Mini Ninjas Adventures

Mini Ninjas Adventures is a 2012 Kinect-controlled action game developed by Side-Kick Games and published by Square Enix, released on Xbox Live Arcade for the Xbox 360. A spin-off of IO Interactive's charming 2009 family-friendly title Mini Ninjas, it adapts that game's cute, stylised world of pint-sized ninjas for motion control, requiring the Microsoft Kinect sensor. Players use full-body movements, punches, kicks, blocks and gestures, to fend off waves of comical samurai foes in an on-rails, arcade-style combat experience starring the young ninja hero Hiro. Designed as an accessible, pick-up-and-play motion game aimed at younger players and families, it traded the original's exploration and adventure for short, gesture-driven action sequences suited to the living-room Kinect format. Critical reception was generally lukewarm; reviewers found it a pleasant but slight and repetitive use of the license, hampered by the imprecision common to many Kinect titles of the era. As one of the numerous motion-controlled games released to support Microsoft's Kinect peripheral, Mini Ninjas Adventures is a minor entry trading on an appealing brand, and it requires the now-discontinued Kinect hardware to play, limiting its accessibility today. It requires the now-discontinued Kinect sensor, making it largely inaccessible to players today. It remains a minor footnote to IO Interactive's better-regarded original Mini Ninjas, trading on that game's appealing world for a motion-controlled audience.