Splatoon is, without a doubt, one of Nintendo's giants now. Even in spite of the fact Splatoon's debut game released on a console many consider one of Nintendo's great blunders, the paintball shooter franchise has garnered such mainstream appeal that it's been one of the best-selling games across two platforms, and the starring characters, Inklings, were the very first fighters advertised for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. As with all games that receive such outstanding critical and commercial success, Splatoon is starting to see some of its own imitators, and besides terrain-painting/scooter-simulator hybrid Crayola Scoot, Ninjala is the first game to draw from Splatoon's growing popularity.

Ninjala's Splatoon inspiration is incredibly apparent in every respect. Just like Splatoon, Ninjala employs a toony-pop aesthetic accompanied by a host of fictional brands (whom produce clothing for the player to wear) and fictional bands (whom create the music the players hear in the game). Both games have a host of pop songs touched with aquatic-futurism and Japanese tones respectively, and I'm not entirely convinced I didn't hear Splatoon music motifs in Ninjala. Both games feature smaller-than-the-old-world blank avatars that the player customizes, both of whom fight using household items precariously fashioned into weapons, and can not only fight by drawing their staple ammunition (Ink and Gum respectively) from tanks propped up on their backs, but also use the very same ammunition to travel vertically up walls! Ninjala doesn't try to hide it: it's definitely riding in on the trails blazed by its ink-shooting ancestor.

Behind the many, many, many apparent visual, stylistic and aesthetic similarities to Splatoon, however, Ninjala boasts a variety of unique ideas that make it a breath of fresh air in the genre. Combat takes place in one of two formats -- 4v4 team matches, and free-for-all 8-player battle royales -- and unlike the strong majority of competitive team-based games or battle royales, Ninjala is not a shooter, but a close-quarters weapon-based brawler. Much of the combat involves hand-to-hand combat where players fight using the well-rounded katanas, slow-but-disruptive hammers or the long-distance yo-yo's. Every one of the 12 different weapons (4 for each weapon class) features two regular attacks and four special skills, one of which employs the weapon itself and the other of which uses gum-bubbles as one of multiple different kinds of projectiles. The gum serves to protect the player, allow them to perform ninja-substitution tricks and let the player perform air dashes to close the distance between yourself and an elusive foe. In exchanges, two players may strike each other's weapons resulting in a parry where the players must choose one of four different directions in an advanced style of rock-papers-scissors. Whoever wins is allowed to perform a vicious killing-combo on the loser. Players also have the option of running on walls to fight each horizontally, and many maneuvers take players into the air, offering a strong element of vertical combat.

Being a battle royale brawler, Ninjala is at its core a unique game. In turn, Ninjala also poses many unique issues and also unique pros. Where the game goes right, it certainly goes right. A host of customization options promises in-depth character creation well beyond what Splatoon offered, including gender-neutral faces, hair-styles and voices so that a player can mix-and-match however they choose, creating a girl avatar with a butch haircut or a male avatar with long hair. However, in turn the game's limited options for unlocking cosmetics without resorting to spending honest-to-God real-life money makes those many options moot and, often times, totally unusable for most players. The game's hand-to-hand combat in the battle royale scene creates a unique game flow, but it's hurt by unintuitive gameplay mechanics. The game only launched with two maps, both of which are visually uninteresting and one of which is too large for such small-scale battles, often forcing the player to hunt out opponents and spend long stretches of their very limited time doing nothing at all. And the weapon-based combat is interesting and fun, but its hurt by the small selection of weapons and a Parry system that prioritizes luck over legitimate player skill, which is a poor sort of game mechanic to find in a fast action-game. The game's biggest, most apparent and most discouraging flaw, however, is its connectivity issues. Even with players on good, high-speed internet, servers oftentimes struggle to support the massive workload that is Ninjala, resulting in rubber-banding, desyncing, bizarre instances where the game freezes at the beginning of a match for seconds to full minutes at a time, and even full crashes in the middle of matches!

Ninjala is a fresh and interesting game marred by a weak launch. There's tons of promise in the variety of cosmetic options, the unique gameplay, the similar-but-distinct cutesy-pop, neon-touched aesthetic and the clever weapon designs. However, a startling lack of options for even an early-launch title, leaves a lot of it up to the imagination. The few maps we have are somewhat out of touch with the game's core gameplay, and both visually and mechanically aren't very interesting to play on. If it isn't apparent, in its current state, Ninjala is a hard game to recommend, and its hard to get an accurate feel for just how good the game will be thanks to the game's lacking, limited and monotonous early launch. It's a worthwhile game to watch for updates, but don't go in expecting it to replace Splatoon.