Mexican Ninja Review

Mad Bricks mixes Mexican and Japanese culture, fast combat, ridiculous humor, and roguelike progression into a game that is messy in places but surprisingly difficult to put down.

Mexican Ninja is the kind of game that sounds like a joke before you even see it in action. The basic idea is simple enough: take the classic beat ’em up, throw in a Mexican Ninja, mix Mexican and Japanese culture together, add Narcos and Yakuza, and then build the whole thing around a roguelike structure.

Mexican Ninja takes place in Nuevo Tokyo, a fictional city born from a collision of Japanese and Mexican influences. The Narkuzas, a ruling class formed when Narcos and Yakuza joined forces, control the world. You step into the role of the Mexican Ninja, a rebel fighting through the city and taking on the people responsible for its violent new order. 

The setup is intentionally ridiculous, but underneath the comedy there is a darker world involving violence, drugs, corruption, corporate control, and people struggling to survive. 

Mexican Ninja was developed by Mad Bricks, a Latin American studio based in Bogotá that was founded in 2015, with Mexican Ninja serving as the studio’s first listed game. It was published by Amber and released on August 20, 2026.

That combination of serious and ridiculous ideas is important to understanding the game. Mexican Ninja clearly wants you to enjoy its absurdity, but it does not always maintain the same tone. Some parts of the world are genuinely dark, while other sections lean heavily into crude comedy, sexual jokes, parody, and cultural references. 

If you are comfortable with that style of humor, Mexican Ninja has plenty of personality. If you are not, some of the jokes may feel excessive. The important thing is that the game never feels generic. Even when something does not work, it usually has a strong identity behind it.

Your mission is to roam the streets of Nuevo Tokyo and take out gangs and members of the Narkuza organization. You go around different areas, fight enemies, complete objectives, meet characters, and slowly learn more about what is going on in this weird world. The story isn’t really the main reason to play the game, especially if you’re more interested in action than dialog, but there’s more story here than the ridiculous premise might suggest.

The writing also varies a little between runs. The use of different dialog for bosses and other characters makes repeat encounters feel less mechanical. There are also side quests that add an extra layer to the world, and completing them can give useful rewards. 

You can technically skip dialogue, but doing so means missing some of the background and the jokes that help explain the game's unusual setting. The humor also relies on Spanish and Japanese references at times, so some wordplay may land better if you understand either language. 

Once you start playing, the main attraction is the combat. 

Mexican Ninja is a 2.5D roguelike beat ’em up, and its combat is built around speed, movement, positioning, and aggression. You have light and heavy attacks that can be chained together, along with jumping, dashing, parrying, passive abilities, and two active jutsus. 

The most important thing to understand is that standing still is usually a bad idea. Enemies can surround you quickly, so you are encouraged to keep moving and take the fight to them. You can attack, jump over enemies, dash away, launch opponents into the air, juggle them, and use special abilities to clear groups.

The combat is particularly satisfying once you start unlocking additional moves because your character gradually stops feeling like a basic beat ’em up protagonist and starts feeling much more capable. You can launch enemies into the air, chain attacks together, juggle multiple opponents, and combine different abilities to create more effective and flashy combos.

Your heavy attack can also function as a parry, giving you another option when an enemy attacks. Dodging and timing are important, and some encounters reward you for learning enemy patterns rather than simply attacking without thinking. You can also use your jutsus to deal a lot of damage, control groups, or set up combos. 

Some combat options, however, seem more useful than others. Some skills look nice and deal serious damage, but their cooldowns make them unreliable in some fights. Other abilities have shorter cooldowns and are much easier to use repeatedly. 

Once you figure out which abilities are most effective, you may naturally begin ignoring some of the others. The same applies to combos. There is a decent amount of variety, but a couple of crowd-control combinations can be so useful that you may find yourself using them again and again.

This is not necessarily a failure of the combat system because the foundation remains strong. 

Mexican Ninja rewards you for understanding how its systems interact. You need to know when to attack, dodge, parry, and get out of the way. You also need to pay attention to positioning because being surrounded can quickly turn a good run into a disastrous one. 

The problem is that sometimes there is simply too much happening around you. The combat is extremely fast, and once several enemies, projectiles, effects, and environmental objects are on screen, it can become difficult to keep track of your character. 

That problem becomes more noticeable because the levels themselves are often cluttered. Barrels, crates, barriers, fences, and other objects can fill the environment. Mexican Ninja looks detailed, but in a beat ’em up, visual clarity is more important than simply having more things on screen.

The camera can add to that problem. During some battles, the perspective changes or zooms in to create a more dynamic arena. Most of the time the system works, but there are moments when the camera is too close or positioned at an awkward angle. A large enemy in a small arena can make things even worse. 

The roguelike progression is what keeps the combat from becoming a simple series of repeated fights. Every run gives you temporary upgrades, abilities, and opportunities to build your character differently. You can find passive effects, level up your jutsus, unlock combos and make choices that affect the way the rest of your run plays out.

Some of these systems also interact with your combo meter. 

You’ll build up a combo by hitting enemies, which can make you more effective, giving you an incentive to keep the momentum going. This fits the aggressive nature of the game, because you get rewarded for keeping active, not constantly backing away. 

The progression does not stop when a run ends. You can spend your currency on permanent upgrades, including increased damage, additional health, improved healing, reduced cooldowns, new combos, and other improvements. This is one of the better parts of the roguelike structure because dying does not simply mean you have wasted your time. 

Mexican Ninja is also relatively generous with health. There are healing opportunities throughout all stages, including vending machines and health drops from enemies. That makes Mexican Ninja more accessible than some roguelikes that punish you heavily for every mistake. 

Side quests feed into this progression as well. Some can be finished in one run; others require you to keep playing. Once you've finished a quest, instead of losing all your progress upon death, you can return to the hub and collect your reward. These rewards give you meaningful upgrades, like improvements to your health and other aspects of your character.

The stages themselves also encourage exploration. The main route seems fairly linear, but there are alternate routes and hidden benefits in certain areas. Statues that give you passive abilities or jutsus can be found, as well as smaller upgrades hidden in the environment. 

Your character also has a skill tree, and you can learn new moves as you progress. 

Some attacks are especially gratifying, as they can juggle enemies in the air and lead into aerial combos or ground-bounce attacks. You can string these moves together with jutsus and other abilities to create the over-the-top combat that suits the game's arcade-inspired design.

Skins are another interesting part of the progression system, because they aren’t just cosmetic. The different outfits can offer gameplay benefits, changing the way you approach a run. Some can help repair some types of damage, and some can earn you extra money or make explosions when you use light attacks. 

The enemy design is more mixed. Early on, different enemies can feel distinct because they approach combat in different ways. As you progress, however, you begin to see familiar enemy types repeatedly, sometimes with altered appearances or additional health. This is common in beat ’em ups, but Mexican Ninja could have benefited from a little more variety. 

Bosses are generally more successful. They have personalities and distinct attack patterns, and they often feel like they are genuinely trying to end your run. That is exactly what you want from a roguelike boss. Some encounters are more memorable than others, but there is enough variety to make the boss fights feel different from ordinary enemy encounters.

The biggest issue with the difficulty comes toward the end. Most of Mexican Ninja gradually teaches you how to deal with enemies and bosses, and you can become compelling as your build develops. Then the final boss suddenly demands a much higher level of precision. 

A difficult final boss is not inherently a problem, but the transition can feel abrupt. You can move through most of Mexican Ninja feeling powerful, only to reach the final fight and suddenly find that reckless attacks no longer work. If you are not comfortable with parrying, dodging, and carefully reading attacks, the final encounter can be a major wall. 

Visually, Mexican Ninja has a clear style. 

The cel-shaded presentation gives it a comic-book quality, with an exaggerated look that suits the characters and setting. The Mexican and Japanese influences are visible throughout the world, and the mixture helps Mexican Ninja stand out. It is not trying to look realistic, and that is the right decision for this kind of game.

The environments are also packed with details, although, as mentioned earlier, that can sometimes become a problem. The visual clutter is part of the game's identity, but there are moments when it gets in the way of the combat. The same applies to the camera. When everything is calm, the environments look interesting and distinctive. 

The sound and overall presentation support the game's exaggerated personality. The action feels energetic, and the mixture of cultural references, dialogue, combat effects, and absurd situations gives Mexican Ninja a consistent sense of attitude. 

The humor is not going to work for everyone, but Mexican Ninja commits to it rather than occasionally dipping into it. That commitment is part of what makes Mexican Ninja feel like its own thing instead of another generic roguelike brawler.

Mexican Ninja ultimately works because the foundation is much stronger than its ridiculous premise might suggest. You get a fast beat ’em up with responsive controls, a useful progression system, multiple build options, meaningful upgrades, side quests, special abilities, and bosses that can genuinely challenge you. 

Its biggest weaknesses are mostly connected to presentation and balance. The levels can be too cluttered, the camera can occasionally make combat harder to read, enemy variety could be better, and some abilities are much more practical than others. The final boss also creates a difficulty spike that feels out of step with the rest of the game. 

Even with those problems, the moment-to-moment gameplay is difficult to dismiss. 

Once you start chaining attacks, launching enemies, throwing out jutsus, dodging incoming attacks, and watching your build become stronger, Mexican Ninja becomes exactly what it wants to be: a fast, ridiculous arcade-style brawler with enough roguelike progression to keep you coming back.

Mexican Ninja does not need to be perfect to be enjoyable. Its best ideas work together surprisingly well. The combat gives you a reason to keep moving, the upgrades give you a reason to keep experimenting, and the permanent progression gives you a reason to start another run after a defeat. 

If you enjoy roguelike games and fast beat ’em ups, there is plenty here to appreciate. You should expect some visual mess, repeated enemy types, uneven abilities, and a final challenge that may test your patience. But if you can accept those issues, the combination of speed, progression, humor, and unusual world-building makes Mexican Ninja a distinctive action game that is worth your time.