Shinobi Swarm Review: Survive or Die Trying

You spawn in, start moving, and enemies rush you from all sides. Auto-attack is on by default, so you're mostly focused on dodging and positioning while collecting XP orbs dropped by kills. Each level lasts maybe 4-5 minutes if you survive, which gets shorter once you build up some speed. Bosses show up at the end and they're not messing around, so don't skip the upgrade screen. First run I wasted all my coins on a character I didn't even like. Turns out some of the cheaper ninjas are actually better for learning the patterns. The third level spike caught me off guard and I died twice before realizing I needed to grab the dash evolution first. Also yeah, the tutorial drags on a bit longer than it needs to, but you can skip it after the first time.

Movement runs on WASD or arrow keys, and you can also use a D-pad or left analog stick if you're on a gamepad. ESC pauses the whole thing, and Start pulls up the menu on a controller. Mobile players get a virtual joystick right on screen. Took me a bit to figure out you could rebind keys in the settings, but defaults work fine for most people.

Shinobi Swarm does the survivor-bullet-hell thing better than most browser knockoffs because the ninja theme actually affects your abilities instead of just being cosmetic. It's got more character variety than something like Landgrab Royale and runs smoother on older laptops than most action shooters. The boss fights give it an edge over pure auto-battlers since you actually have to move and react. Worse than Vampire Survivors though, mostly because the upgrade pool feels smaller.