Veggie Samurai

Veggie Samurai by QuantumSquid Interactive

iPhone Application Game

 

Veggie Samurai would probably like to claim that their game is a pastiche of Fruit Ninja but the harsh reality is that it’s an almost exact copy. Unfortunately for Fruit Ninja, Veggie Samurai’s game play is many ways better than the original.

When starting the game the main menu comes up. Here instead of slicing anything there are buttons instead. The main menu allows you to start a new game or go into Openfeint (high score program used by some iPhone games). A small button with a question mark on it explains the main principles of the game to new players and shows with illustrations and text how to play. The main difference between Veggie Samurai and Fruit Ninja is that in Veggie you can slice the vegetables more than one time, in fact you should always dice the vegetables to get higher scores. This also allows for more combos as you can get a multi-slice or a multi-dice combo. Instead of bombs you must avoid poison flasks. If a poison flask is hit one life is subtracted rather than ending the game completely like in Fruit Ninja.   

Veggie Samurai has 5 main modes and one training mode. Each mode is explained with a small text box allowing the player to decide which mode they should choose. The training allows players to improve their game skills without worrying about lives and time limits.

I choose the Samurai mode as it looks like what would be called a Classic game. The game starts immediately but as I read through the instructions in the Main Menu I already knew what to do. The game goes smoothly and the game play is very similar to Fruit Ninja, expect you have a lot more to do as you can slice and dice the vegetables.

Although both games would probably like to be mentioned separately it is obvious that they share similarities in game play.

Vegetable Samurai provides the player with more game modes and more player actions while playing. It does however not have the choice of customizing your blade or your background which is a great feature in Fruit Ninja. There aren’t any achievements either, which is odd, as it has become the norm rather than the exception in most games. Vegetable Samurai is always very dark in their color choices, which is a shame because Fruit Ninja just looks more appealing with its bright colors.

As I mentioned earlier the designers made a good call on making a small button that quickly explains the key features of the game play, which is something that Fruit Ninja could learn from.

If it was up to me I’d like to combine the two games in order to make one game that had all the best features of each game.