Fruit Slice

Fruit Slice is a swipe-slicing arcade game for the browser. Apples, oranges, watermelons, kiwis, bananas, pineapples and strawberries are tossed up from the bottom of a wooden dojo, and a single fast swipe cuts anything the blade crosses. Every cut splits the fruit into two spinning halves, throws juice and seeds in that fruit's own colour and leaves a wet mark on the bamboo behind it. Line three, four or five fruits up on one stroke and the chain pays a bonus on top.

There are three ways to play. Classic is the long game: three fruits may hit the floor before it ends, and one black bomb ends it on contact, so the greedy swipe through a crowded screen is always a gamble. Zen is ninety quiet seconds with no bombs and no penalty for a miss — just fruit, a blade and a clock. Arcade is sixty loud seconds with special bananas mixed in: a frenzy banana buries the screen in fruit, a freeze banana slows everything to a crawl for six seconds, and a double banana pays twice for eight.

On a desktop you hold the mouse button and drag, or hold Space and sweep the blade with the arrow keys if you would rather not touch the mouse. On a phone or tablet you just draw across the screen with a finger, and the game fills the screen in portrait as happily as it does in landscape. A quick round takes a minute, your high score is saved per mode in your browser, and P pauses while M mutes.