This week's game is Otoboke Ninja Colosseum, which asks the bold question of "what if Bomberman was a ninja girl instead?". Turns out that it leads to a very solid maze game with novel twists on controlling space and fighting enemies!
First off, based on the timing of Cohost going read-only next week, I believe this will be the last blog post I get to share on Cohost! Depending on when the site goes read-only on October 1st, anyway. As mentioned in my pinned message, it's unfortunate to see it go and I'm glad to have spent time here interacting with you all! If you want to keep following my work/stay in touch or are swayed by this post to start reading my blog going forward, please do follow me on Bluesky because the show will go on there!
Otoboke Ninja Colosseum is a really solid, inventive twist on Bomberman. As mentioned, you get to play as ninja girls instead of Hudson Soft's lovable robot, but the biggest twists come with the moment to moment mechanics. Instead of bombs, you place caltrops that burst into shuriken after a few seconds. Since these are projectiles and thus have travel time, this changes how you approach things. Projectiles can be dodged more easily, but you can also stagger them to create formations that are difficult to break through or drop 'em all in one row to hit an enemy multiple times quickly. Projectiles can sometimes even be used to interact with the environment from afar, which the story does make use of a few times.
During multiplayer (or against certain enemies and bosses), simply hitting your foe with shuriken won't be enough. To finish the job, you have to pull out your kusarigama and have it extend towards your intended target. This kusarigama is an excellent tool capable of safely finishing foes from afar, moving blocks around to solve puzzles or stop advances, and even destroying soft blocks with the right power-up. The catch is that it leaves you completely immobile, needs to be carefully moved around corners, and can be blocked by people passing through who aren't stunned. The overall setup of this game in both single player and multiplayer is pretty much identical to Bomberman, but these two mechanics are compelling enough to make this one well worth a try whether you play solo or with others.
