The game requires players to use the console's accelerometer and gyroscope to manipulate the titular character through various levels on a quest to rescue a princess.

Using power-ups collected from scrolls,[3] CC can shrink, gain a shield, throw shuriken at enemies, and unlock all of the doors in a level.

However, the overall visual appearance was praised for "[feeling] like a great deal of care and attention was put into making the game look as slick as possible.

The exploit, known as Ninjhax, requires users to place a boot file on the device's SD card, and then use the level sharing feature of Cubic Ninja to scan a malformed QR code.

[15][16] The discovery—which is the first ever public software-based homebrew exploit for the 3DS family—triggered a surge in demand for the game, whose poor reception had led to its classification as a "bargain bin" title by critics.

[17][18] Shortly after the announcement, Nintendo pulled Cubic Ninja from eShop, presumably in an effort to prevent widespread use of the exploit—the game was only available digitally in Japan, however.

[19] Rabet also pointed out that, ironically, despite the increased attention the game received, the studio who developed Cubic Ninja became defunct only months after its release through a merger that formed Marvelous AQL.

[18][19] Subsequently, other people used Ninjhax as a base to develop further exploits that allowed running custom firmware and decryption of system contents and game cartridges.