There are times when reviewing indie games can be truly exasperating. While the majority of titles out there are either good, bad, or indifferent, there are those that stand out because they were on the edge of being better, but then somehow whiffed it. The causes can vary, but in general nothing tends to sink games more quickly than control mechanics that aren’t quite up to snuff.

Unfortunately, that’s what we have here with the case of the epically-named Chibi Ninja Shino-kun Treasure of Demon Tower. In it, you’ll play as a ninja, and your ability to move around and avoid traps is actually pretty impressive. I particularly like the ability to grapple and then move across the ceiling as something I don’t normally see. While perhaps his abilities to deal with enemies feel pretty heavily nerfed for a ninja, that’s not the primary concern. 

What does quickly become a problem though is the implementation of the wall jump, which by now you’d think would have a sort of universal feel to it, but apparently not in this case. In order to be successful you need to still be pushing in the direction of the wall at the point you jump, and though in principle this makes sense, it could be off by just a split second which made it feel very difficult to pull off consistently. Given this is a vital skill for simply getting around, let alone grabbing bonus coins, the feel for something so fundamental being off absolutely tanked the experience for me.

While I have no doubt that others may not struggle with it, or will simply adapt, as someone who has been playing platformers since they began, with wall jumping being a core skill burned into my brain long ago, I’ll stand up and say it’s implemented here poorly. Like I said, in truth the timing may be off by just a hair, but the moment something I’ve taken for granted for decades fails to work consistently it’s a problem, and honestly I’m not interested in adapting. I would assume this is accidental, and not a matter of someone purposely trying to make a game tougher by playing with fundamentals, but either way there’s no doubt that this mechanic currently makes the game problematic.