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Daily iPhone App: Dojo Danger is worth the wait
It's hard to believe it was almost exactly a year ago that I met up with Kihon at last year's Game Developers' Conference to see this game called Dojo Danger. It's now available on the App Store, but it took quite a while. Even though the game was almost finished last year, Kihon chose to focus on a Draw Something-style game called SketchPhrase instead, only bringing Dojo Danger out a little while ago. In my humble opinion, they needn't have waited: Dojo Danger is a great game. Kihon is perhaps best known for the very simple Baby Monkey (Going Backwards on a Pig), but their work has a lot of polish and charm, and Dojo Danger is a very colorful, well-built title. It's a turn-based physics combat title, where you fling little discs (meant to represent ninjas and zombies) around a 2D board, doing and repairing damage and trying to win the battle. There are a few games like this on the App Store (the Squids series is one), but I like Dojo Danger despite its similarities -- it's simple, straightforward, and while the strategy can get interesting (each level has various obstacles and bonuses for you to go after with your attacks), it's never overwhelming. There is one small issue with the game, and it's that with the HD version on the iPhone, the text and controls are a tad too small -- the title's clearly designed for the iPad, and I bet it looks great on an iPad-sized Retina display. I'm also not a big fan of the boost system and its IAP -- it's very powerful, but it adds a lot of complexity that probably shouldn't be there. Those are small issues, however -- Dojo Danger is a lot of fun, and definitely worth the US$0.99. Hopefully the next time Kihon's got a game like this, it won't make us wait a year to play it.
Baby Monkey devs Kihon get involved in Dojo Danger
It might be embarrassing to say, but I am a big fan of Kihon Games' first title Baby Monkey (going backwards on a pig). Yes, it's a silly game based on Parry Gripp's song of the same name, and yes, it's a pretty typical endless runner title. But I like it nevertheless, and so when Kihon offered to show me their second iOS title last week at GDC, I gladly assented. Turns out Baby Monkey was a trial, more or less. Kihon is a fairly new company (they've got seven employees so far) that was looking to dip its toe in iOS development, and Baby Monkey was the first result. Now that the water's been tested, however, they're ready to jump in, and they'll do that with a second title called Dojo Danger. Dojo Danger is a little more complicated than Baby Monkey was, as you might imagine. The game is turn-based strategy, and plays somewhat similarly to The Game Bakers' Squids -- you get a team of players pitted against another team (in this case, it's ninjas vs. zombies), and during each turn, you use a little slingshot mechanic on each round player to fling them across the board and try to do as much damage as possible. Though the basic mechanics are simple, Dojo Danger will have a huge amount of content: There will be 50 level campaigns for each of the two factions, and fifteen different units for each as well. Those units won't just vary in strength -- some will have healing abilities or other special functions, and there will also be consumable items used to boost up the troops (and sold via in-app purchase, of course). There will also be multiplayer available, both pass and play, and online asynchronous, where you'll be able to set up a dojo of units, and then your friends will come and try to take it down with their various armies. Maps vary as well -- some are just open battles, while others are a "Capture the Duck" variant (where you try to throw a duck into a goal on either side of the map), or have troops "frozen" on the field that need to be broken out of their ice blocks before being used. Finally, Kihon's business model for this one should be interesting -- aside from the standard freemium purchases, the company is also planning to release new units as often as possible, and sort of borrow the League of Legends model from Riot Games, where players will need to pay real money if they want to use those heroes right away. That should be interesting; obviously, balance will be an issue, but hopefully Kihon can make the profit they need without requiring players to buy specific units to win. Dojo Danger definitely looks interesting -- it's gearing up for a beta test right now, and expected out later on this year from Kihon.
