In 2009, I teamed up with original designer, Luke Muscat, in prototyping a simple but effective one-touch game with visceral gameplay at Halfbrick Studios. Fruit Ninja was an instant success and has been downloaded over 1 billion times across multiple platforms over the past decade. This is the first time I've released any information about Fruit Ninja, and the first appearance of the prototype designs and assets from the initial design round of the game. The famous watermelon began here, along with sword 'swipe' and 'splat' designs.
Original logo and front styling
Originally for Xbox 360 Kinect
The Original iPhone App Icon
Visceral and fun was the combo and it delivered exactly what a billion phone users and console gamers believed were the perfect elements of casual gaming.
These are original 3D model assets for the 3D prototype, which was the initial platform for playtesting the idea and innovating the gameplay.
The original and final design reference for the sword 'swipe'
The original Flash slash 'swipe' concept with various swipe complexities
The original Photoshop slash 'swipe' concept with various swipe complexities
These are original design concepts and references for a Flash prototype, which was a reverted method for prototyping after our innovation sub-team lost our programmer, leaving us with the designer, Luke Muscat, and artist, Aaron Green.
Halfbrick Studios celebrating 1 million downloads of Fruit Ninja - 1 billion downloads occurred over the next 6 years.
The original sub-team consisted of only 3 developers; designer, Luke Muscat (not pictured), programmer, Dean Loades (bottom left), and artist, Aaron Green (me). The idea began development as an innovation initiative to encourage new ideas that could be made with small sub-teams over 8 days, 1 full day day every 2 weeks. Luke's idea was clear from the beginning, but the remainder of the developers had committed to other projects, so I abandoned my social media game to join him as an artist. Dean had already committed to the idea before the announcement, but we only completed 1 day of development before Dean left to travel. Luke and I spoke about the feasibility of the idea, not having a 3D platform programmer, but we decided to switch to a 2D prototype in Flash and prove the gameplay at a company review.
As Halfbrick Studios was mostly an outsource developer, the innovation program was suddenly interrupted, focusing teams on executing outstanding publisher contracts in 2009. Unfortunately, the Global Financial Crisis ruptured the video games development industry and dried up publisher commitments. As we entered 2010, the company naturally became concerned about sustainability but made the decision to commit a small full-time team to complete Fruit Ninja as a fully commercial and independent release. It was built, polished, and released with fingers crossed. Destructoid picked up the day one release and gave it a glowing review, followed by other independent media sites, and the downloads began to show. From memory, a good 30-40,000 copies were sold for 99c in the initial weeks, and Fruit Ninja managed 2nd best selling iPhone game behind Angry Birds for the longest time. The rest is history, but it will always be an iconic achievement for such a simple idea, hanging on a thread between two persistent gamer dudes.
As Halfbrick Studios was mostly an outsource developer, the innovation program was suddenly interrupted, focusing teams on executing outstanding publisher contracts in 2009. Unfortunately, the Global Financial Crisis ruptured the video games development industry and dried up publisher commitments. As we entered 2010, the company naturally became concerned about sustainability but made the decision to commit a small full-time team to complete Fruit Ninja as a fully commercial and independent release. It was built, polished, and released with fingers crossed. Destructoid picked up the day one release and gave it a glowing review, followed by other independent media sites, and the downloads began to show. From memory, a good 30-40,000 copies were sold for 99c in the initial weeks, and Fruit Ninja managed 2nd best selling iPhone game behind Angry Birds for the longest time. The rest is history, but it will always be an iconic achievement for such a simple idea, hanging on a thread between two persistent gamer dudes.
Copyright © Aaron Green 2021