Since its launch in 2010 for iPhone, Fruit Ninja, by Halfbrick Studios, has become one of the most iconic mobile games. Now, this experience is taken to a new level with its arrival on Vision Pro, Apple’s highly anticipated augmented reality device. The version for Apple Arcade promises a total immersion in a world where cutting fruit with our own hands becomes an almost tangible experience.
A fruit salad?
The leading gameplay developer at Halfbrick Studios, Samantha Turner, described the game on Vision Pro as “truly impressive” (truly bananas, making a fun play on words with the fruit that appears in the game), pointing out its potential to “do something very special”. The main challenge for the team was to transform the traditional 2D interface into a dynamic and immersive 3D space. “We had plenty of ideas: What if players could squeeze oranges? And what if they could slice watermelons and splash juice on tables and walls?“, commented Turner.
To achieve this, Halfbrick devised a system of virtual cannons that launch fruits towards the players. The interaction with the fruit was, in fact, a key point: after experimenting with different movements of our hands and weapons, the team decided that the most satisfying thing was to use our hands directly.
“We always knew that hands would be the center of the experience,” says Turner. “We wanted players to be able to grab things and move them aside. We adjusted the trajectory of the fruit to ensure a comfortable cutting experience, even using the vertical position of the device itself to make sure we didn’t throw the fruit over your head or too low.”
In the Vision Pro, we will be able to chop pineapples and watermelons with various movements, push bombs away by pushing them towards a wall, and throw shurikens at fruits with a simple outward palm movement. But if that wasn’t enough, Super Fruit Ninja is just one of the over 250 titles of Apple Arcade that will be compatible with the Vision Pro, many of which have been customized to offer spatial experiences. Moreover, more productivity applications, streaming apps, and several others, we are facing the beginning of a great change.
