Super House of Dead Ninjas Review

I hate purple ninjas.

These bastards only pretend to be helpless vegetables, aimlessly crawling through the corridors of the tower. The moment you get distracted or simply show mercy and leave a purple ninja alive, they will definitely find the most inconvenient moment to drop on your head through a hole in the ceiling.

These guys especially show off when you have to descend through a spike-filled pipe. You barely maneuvered along the walls, jumped to the floor, took just a second to look around, and then this creature lands on your head like a plumber.

I will kill you with dynamite. And dismember your bodies with a lightsaber. Someday.

First, you quit Super House of Dead Ninjas after 15 minutes of playing because all those bastards were going through it so easily, how is it even possible to beat this game. Then, after some time, you start it again and quit for the same reason, but this time after 20 minutes. After n attempts, you manage to reach the first boss with one life, who destroys you three seconds into the battle.

This stupid tower changes from run to run. Individual cubes that make up the three big sectors are quickly memorized and recognized, but what will happen in two floors, you will never know for sure. It’s called learning from rogue-likes.

…the first boss was defeated, and our ninja still had two lives left.

Which were enough for one floor with a red mace and one floor with a frog. ShoDN (SHODAN, SHODAN!) sucks out the will to win from wild vampires, even the will to anything at all. Well, how, how did that crazy monkey suddenly manage to jump over the hatch just when I threw a shuriken at it, and then take away my last continuum?

Next, you will encounter a mine, an animal.

The average session of Super House of Dead Ninjas is about half an hour, if you are a tough, hardened Castlevania and Super Meat Boy fighter. Otherwise, the hysteria starts earlier, but you still know that sooner or later you will beat the game at least on Normal.

Cool projects with a plot and graphics lead you by the hand, but here there is a challenge. Firstly, they challenge you back to the nineties, secondly, they challenge you to be a man and complete ShoDN on Hard.

I found a long sword, now it’s the end for all of you.

Or so I thought until I reached the second boss. By that time, I had spent about four hours on ShoDN, and it seemed like I had been playing this thing my whole life. The purple invalids can no longer reach me, but it turns out that there are two types of evil skeletons in the tower. The second ones like to respawn three seconds after death and torpedo you in the back.

Also, on the horizon, completely insane combinations of floors begin to appear. Vague doubts start to torment me that the third boss and the possibility of completing ShoDN as such are an illusion, and only death and decay await you below.

Seven hours, I reached the third boss and consistently die despite being able to somewhat understand the patterns of his attacks. Neither dynamite, nor magic, nor shurikens work against this bastard – he needs to be taken down in close combat, and when was close combat against bosses in such games an easy task?

ShoDN gets the most pleasure when the game starts to work out. Beautifully, with a flourish, execute your part, in one beautiful jump, cut four heads across three floors, pick up a 1up and dodge two traps – what could be better in this world?

One fine day, you defeat the third boss and instantly get beaten by the fourth, who comes right after the fight with the third.

At the same time, you start venturing into the “rift between worlds,” an alternative tower where it’s completely random and hardcore. After training in this parallel, colorful reality with cheating monsters and rooms, the journey in the regular tower from the 350th floor to the ground floor starts to seem like an easy task. Now the main challenge is to keep enough lives to deal with both the third and fourth bastards.

The main tower of Super House of Dead Ninjas can be completed in 10-15 minutes. However, you won’t be able to do it in real life unless you have spent at least a few intense and dynamic hours playing the game, making thrilling attempts, and experiencing incredible failures.