottom screen, and these energy stores increase with the amount of Wee Devils you fend off.

Although the Ol' Master spends most of his time in a hot air balloon on the right hand side of the handheld's top screen, he will occasionally jump out of his balloon and onto the battlefield when you summon his special powers. We saw two of these powers at work, which were the 'Hickory lunge' and 'Get off my lawn'. The former gives you a few seconds to tag as many Wee Devils as possible on the touch screen for the Ol' Master Ninja to subsequently banish, while the latter utilises the DS's microphone in a way that's guaranteed to make you light headed. After selecting a wind direction on the d-pad, you then blow into the microphone to force Wee Devils in that direction. This is particularly handy if a few Wee Devils have penetrated your final line of defence and you want to send them back towards your Ninjas before they get to the bridge.

That's pretty much it for the details we could gather during our hands on. Although Ninjatown is certainly a casual game at heart, it's not easy by any stretch of the imagination. The gameplay we experienced during our demo was very finely balanced, requiring you to use a large amount of forward planning when positioning your units. The Wee Devils are also a pretty hard foe to get rid of, and it took us quite a few playthroughs of the same level to figure out where each wave came from and how we should place our defences accordingly. Given this kind of learning curve, the 35 levels that SouthPeak tells us will be on the final game should make for a decent amount of content.

The visuals will also go a long way to keeping you entertained throughout the game's lifespan. Gamers will certainly warm to Shawn Smith's artwork which, coupled with some adorable animations of the various Ninjatown characters, makes for graphics that will get you smiling in that Saturday morning cartoons kind of way. Stay tuned for more details as Ninjatown nears it's slated release window of Q4 2008.