Ninjala

Ninjala centers upon an eponymous tournament being held by the fictional World Ninja Association (WNA), which developed bubblegum that could be used to allow people with the DNA of a ninja to perform ninjutsu. The game focuses primarily on melee combat using various types of weapons. The player can double-jump and run along walls to navigate the map. A match can be played between up to eight players in either teams or a solo "Battle Royale".

Bubbles can be blown to trigger abilities, such as launching them at opponents as a ranged attack, or activating an air dash move. Their power can be increased by destroying drones that periodically spawn on the map, allowing the player to craft a larger melee weapon when fully-charged. The player can also disguise themselves as a prop on the field. Points are scored primarily by knocking out opponents, and an "Ippon" bonus can be scored as part of a KO if the player does so in combination with their abilities. Each match lasts four minutes and the player or team that scores the most points when the timer runs out wins.

GungHo CEO Kazuki Morishita explained that Ninjala was inspired by his childhood memories of ninja and sports chanbara, having envisioned Ninjala as being a mixture of both. He stated that the main goal was to develop create a multiplayer action game that both children and adults could enjoy. Takeshi Arakawa, who co-produced Dissidia Final Fantasy while at Square Enix, is part of the development staff of Ninjala. For its unveiling, GungHo elected to primarily target Europe and North America to gauge their reactions before giving it more prominent promotion in Japan. Ninjala was built using the Unreal Engine game engine.

Originally announced for release in 2019, GungHo announced on May 31, 2019 that Ninjala had been delayed to early 2020. In December 2019, GungHo president Kazuki Morishita stated that Ninjala was still on track for a Spring 2020 release, and that it would contain content that would be "satisfying" for "seasoned players". Ninjala was originally set to be released on May 27, 2020, but it was delayed four weeks later to June 24 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The overall visual style of Ninjala has been widely compared to Nintendo's Splatoon franchise. Jordan Devore of Destructoid felt that Ninjala was hard to judge based on its early multiplayer demo at E3, noting the lack of playable weapons beyond baseball bats (though noticing that yo-yos had appeared as a disabled option in the menus), a need to improve the "flow and feel" of its gameplay, and the lack of "good" lock-on targeting functionality. However, he felt that "there's something to this gum-loving ninja concept for sure", and that Ninjala was "worth following". He argued that alongside Splatoon, there was "plenty of room for more colorful, poppy, kid-friendly multiplayer games". IGN similarly noted that its concept felt like "Splatoon meets Arms", and that "if GungHo makes good on delivering creative weaponry and polishes up the combat, Ninjala might just have what it takes to beat Nintendo at its own game."

Following the 2020 open beta, Connor Sheridan of GamesRadar+ noted that the game's fundamentals had an initial learning curve (especially in comparison to Splatoon), but that "figuring out how to string attacks together for maximum points and minimum chance of reprisal" had a strategic depth similar to fighting games, and that he was "pleasantly surprised" by the number of character customization options. Siliconera described the game as "trying to appeal to the fans of its larger cousin [Splatoon] without replacing it", noting that the drone mechanic added a "MOBA-like" progression that could potentially influence strategy among coordinated teams, but that the tutorial video provided by the beta was "not particularly effective at explaining the uses and advantages of each kind of attack" as opposed to an in-game tutorial, and the server capacity issues from the beta showed that there was "still significant work to do to build a stable environment for launch next month".