KO. KO. KO. Don't stop. The longer your chain, the louder the leaderboard.
Survival is the floor. Bald Ninjas is really about the combo. Every KO you land within a short window of the last one adds to a chain, and every chain multiplies the coins and score you bank at the end of the wave. A clean run isn't the one where you live the longest — it's the one where you never let the chain drop. If you spent your teenage years grinding combo counters in Super Smash Bros training mode or chasing signature strings in Brawlhalla, you already know the feeling. We just put it on a bald guy with a katana.
The chain meter sits in the top-right corner of the arena. It fills with every KO and drains between hits. The drain rate is forgiving early — about three seconds of grace at chain length one — and aggressive late, dropping to under a second once you cross a x10 multiplier. That curve is what makes the system feel like a real conversation: early waves let you breathe, late waves demand that every dodge end in a strike.
The multiplier
Each KO inside the grace window bumps the multiplier by one. x2 doubles coin drops. x5 unlocks the gold flash and a louder hit sound. x10 turns the screen edges crimson — at that point, every hit you take is a heart attack, because dropping the chain undoes minutes of work.
Empowered Atk rewards clean chains
Hit and Kick fill your power meter. When it's full, the next Atk — your auto-jump diving strike — lands for double damage with a wider AOE and a brief slow-mo. The best runs look like highlight reels because the meter pays you back: every honest combo turns into one decisive aerial finisher, then refills as the chain continues.
Daily Challenges
Every day the home screen surfaces a Daily Challenge with a fixed seed, a chosen ninja, and a score target. Hit the target and you bank a coin bonus that stacks on top of your run earnings. It's the easiest way to fund Dojo perks without grinding endless waves.
Dojo perks shape your combo style
First Blood widens the chain grace window. Combo Lock prevents your multiplier from dropping during a single dodge. Second Stand gives you an extra life so a single dropped chain isn't run-ending. Mix them based on whether you're chasing survival or score.
Reading the leaderboard
The leaderboard tracks final score, not wave count. That's deliberate. Plenty of players can hit Wave 15 by playing patient Kage and never combining anything; very few can hit the same score by playing aggressive Enji and never dropping a chain. The leaderboard rewards style as much as endurance — which is the philosophy we stole, unapologetically, from arcade-era fighting games.
Coins follow score the same way. 
Every wave deposits coins based on the highest multiplier you reached, not the average. One huge spike pays better than a steady simmer. Spend those coins at the Dojo on perks, then climb again with a build that fits the way you actually like to fight.
Why combos make a brawler stick
Fighting games live or die on the feedback loop between input and reward. A combo system gives the player a way to say "I did that on purpose" — and to want to do it again. Bald Ninjas keeps the loop short: three buttons (Hit, Kick, Atk), three ninjas, one chain. There's no half-circle motion to memorize and no thirty-character roster to learn. There's just you, a bald protagonist, and the question of how high you can push the number before it resets.
