Fruit Ninja Message Board

It's not just humans who like playing Fruit Ninja. Cats in particular seem to love the swipe-to-slash game.Read more...

#twitter Amidst a torrent of official announcements, a very strange tweet appeared on the feed of the Dallas Police Department over the weekend. More »

#fruitninja It's a gimmick, sure, but it's a neat one: this is a sheet of water vapour that, thank to some fancy add-ons, has been turned into both a screen and a touch-screen device. Letting you get your Fruit Ninja on. More »

#watchthis From YouTube video creator Scott Winn, creator of the famous kittens flying in slow motion video, comes the ultimate realization of the world's most popular fruit-slicing mini-game. More »

Go buy every Halfbrick game on the App Store, for your iPhone or iPad. We don't normally make such direct demands on our readers' finances, but as it turns out, this won't affect your finances much.

For a "very limited time," all Halfbrick games on iPhone or iPad are free. That includes stuff like Fruit Ninja, Age of Zombies, Jetpack Joyride, and Monster Dash. Halfbrick games are among the most clever and addictive pastimes on the iOS platform. We'd recommend them even at nonzero prices!

Fruit Ninja might not really need updating - it's pretty feature-complete if there is fruit for you to slice, and you can slice it - but Halfbrick is adding content to the mobile game anyway in honor of its two-year anniversary. The new update will be live May 24.

Gutsu and Truffles join the cast (in other words, Sensei), bringing with them a shop where you can purchase powerups that add time, deflect bombs, or explode, in exchange for Starfruit, a new currency that you earn in-game.

Speaking of currency, Halfbrick is handing out the iPhone game at no cost right now on its anniversary website. The offer is limited, but we'd be surprised if this Starfruit update weren't leading into an optional microtransaction-based system like that in Jetpack Joyride.

#watchthis A journey for vengeance takes one man down a wild path that he can't overcome on his own. More »

Normally we'd be skeptical of heavily discounted fruit, but we think this offer is safe for consumption. In honor of the Android Market's ten millionth download, that platform's version of Fruit Ninja is on sale for ten cents today!

Halfbrick also informs us that Age of Zombies will be on sale for a dime this Saturday. Good thing, too -- we can't be expected to pay almost a whole dollar for every game.

Other than coconuts, we mean. Halfbrick Studios is making a claim on more of your money, after some admittedly reasonable financial demands from the Fruit Ninja series. The developer has opened a store offering two themed plush toys, which include the cutest watermelon you've ever forcibly bisected, and a happy Sensei whom you can pretend is performing said cut.

In the US, the Sensei sells for $16 (or 16 times the price of a copy of Fruit Ninja), the Watermelon for $15 (1.5 Fruit Ninja Kinects), and a "Training Pack" of both for $30. The Sensei is available now, but that adorable melon is shipping in mid-January.

We may sound as if we're giving Halfbrick a hard time for cashing in on Fruit Ninja, but we're happy for the developer. The games have been universally worthwhile, and the toys are undeniably huggable. Besides, Halfbrick has to raise money to save the Australian game industry, pretty much single-handed.

Halfbrick Studios is working on a sequel to Fruit Ninja at its new government-supported studio in Sydney, Australia. In mid-October it was revealed that the Brisbane-based company was opening up a second studio in Sydney; a new piece in the Illawarra Mercury tosses up some more details.

According to New South Wales Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner, the studio is the result of a new $3 million "Interactive Media Fund," but there is no clear indication regarding how much of that fund went to Halfbrick.

"The new Sydney team will develop the next evolution of the Fruit Ninja games franchise. The new game will involve players launching a series of fruit to knock ninjas off their towers in a 3D world, with each fruit having special powers," Stoner said. The game is expected in 2012, with an initial launch on iOS.

Stoner explained the $3 million fund is designed to support local developers over the next two years. Given the current state of the Australian development scene for big publishers, it may be time to get a bigger fund for the local indies.

#plantsvszombies Australian band Hey Geronimo have made a video that stars most of the iPhone's biggest and most recognisable games. Well, it stars the members of the band dressed up as most of the iPhone's biggest and most recognisable games. More »

Did you know that you can download handheld games now? That's amazingly convenient! The only inconvenient part of it is finding the right games to buy -- and that's where we come in, with our Portabliss column. In each installment, we'll tell you about a downloadable game on the iPhone, iPad, Android device, DSi, 3DS, PSP, etc. Today: Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots.
You might be tempted to hold a grudge against Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots. It seems like a vaguely disturbing trend to match popular mobile games to upcoming movies, just because they have compatible premises, for purely promotional purposes. Two games is a trend, right?

But we all knew this was going to be good. It turns out that the license is actually a good thing, as the result is a version of Fruit Ninja with the addition of vocal encouragement from Antonio Banderas. Ah yes!

The other, less Boots-specific additions are delightful as well.

#gamingappoftheday No offense to Halfbrick, but I already developed the Puss in Boots mobile game. My cat wanders into the office, stares at me with big, sad eyes, and then gets a cat treat or five. "You have acquired mah servicesssss," I say, to my little honey bunny baby bear the cat, mimicking Antonio Banderas' voice from Shrek 2. Honey Bear don't give a shit, of course. More »

Australian developer Halfbrick is opening up a studio in Sydney, which likely comes as welcome news for the nation's troubled development scene. Gamasutra took note of the job listings for the new Sydney office for the Brisbane-based studio.

Halfbrick is best known for Fruit Ninja, which has made the studio so much money, it sponsored an orchard as reparations for all the virtual fruit waste. It is also going to make more coin going the Angry Birds movie tie-in route, with the upcoming Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots. We're particularly fond of Halfbrick's Jetpack Joyride.

Asked if Halfbrick would change its name to "Fullbrick" after opening a second studio, Marketing Director Phil Larsen told us, "No. A logical question nonetheless."

#bowlin Our good friends from Halfbrick have showered us with free Xbox Live codes for Fruit Ninja Kinect, both for the full title and for all of its downloadable content—the Storm, Art and Space packages of blades, shadows and new achievements. More »

As if the fruit on your phone, iPod, tablet, Android, and Kinect weren't already sliced thoroughly enough, Halfbrick is burdening yet more fruit with potential murder in the upcoming movie tie-in Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots. As you've likely surmised, the game is a Puss in Boots-themed Fruit Ninja release, which imagines the titular Puss slicing up fruit with his dutiful foil.

In addition to introducing a well-timed theme into the mix, FN: PIB adds the "all-new Bandito mode," which tasks players with surviving progressively more difficult levels with unique challenges, and the "Desperado" mode, which updates the first game's "Classic" mode. "We wanted to create something new and different for our fans while keeping the magic of Fruit Ninja intact, and we think Bandito Mode will keep even the most practiced players on their toes," Jetpack Joyride playable character and Halfbrick chief marketing man Phil Larsen notes in the announcement.

Oh, and tomatoes? Totally in there, definitively proving once and for all that they're fruit. Take that, science! Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots arrives on the iOS App Store on October 20 for $0.99 on iPhone and $1.99 on iPad.

#timrogers Whenever someone I know mentions Facebook games in front of someone else, a few lines of conversation transpire, during which they agree to agree to that Facebook games are not cool. More »

#thegunstringer The Gunstringer is likely the first dead cowboy puppet shooter you've ever played. More »

Unless, that is, you are able to believe the premise that it looks exactly like Fruit Ninja. In that case, it's actually pretty believable. What a relief that Halfbrick stuck to the formula of cutting fruit with a sword, instead of going into some kind of Facebook-style fruit dojo management sim.

MTV Multiplayer got exclusive video footage and details of Fruit Ninja Frenzy, the Facebook-bound version of Halfbrick's absurdly popular fruit-slicing game, which you can see after the break. Frenzy is essentially Fruit Ninja's 60-second "arcade mode" with the addition of power-up "smoothies." You can choose one at the start of each round, from a list including "Extra Time" which gives you 7 additional seconds, "Spirit Bombs" which neutralizes bombs, and "Mega Freeze" which doubles the number of fruits that appear after a "Freeze" banana.

Optionally, you can increase the number of "smoothie" slots per round with microtransactions, because Facebook.

We know how it is. You want to play Fruit Ninja on your Android device, but that hefty $1.28 stays your hand every time. Worry no more, for a new free version of Halfbrick's fruit-slicer is now available on Android Market. Simply titled Fruit Ninja Free, the game includes all of the features of its comparatively costly sibling, including three different gameplay modes and OpenFeint support.

Being free, it also includes a brand new feature not seen in previous versions: Advertisements. Ads pop up once the game loads and between fruit brutalizing sessions as well. But hey, it's still free Fruit Ninja, right?

#watchthis No, he's not really chopping fruit on the fly, but he is really swinging a clever around so that's cool... right? More »

The fruit of life is now featured in Fruit Ninja thanks to a free update.