Clearly, there’s no excuse for virtual scurvy. According to a Halfbrick press release that just came zooming in, more than 300 million copies of Fruit Ninja have been downloaded, and more than 1.5 trillion pieces of fruit have been chopped. There’s more to Halfbrick than that, of course, but that’s still a cool milestone. Melons!
Believe it or not, it’s already been two years since Fruit Ninja sliced its way onto the iTunes App Store. The slash-happy game notched up over 20 million sales for Aussie developer Halfbrick within the first 12 months, and now the studio is celebrating with a week-long competition tour that will see someone crowned Australia’s Fruit Ninja Master.
Mobile games that have experienced explosive success have a tendency to venture beyond mobile devices: think Angry Birds plush toys, clothing, keychains, and accessories. Now Australia’s very own Halfbrick is following suit with Fruit Ninja.
You remember that Bearded Dragon, right? Or the orangutans? Or the African bull frog crushing virtual ants?
This may sound off-key coming from the guy who nominated the 12th edition of annual sports franchise for overall GOTY last year. But I’m inclined to say “None of the above,” this year. I prefer for these honours to truly mean the game, at minimum, was the best at what it did. This year’s big games, nearly all of them sequels, seem to arrive at that point more out of incumbency and the expectation that they would be a game of the year nominee.
A new Christmas DLC pack for Fruit Ninja Kinect is now available for free on Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade. The pack includes a Santa’s Workshop, Snow Globes to smash and a Candy Cane Blade.
It’s easy to think of them as an overnight success: a studio that burst forth fully-formed with the single goal of dominating the iOS market with a series of fruit-slicing, jetpack joyriding, monster dashing games they’d prepared earlier. It’s also easy to be wrong. While many believe Halfbrick only came to exist after the release of the critical and commercial iOS hit Fruit Ninja, the Brisbane studio has been quietly working on games for almost ten years. This is a story about how everyone now knows who they are.
The NSW government has just announced that it will be helping fund a new wave of digital content creations in Australia, utilising funds from the $3 million strong Interactive Media Fund. Among the recepients are Halfbrick, who are in the process of opening a new studio in Sydney, and Nnooo — the creators of the critically acclaimed Escape Vektor.
