![]() ![]() “Guys would get up and pitch an idea and, if someone else liked it, they’d join them and form a prototype. He says the company began pitching sessions for game ideas, called Halfbrick Fridays. ![]() So in 2010 Deo set himself an ultimatum: “Get rich or die tryin’”. With Halfbrick at risk of becoming Quarterbrick, and 70-odd employees at its Brisbane headquarters alone, that didn’t feel like a nice way to double down. Then the global financial crisis hit, and all of a sudden Australia was no longer an affordable place to create entertainment products. Founded in 2001, for the company’s first seven years earnings primarily came from working on international projects. Fruit Ninja code#The last local AAA studio (industry code for a major production company), 2K Australia shuttered its Canberra digs in April. Fellow Brisbanites THQ Australia closed in 2011, as did the Melbourne crew Blue Tongue. Making video games in Australia is also serious business and not for the faint of heart. Photograph: Halfbrick StudiosĪ reference to 2007 puzzle game Portal suddenly feels appropriate: was the cake a lie? “You had to do it,” he laughs uproariously, before becoming intensely serious. Fruit Ninja free#Also be sure to check out Fruit Ninja Free even if you already own the paid version as it really feels like its own thing now.Shainiel Deo of Halfbrick Studios. Fruit Ninja update#So if you were turned off by Fruit Ninja’s changes over the past few years, it’s worth checking out this latest update as it really feels like a return to form. I don’t know if that’ll be permanent or not, but effectively I feel like I have two quite different versions of Fruit Ninja now, which is pretty neat. Also, the free version still contains the 5th anniversary tournament and mini-games which were removed with this update in the paid version. In fact both games recognize my profile separately, which means I keep all that in-game currency I had before when playing the free version. The cool thing about all this is that if you liked the way things were before, it sounds like everything is pretty much staying the way it was in Fruit Ninja Free (Free). In addition, the level cap has now been raised to 100, and whatever Starfruit or Golden Apples you had in your inventory pre-update will be turned into experience and go towards leveling you up. Power-ups can also be earned by completing missions or watching a video ad. That doesn’t mean there’s zero IAP now, you can still buy a pack of power-ups for a buck or some specialty blades like the Chainsaw, but the in-game currency system is no more. That changes today with Fruit Ninja’s newest update which removes the premium Starfruit currency and streamlines the whole experience closer to how it was back in the day. The idea of power-ups was kind of cool but it muddied up what was once such a simple and pure experience and, even worse, long-time players felt alienated by an IAP currency being added to their beloved game. ![]() One way Halfbrick tried to keep things fresh (and earn a little extra income from their dollar game) was by adding a premium currency in 2012 called Starfruit alongside new characters Gutsu and Truffles who were there to sell various types of power-ups. However, after years atop the iTunes charts Fruit Ninja was struggling to keep people interested in the face of a constant deluge of new games. Short gaming sessions, intuitive touchscreen slicing controls, and colorful visuals made Fruit Ninja an immediate and long-lasting success. It was just about as perfect a mobile game as you can get. Fruit Ninja ($1.99) is one of those platform-defining games and it put long-time Australian developer Halfbrick on the map in a big way. ![]()
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