Bowja the Ninja

Link to game

I have a confession to make.

I have a guilty pleasure for games on pencilkids.com.  I mean, I know these are games intended to be played by six year olds, aka that demograph that could be playing an epilepsy-trigger app and think its the cat's bollocks.  I know these games look so diabetically cute, with big-eyed characters that drip with insincere cuteness.  I know that you could play through many of these games in under fifteen minutes without a walkthrough.

I still think these games are awesome.  So let me introduce you to the game that introduced me to pencilkids.com: Bowja the Ninja.

Anyways, this is a point and click adventure game where you play the role of a ninja named Bowja (oh no fuck) and your red-jumper ass is charged to commit murder on Randy the Robot.

and have rival ninjas swear at you.

So you see my introduction to a site dedicated to kid's games was an innocent title that dripped with badass on top of cuteness.  Now there are things that I like about Bowja the Ninja that wouldn't have been placed into a game intended to be played by teenage boys suffering from testostrone poisoning.

For one thing, Bowja focuses on stealth and using the environment to outsmart his enemies and achieve his goals.  The reason for this is obvious: a focus on violence like one would see in other games about ninjas is a blatant foe-pas if you are making a game for kids.  This actually makes Bowja interesting, as he is doing things that actual ninjas are doing, sneaking around to dispatch his foes and progress though the game, not by getting into multi-man melees with a bunch of baddies.

Isn't making a circular block a wood roll onto a baddie more awesome than simply reducing said baddie into gibbets?

Now, there are many awesome things that Bowja the Ninja finds himself doing over the course of the game.  I mean, this is a game for kids and kids do have a higher tolerance for weird than adults do.  I mean, there's a moment in this game, as an example, where you have to shoot down a helicopter with your bow!

In a broken light-rail lift!

Now, this game has some interesting puzzles that not only have enough rhyme to reason that you can figure them out without a walkthrough, but some of them are kind of brilliant.  Now, remember that kids aren't going to have the patience to go reading up walkthroughs on puzzles that employ no logic to them whatsoever.  While there is a degree of combing the screen for hotspots to click everything you need to do comes intuitively.  As a Dr. Song example, there is a bossfight with a helicopter where the solution is to shoot the tail propeller.

Pro-tip: this game LOVES roman numerals

Course, as this is a point and click game, shit needs to be click in a certain manner, and this is how you commit your murder on Randy the Robot and other shit.  Course, I'll admit I was disappointed with Randy the robot: I mean he started off badass by shooting at Bowja every time he had his red little head poke up, but it took only one click to dispatch of the threat... or at least I think it was a threat... we are never really told why Randy needed to be discommissoned... I'll just assume that Bowja needed to prove his badassness by taking out a war mech so he can get earn the title of master or something.

Bowja makes robot murder look so easy

Course, you beat the game and get a screen linking you to the pencilkids site where you can claim a desktop background for beating the game or something... look, unless you are a member of the game's target audience you will not care.  Also, this game is short... or at least it felt short.  Maybe the kids that play this game might find it tough, but older player should be able to get through it within at most thirty minutes.

The game aesthetics are just so fitting with what you might get from a children's cartoon about a ninja.  Everyone has a high-pitch voice and the game avoids grey and brown a lot.  Its bright in some points and dark in others.  And Bowja is a cute little guy... I mean cute in a non-sexual manner, please don't get the wrong idea.

Now, if you are a douchbag whose homophobia is so sever anything colourful and cute will cause your testes to shrink into your groan don't play this game.  However, for the rest of us that is secure enough in their sexuality and social standing that playing Kirby wouldn't destroy us, well, for what its worth, Bowja the Ninja is a fun little distraction.  Really, it is!  Go play it and see why I do like pencilkids.com.