Onore no Shinzuru Michi wo Yuke

Onore no Shinzuru Michi wo Yuke, released in 2009 by From Software and developed by Silicon Studio, is a greatly enhanced PSP version of Yoshio Ishii’s 2008 Flash game Cursor*10. For simplicity, we’ll call the update Shadow Ninja, which isn’t exactly a translation of the Japanese title but would undoubtedly make an excellent localized name if any North American or European publisher opted to distribute it outside of Japan (they haven’t). The title translates to “Go the hell the way you believe in!” or something along those lines – it’s an impolite and straightforward statement. Shadow Ninja was never released in the West because it was immersed in Japanese culture, emphasizing Ukiyo-e artwork and similarly fitting music. Nonetheless, it is an ingenious notion supported by some lovely aesthetics and, despite some pretty severe issues later on, is worth considering alongside its Flash progenitor. Onore (and its Flash predecessor) have a basic concept: you are given 10 ninjas (lives) and must explore 16 floors, each connected by stairs and stocked with various objects to boost points, traps to steal lives, as well as switches, keys, and other hotspots necessary to activate the next set of stairs. Consider each floor a puzzle that occasionally interacts with another base via buttons or a key that needs to be shlepped to lock three stories up. Each ninja, however, has just around 60 seconds to do their job before the “session” finishes, and you assume control of a new ninja. As the sessions go to the tenth, all previously utilized ninjas will continuously replay their lives – and this is where the puzzle comes in; for certain ninjas’ primary function will be to stand on a switch, allowing others who follow to access whatever is now unlocked. Others must disarm traps by impaling themselves on spikes as a kamikaze. Along with Echoshift and TimeSlip, it thus joins the limited category of temporal-themed puzzle games.