Tag: Halfbrick »

Halfbrick, the developer behind Fruit Ninja, has reason to be proud. The fast-paced fruit-slicing game has won many hearts. Our own Carter Dotson, reviewing the HD version, wrote that "The game is simple and addictive. It’s the kind of basic mechanic anyone can pick up and enjoy in seconds, and keep playing for hours, especially in Zen mode, where the quest for high scores can keep you playing for long periods of time." Fruit Ninja has apparently won over App Store customers as well, and is now celebrating its 6 millionth sale.

But how exactly should Halfbrick celebrate? Apparently, they want to make amends. Luke Muscat, lead designer of Fruit Ninja, remarks that without growing fruit, there won't be any more fruit to slice! The press release continues:

To celebrate the sales and make amends for fruit death worldwide, Halfbrick has partnered with the Fruit Tree Planting Foundation to help give something back to juice lovers. Yep, there is a charity specifically dedicated to growing fruit! The Fruit Tree Planting Foundation plants orchards around the world to benefit communities and the environment. Halfbrick has committed to sponsoring a fully functioning orchard in a low-income Native American community as part of FTPF’s Reservation Preservation program. The harvests will not only provide fresh, healthy sustenance but also income for the long-term benefit of the tribe.

A little whimsical? Well, naturally (have you seen Fruit Ninja?). However, sponsoring an orchard sounds like a great way to mark a milestone, as it not only resonates with Fruit Ninja's theme but hopefully can make an impact as well. The developers promise that you'll be able to monitor the orchard's progress through their blog. Halfbrick is also teasing that some new content for the game itself is in the works. Mm, tasty.

Congratulations to Halfbrick for hitting 6 million—and for coming up with such a creative way to celebrate it!

Fruit Ninja has consistently been one of the best-selling and most beloved gaming apps available on the iTunes Store, and now this super-entertaining game has gotten even more addictive with the addition of a brand new mode. The game, both in standard and iPad HD varieties is getting support for a brand-new Arcade mode, which looks to be highly entertaining. Among the new features included are:

Double Points – This banana will award you double points for a short period of time. Criticals and combos count too, so rack up those fruit for some massive scores!

Frenzy – If you’re not content with the amount of fruit on screen, the Frenzy banana will take care of that. A mammoth amount of fruit will begin flying in, but you have to stay focused to slice it all!

Freeze – The entire screen will slow down, allowing for maximum accuracy and combo potential!

Each round in Arcade mode lasts for 60 seconds, and at the end you can post your scores and see how you stack up with other members of the fruit slashing community. It's very similar to other Arcade style games such as Bejeweled Blitz, and we all know how ridiculously addictive and popular such games can be. When you're tired of cutting the rope why not go back to cutting the fruit, but this time with a frenzy?

Now that the mysterious "banana mode" which has haunted players for months has finally been revealed we have to ask, what do you think? Is this the sort of thing you had been dreaming of, or would some other new mode have suited the game better? From where I sit, you should be happy I stopped playing long enough to report this news, there are pineapples that must be frozen and then sliced and I'm wasting precious seconds typing instead!

[via TiPb]

If you've played Halfbrick's Monster Dash, you will be aware of the game's wisecracking protagonist, Barry Steakfries. What you may not be aware of is that Monster Dash is not the character's debut - he first appeared in a PSN Minis game called Age of Zombies, that was a top-down shooter that involved time traveling and snarky humor. Why am I telling you this? Because iOS gamers will get to experience this game for themselves this October.

Age of Zombies is a dual-stick shooter (although coming from the PSP, this is the first time it will actually be controlled with dual sticks), that has you killing zombies across various time periods, from the age of dinosaurs to samurai Japan, all the way to the future and all with zombies. The game is level-based, but there is a survival mode for each time period that you can play in once you beat each age's boss. Assuming it is unchanged from the PSN Mini, you can expect plenty of hilarious (and occasionally profane) dialogue to set up the game's ridiculous story, and plenty of humorous Barry Steakfries one-liners, which are actually spoken by the character, instead of being just lines of text as in Monster Dash.

What is most interesting about Age of Zombies for iOS is that it is Halfbrick's first universal app, with graphics in high-resolution for the iPad. While it is unknown if it will also support Retina Display graphics, the game's interface and menus have been redesigned for the iOS touchscreens. As well, the game now features global leaderboards, a feature not present in the PSN version. With a nebulous release date of 'October,' fans of Monster Dash's protagonist and fans of twin-stick shooters will likely want to keep an eye out for Age of Zombies for iOS.

Halfbrick, having already invented and mastered the object slashing genre with their popular app Fruit Ninja, are about to unleash their take on another casual gaming genre, albeit one more familiar to iOS gamers. Monster Dash is Halfbrick's newest game, and is an endless horizontal platformer, similar in nature to Canabalt.

Monster Dash stars a sarcastic antihero named Barry Steakfries, who should be familiar to fans of Halfbrick's PSP games, as he was the protagonist of the arena shooter Age of Zombies. In this game, he is running forward, shooting zombies, mummies, vampires and other types of supernatural horrors that cross his path. You have two commands - jump and shoot - and a health bar that allows you to track the damage you take from enemies and spikes before dying. You can pick up additional health and various weapons as you constantly run forward, including my new favorite weapon, the machine gun jetpack, which fires downward as it propels you upwards.

Monster Dash provides several different random locales for you to run forward in, although the only key difference is the visuals, but you will see different level types every 1000 meters. Every time you die, you get a humorous one-liner from Barry Steakfries, sporting similar smarmy and sarcastic humor as was in Age of Zombies (which still hasn't been confirmed for iOS yet, despite being a perfect fit considering the popularity of twin-stick shooters on the platform), along with the ability to check OpenFeint leaderboards and to tweet your score. Monster Dash is an intriguing attempt to bring some more action to the endless platformer genre, which gamers will get to play starting August 19th.