Week 7 - Game Review - Fruit Ninja

This week I decided to do a game review on the now famous: "Fruit Ninja" developed by Halfbrick Studios in Brisbane, Australia.



Ashamedly although I had heard of Fruit Ninja I never really knew much about it or had played it until I was fortunate enough to actually meet Jason Harwood, Producer of Halfbrick Studios. This was largely due to me personally but really being a fan of games on smart phones however Fruit Ninja completely changed my opinion of the platform and it's viability for gaming.

Fruit Ninja is a game that was completely designed around the interactivity with the user. Until Fruit Ninja came along there were games that exploited almost every gesture that the iPhone's touch pad offered bar one (swipe). With this in mind Halfbrick set out to produce a game that revolved around the swipe feature and did so in a way that was both unique and ingenious.

Fruit Ninja is an arcade style game that involves the player continually slicing an array of fruits as they are "thrown" up from the button of the screen. The game is typical of many side show alley style shooting arcade games that have come before it but differs in  it's interactivity using the swipe mechanic.

The spatial arena involves a a simple, static back-drop with the only movement involving the randomly generated fruits as they are thrown into the player's view.

Whilst the game offers a few modes they are all virtually variations of arcade mode. The  player must slice all of the fruit on the screen (preferably in a single swipe for additional combo points). If a fruit is missed the player looses a life, once all lives are lost, the game is over with the score presented.

Challenge is mainly provided in the form of trying to outdo your previous high score and by trying to avoid randomly generated bombs that are substituted for fruits whilst attempting to slice all fruits currently visible in a single motion. Difficulty increases over time which ensures that a player will not easily beat their previous high score.

The game lacks little in the way of story. As the game is an arcade style of game intended to be played casually on a portable device it does not require it, nor to I believe the addition of narrative have any benefit to the game.

All in all Fruit Ninja proves that one can take a tried and true formula of which numerous games have been developed by in the past, add a slight twist and become an instant success (well over 300 million units have been sold across all platforms to-date).

This further re-enforces what I have learnt in this subject; whilst humans like change, they do not like too much change. Rather than aiming to produce a radically different game that is in no where similar to anything that has ever come before it, there is usually more chance of success in looking to the past for sources of inspiration and adding a new twist to revitalize the concept.