As part of the Fighting Game Community (FGC), it is nice to see when the community starts to build something new, and R24 Digital has done this by bringing The Ronin Dojo to IOS and Android. The Ronin Dojo is a ..”tool designed by the FGC for the FGC”as well as to help “improve your speed and reflexes even when not near your fight stick or pad.”

Visuals

The Ronin Dojo is a phone app/game, which isn’t supposed to be flashy because it has a purpose, but  it still looks good for presentation wise. The colors are bright and sit on each other fairly well, which the app/game needs to rely on for the game play to work. Fonts are legible and menus work for how basic they are. Visually, this app does what it needs to and is nice to look at.

 Gameplay

When first being introduced to The Ronin Dojo, is presented to me as a tool to help your response time for fighting games. Well after playing it, I see the concept of how it is supposed to work. The game is set up like Simon Says style. The play screen will present one of the four random action highlighted in a vibrant color, “Punch”, “Kick”, “Block”, and “Throw”. Your job is to press the buttons colored to the corresponding action, which will be the four buttons on the bottom of the play screen. The only thing that makes this different from Simon Says is that you have to respond within the time frame or hit frame given, as you would for any fighting games. This makes The Ronin Dojo addicting because you will notice how you start responding slightly faster each time and trying to beat your High Score. This element makes the game feel more like a rhythm game. You start to notice that the game throws the action in a steady beat which will sort of draw you away. This is one aspect I can see be tweaked later on while the game develops, but so far, I can’t wait to see the improvements on the game/app down the line.

I would recommend members of the FGC to try this out and keep a close eye on it. This is just the beginning of The Ronin Dojo’s life cycle, so their might be some nice improvements for the evolution of this game/app with updates down the line. Be sure to check the game out along with checking out the developer’s website. Let us know what your high score is!