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.