Ninja Slayer game sees a massive sales boost after a speedrunning event and a name change

The official Twitter account for the cyberpunk ninja novel Ninja Slayer has reported that the tie-in game NINJASLAYER: AREA 4643 received a massive boost in sales over the past week. According to their tweet, the recent name change, and increased recognition are being reflected in the sales.

NINJASLAYER: AREA 4643 is a top-down shooting game set in the cyberpunk city of Neo-Saitama. The game is based on the Ninja Slayer Japanese novel series that was serialized on Twitter and features tense action and characters from the novels like Yakuza Tengu. The game was jointly developed by Diehardtales Games, the team behind the original work, and Japanese indie developer DeathMofuMofu who have previously released games such as Neko Navy.

The game was initially released as AREA 4643 but received a sudden name change to NINJASLAYER: AREA 4643 just the other day, adding the name of the original work to the title. This was done because of a speedrunning event in Japan called RTA in Japan Summer 2022 (RiJ) where the game was featured. During the run, viewers could be seen saying they didn’t know it was a Ninja Slayer game which prompted the official Ninja Slayer Twitter account into action. They explained, “After watching RTA in Japan and seeing nobody realize that this was a Ninja Slayer game, we added the title.” (related article)

And judging by a tweet from the Ninja Slayer account on August 22, it sounds like it didn’t take long for the results to become apparent. After roughly 5 days since the name change, the official Twitter account reported a massive increase of “roughly 4,643%” in sales compared to the previous week. The tweet credits an increase in recognition of the game due to the previously mentioned RiJ and the media coverage that came along with the name change.

The tweet also contains a screen capture of the actual sales total window in Steam, and we can see that the change was actually 4,820% rather than 4,643%. I don’t know what kind of rounding they did to get to 4,643% but it does match up nicely with the game’s title.

◆WNS◆RiJ夏にも登場した興奮する真のゲーム「AREA4643」ですが「ニンジャスレイヤーのゲームだと知らなかった」「なんで教えてくれないの」という人が大勢いることがわかったため、ゲーム名を「NINJASLAYER : AREA4643」に変更しました。日本語も引続きフルサポートです◆https://t.co/Mn0to3Ivcd pic.twitter.com/Yq6dhpVDdj

— ニンジャスレイヤー / Ninja Slayer (@NJSLYR) August 17, 2022

The “4643” in the title is a play on words referring to the Yoroshisan pharmaceutical company that appears in the series. In Japanese, the numbers 4-6-4-3 can be read as yo-ro-shi-san. The company does all sorts of bad stuff in the series like mass produce Yakuza clones for combat and mix narcotics into medicine and nutritional supplements. For hardcore Ninja Slayer fans, seeing the number would ring a bell.

Overall, the original novel series is a high-context work, but the recent name change, and increased media coverage seems to be bringing the tie-in game a new batch of fans. Ninja Slayer is highly regarded as an action-packed novel and has been adapted into a popular manga series as well. NINJASLAYER: AREA 4643 is a game you can enjoy even if you aren’t familiar with the original, and as a hardcore Ninja Slayer fan, I (the original author of this article) hope you check it out if you’re interested.

NINJASLAYER: AREA 4643 is available on PC (Steam). They also have a policy of not putting the game on sale, so there’s no need to worry that the price will drop right after you buy it.

Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-08-22 17:42 JST)