There’s a special breed of mobile game that seems to be designed for endless hours of frustrated playing that you just can’t stop.
A few years back, Flappy Bird was on the throne of this genre. If you’ve ever played it, you will understand the conflicting urge to throw your precious smartphone against the wall, just to destroy it and the hellish game it contains.
The creator behind this viral game decided that it was a brilliant idea to bring a new game with a different concept but retain its element of complete exasperation.
Ninja Spinki Challenges!!(NPS!!) is the latest game by Dong Nguyen, the Vietnamese artist and programmer behind Flappy Bird and Swing Copters.
Made available on iOS and Android, NPS!! incorporates elements from Flappy Bird, making it addictive yet simple to pick up. I see it as a step up from Swing Copters which tried to live up to its predecessor but failed ultimately to spark the same virality.
Various reviews have been left on NPS!! which are a mix of players expressing their frustration on how mindlessly difficult the challenges can be to those praising Nguyen for creating yet another time-devouring game.
I gave it a go, mostly to test the limits of my patience.
Send Help, There’re So Challenges To Complete
Unlike his other games, this one doesn’t just revolve around one type of gameplay.
Once you’ve loaded the game, you will be shown a menu listing down the various challenges you need to complete under a certain time limit.
There are about 30 challenges at the time of writing but they revolve around 6 mini games that get increasingly difficult the more you progress. The six mini games are Bounce, Shuriken, Crossy, Jump, Rolling, and Cannon.
You play the role of a ninja character that needs to complete one of these tasks, whether it be jumping over bouncing fruit, firing projectiles at objects or swiftly dashing to avoid rolling cats.
Before you get into the level, a short tutorial on the controls will pop up and tell you how to win. It’s usually simple tapping and swiping motions, how difficult could that be?
I breezed through the first 10 challenges and began questioning on how people could get addicted to this.
I was wrong. It was all just a setup to lure me gently in before hell began.
Challenge 12 was the turning point. I began to realise how sadistic the developers were and what a sucker I was for thinking it would be easy.
Once I reached level 20, I had spent over 3 hours straight just tapping and swiping away on my phone. I was hot, bothered and tellingly, determined to master them all. My competitive spirit had been successfully fired up and I was going to ACE those challenges.
Why Can’t I Put Down My Phone?!
If you’re familiar with WarioWare games, then you’ll understand the addictive mechanism behind this. It’s short levels with specific goals for you to complete and they are VERY easy to fail.
As with the other two games from the developer, this game boiled down to making simple movements on your mobile device’s touchscreen. The only real difference I would say is the level of accessibility, which goes from approachable to insane.
If you’re a masochist with a lot of time to burn, allow yourself to be sucked in by the easy opening challenges. Just remember, when you’ve attempted a challenge for the nth time, you were warned.
If suffering through the challenges aren’t enough, there is an endless mode.
Basically it removes the time element of the challenge and sets a different goal for you instead.
An example would be the cat-bouncing mini game that involves only one kitten compared to the other levels and all you have to do is just avoid it until you reach a score of 10. After that, an additional kitten is thrown into the mix. As long as you reach each goal, your score will keep ticking up.
Verdict
This game was designed to drive you mad but keep you wanting more.
I do appreciate that the developers went for a bit of variety with the different mini games rather than sticking to just one single mode, like the previous games.
One small complaint—their method of monetising is through unskippable in-app adverts whenever you want to restart failed challenges. They don’t have an option to pay money to removes ads at the moment, but I personally see these ads as a cooldown time for me to relax a little before I rush into trying the challenge again.
If you have faith in your anger management, you can give NSC!! a try and see how far you can really go with this game. We hold no responsibility over any damage your phone may incur from playing this game.
Feature Image Credit: ninjaspinkichallengesapk.com
