The Brief
This project was the third prototype of the Game Prototyping course. The task was to take an existing game and modify it with one key tweak. That tweak might, of course, lead to other necessary changes, but only one core aspect should be changed.
The Game
The player must use their finger to slice the fruit that the monkeys are throwing. Successfully slicing a fruit grants the player points, while failing to results in a lost life. Once three lives have been lost, the game is over and the player’s score is recorded.
Discussion
Fruit Ninja is based on a very simple gameplay loop. Fruits are thrown up from the bottom or side of the screen into the play area and the player must slice them before gravity pulls them out of view again. To make things more difficult, bombs and other obstacles that the player is not meant to slice appear in the same way the fruit does.
This gameplay loop can become stale. Difficulty is increased only by the speed and quantity of the fruits and obstacles.
We decided to see what would happen if we changed it from a static 2D environment into a 3D environment. Instead of fruit being thrown upwards or sideways into a 2D plane, it would be thrown at the player from different fixed positions within the 3D space. This would allow for a much greater variety of spawn locations and therefore greater diversity of challenges within the core gameplay loop.
This tweak then necessitates some other changes. For example, the original Fruit Ninja uses a flat 2D plane stylised as a wooden board. This doesn’t make sense for a 3D version - when fruit is coming towards them from parts of the environment, players need a point of reference within that space so that they can judge the distance and therefore when to slice. Unlike the 2D Fruit Ninja, they can also now see the origin of the fruit that’s thrown. The monkey concept was developed as a way to present that in a believable way.
