In Fruit Ninja, the player slices fruit with a blade controlled via a touch pad. As the fruit is thrown onto the screen, the player swipes their finger across the screen to create a slicing motion, attempting to slice the fruit in half.Extra points are awarded for slicing multiple fruits with one swipe, and players can use additional fingers to make multiple slices simultaneously. Players must slice all fruit; if three fruits are missed, the game ends, but upon reaching scores that are multiples of one hundred (i.e. 100, 200, 300, etc.), the player will gain an extra life (unless they have not missed a piece of fruit already). Bombs are occasionally thrown onto the screen, and will also end the game should the player slice them
A mode known as Zen mode allows players to seek high scores without the hindrance of bombs appearing on the screen, but players only have a minute and thirty seconds. Also available is an Arcade mode in which players have only sixty seconds to achieve a high score. Special bananas are added to the standard fruit which have unique bonuses such as doubling points scored for a limited time, increasing the amount of fruit on the screen, or slowing down the movement of all fruit for a short period of time. In Classic and Arcade mode, special pomegranates are occasionally thrown on screen. In Arcade Mode, it is guaranteed that at the end of each game that a pomegranate will appear. Players can slice these multiple times to get extra points. Similarly, an ultra rare pitaya sometimes appears in Classic mode which, if sliced, awards players fifty points.
