N++: Xbox One Review

N++: Xbox One Review

Running, jumping, collecting gold, opening exits and avoiding death traps.

Sounds easy as, right?

Well in N++, easy is anything but the answer to getting through a series of levels.

In this graphically simple but frustratingly painful game, 2D is the name of the game as you play a ninja, (a stickman ninja) whose aim is to collect all the gold in a level (because ninjas like gold according to the opening test card) and get the hell out of the levels.

Using physics and speed your best bet to survive each of the five sub-levels of the game is to work out quickly what you need to, how you need to do it and how the easiest way is to get it done. But it's not as easy as it sounds - one overshoot of the platforms or one mistiming of the jump and you splat into pieces, and have to press to start again.

It's fiendishly addictive, over-simple and bloody annoying in parts as the frustration starts to bite at you. Through some 100 levels of the game, it's a fairly intensive process of getting the gold, getting everything timed properly and getting out. Rooms are sparsely decorated and the graphics are even sparser (honestly, the whole thing looks like it's come from a Commodore 64 and looks like it could be the ninja bastard son of Meat Boy) but the gameplay is the thing with this title.

You'll find yourself losing hours to the main game - and that's without the start of the community levels, the multiplayer, the races and creating sections. There's more than enough to play here and more than enough to connect you to cranial meltdown as you apply physics in your head to the problem and watch it all go horrendously wrong in the execution.

Like a ninja training, N++ is about the progression of the journey - if you're willing to stick to it and get there in the end, you could find yourself really engrossed in this platformer that's as devilish as it's simply executed. It thrives on its purity, its simplicity and it's going to drive you absolutely mad.