Klei Entertainment’s Mark of the Ninja begins with a dojo on fire. A heavily armed force has attacked the Hisomu clan. A nameless ninja, resting after receiving an extensive irezumi tattoo, wakes to the sound of it. Ora, a female ninja, gets him moving. He gathers his equipment, kills the attackers, and rescues his sensei, Azai, along with several clan members.
Trailer, via GOG.
The Tattoo That Grants and Dooms
Azai explains the Mark. The ink comes from a special desert flower. Absorbed slowly into the body, it sharpens senses and reflexes. It also drives the wearer into madness. The first Hisomu ninja to bear it became incredibly dangerous and increasingly deranged, and his reign of terror ended only with his death. So a ninja who takes the Mark swears to commit seppuku once the madness begins. Mark of the Ninja sets that bargain against the present day, and against Hessian, the PMC that hit the dojo, run by a plutocrat named Count Karajan.
The stealth is the point. Levels split into light and darkness: enemies see the player in light and cannot see him in dark, though passing within a certain immediate distance of a guard’s face gets him spotted no matter the lighting. Running may give him away, shown as a rapidly expanding circle. The game uses a line of sight mechanic, unusual for a platformer — enemies invisible to the character are invisible to the player, though their sounds appear on screen the same way the player’s do.
| Mechanic | What it does |
|---|---|
| Light and darkness | Player is visible in light, invisible in dark |
| Line of sight | Enemies hidden from the character are hidden from the player |
| Sound circles | Running and noise show as a rapidly expanding circle |
| One-hit kill | Possible only when approaching undetected |
| Alarm | Triggered by an unambiguous sighting or a found body |
Azai’s Bargain and Hessian’s Count
Approach unseen and the player can execute a one-hit kill. Extinguish lights, hide behind objects, slip through narrow grates and shafts enemies cannot use. Get detected and he must stay out of sight for a set period until patrols reset and one-hit kills work again. Hand-to-hand is possible but risks death or disablement and a noisy scuffle that draws others. Enemies react to their environment and to each other. Find a body or clearly spot the ninja, and they sound an alarm that alerts the whole area and stops patrols from resetting.
After the second tattoo, the ninja and Ora are sent after Hessian. He invades the corporation’s East Asian regional headquarters and murders Corporal Kelly, the Hessian employee who led the attack on the dojo. Meanwhile the horishi artist Dosan worries about the quality of the tattoo ink and promises to learn why Azai has not procured a fresh supply.
The cutscenes are rendered in Saturday-morning cartoon animation. Reviewers praised the visual and audio atmosphere, the gameplay, and the new take on stealth, though some criticized the control scheme and difficult puzzles.
Mark of the Ninja earns its reputation because the line of sight mechanic does the work most stealth games fake. You cannot see what your character cannot see, so the tension is real rather than performed. The control complaints and the puzzle difficulty are fair, but they are the cost of a design that refuses to let you peek. Fourteen years on, the bargain Azai describes — power now, madness later — still lands harder than most stealth games manage.
It holds an IGDB critic aggregate score of 9.1/10 across 7 outlets.
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