Fruit Ninja from Halfbrick Studios was developed for the iPhone in 2010, and since then, it's been one of the best-known mobile games. The Apple Arcade version is set to come to the Vision Pro, and Halfbrick today shared details on how it was customized for Apple's spatial computer.
Halfbrick Studios lead gameplay programmer Samantha Turner said in a profile published by Apple that the game on Vision Pro is "truly bananas" and has the potential to "do something very special."
To develop the game, the team worked to bring a traditional 2D interface to 3D space. "We were full of ideas: What if players could squeeze juice out of an orange? What if they could rip apart a watermelon and cover the table and walls with juice?" she said. Halfbrick had to work out how to launch fruit at people, and settled on a set of cannons in a virtual space.
How to interact with fruit was also a question, and while Halfbrick experimented with variety of hand motions and weapons, they settled on hands. Fruit is chopped up with hands, which turned out to be the most satisfying interaction experience.
"We always knew hands would be the center of the experience," she says. "We wanted players to be able to grab things and knock them away. And we can tailor the arc of the fruit to make sure it's a comfortable fruit-slicing experience -- we're actually using the vertical position of the device itself to make sure that we're not throwing fruit over your head or too low."
Users will be able to slice and dice pineapples and watermelons by jabbing at them, send bombs away by pushing them to a far wall, and fire shuriken into fruit by brushing the palms in an outward direction.
Super Fruit Ninja is just one game coming to the Vision Pro. The headset will support more than 250 Apple Arcade titles, some of which have been customized with spatial experiences. Other options include Game Room and What the Golf, plus other titles that third-party developers are working on.
Gaming will be one of the key features of the Vision Pro headset, but there are also a number of productivity and entertainment apps coming to the device. Slack, Microsoft 365, Fantastical, JigSpace, Disney+, and Max are just some of the customized Vision Pro apps that will be available at launch.
Pre-orders for the Vision Pro begin tomorrow, January 19, at 5:00 a.m. Pacific Time. A launch is set to follow on Friday, February 2.
