Ninjas, Bats, and Chewing Gum: A Ninjala Talk with GungHo CEO Kazuki Morishita

Ninjala, the new Nintendo Switch game recently revealed by GungHo Entertainment, defied a lot of players’ expectations. After all, when fans of the publisher hear “new Switch title,” minds likely traveled to mobile and 3DS smash hit Puzzle and Dragons. However, when the curtain was finally pulled back, what we see instead is a world with gum-chewing ninja kids turning that gum into weapons and thwacking opponents into the sky.

When we asked Gungho CEO Kazuki Morishita if he was excited about the prospect of shocking his company’s fans with a quirky new game like this, his response was empathic and undeniable: “YES.”

Ninjala puts up to eight players in an arena as the aforementioned gum-chewing ninjas. Players blow a bubble in order to create a baseball bat-like weapon, the larger the bubble the larger the weapon, then score points by swinging the weapon like a baseball bat and sending other players soaring. Bubbles can also be shot at other players to immobilize them, setting them up for the big thwack, called “Ippon” after successful strikes in judo or kenpo competitions. Whoever score the most Ippon wins the match.

Truly this is a game that subverts expectation, and for Morishita and GungHo that starts with the ninjas themselves. “When you think of the word ‘ninja,” you imagine those old time ninja that lurk in the shadows and strike silently,” Morishita explains. “In this world ninja are no longer needed, so they begin to disappear. Time goes on, the bloodline begins to blur, and it feels like the ninja do not exist anymore. However, there are some inheritors of that ninja DNA in the present day,” and that’s where the player characters come in.

These ninja are “more fashionable and more ‘pop’” according to Morishita, touching on the game’s loud and colorful art style that doesn’t mesh at all with standard ninja norms. This was intentional, as “in the present day it someone’s wearing a ninja suit out on the street, it would draw way more attention.”

Perhaps even more surprising is the use of chewing gum, or “Ninja ,” developed by the in-game World Ninja Association as a way to, and we promise this is real, “allows a person with ninja DNA in their bloodline to awaken their ninja skills by chewing it.” The characters in the game chew the gum, morph it into the weapons the ninja will use, and the action comes from that. Bubbles create weapons, stick enemies to the ground in order to hit them more easily, and perform special attacks. As Morishita puts it: “if you don’t have a bubble, you don’t have an action.”

In a game filled with unique design choices that one seems to stick out, so why gum? Morishita was quick to respond with his trademark wit: “when I was born, I was holding gum.” After a laugh he continued with the actual response: “Gum exists worldwide, everyone knows what gum is. So when we were developing the game we wanted to use something everyone would know, but also something that could freely be morphed or changed, so we landed on gum.”

Ninjala represents the best attributes of the gaming industry: an original gameplay idea using original ideas and out-of-the-box thinking that could create a new multiplayer gem. Granted some of the ideas in the game are borrowed from other titles -- the ninja themselves look a lot like the Inklings of Splatoon -- but the core of Ninjala comes from something completely new and the team at GungHo is completely behind it. The CEO, in particular, seems excited about the game, as his light-hearted approach tells us he understands the vibe Ninjala is going for.

NInjala will be hitting the Nintendo Switch in 2019.

(This story has been updated to correct the spelling of GungHo CEO Morishita's last name as well as remove mentions of Nintendo Switch exclusivity, which per a representative is inaccurate.)