As all great things have a beginning, so too do they have endings. This is the story of the final released project I was part of in my days working at Halfbrick Studios. I had seen the place triple in size, move to a new fancy building, third in size, as well as release dozens of top performing titles in that time, but Fruit Ninja 2 was to be the final Halfbrick Studios game I would help contribute to.

Above: Fruit Ninja 2 - Game Logo Design. By this time I had been tasked with all branding and licensing of the Fruit Ninja game. I guess it would be fitting that the final task I would complete would be the logo for the new Fruit Ninja 2 game (formally known as Fruit Ninja FIGHT while in soft-launch). Side note: I did advise against numbering the sequel (a well documented phenomenon of detracting from its original) but the final decision was out of my domain.

Above: Fruit Ninja 2 - Official Fruit Ninja Font Design. As many with an acute eye for details may have noticed, the Fruit Ninja 2 logo uses a new font. The original 'Gang of Three' font (designed by Vic Fieger) had been edited and updated more times than a Wikipedia article and as such had become bloated, full of technical quirks and ultimately suffered from many issues pertaining to readability and legibility. This was an ideal opportunity to address all of the above at once.

Above: Fruit Ninja 2 - Font Concept Sketches. These were the initial paint-over concepts for each new character glyph. I had only limited experience beyond editing existing fonts before tackling making this new font from scratch. I learnt a lot in the process and with many rounds of user-testing was able to produce two font variations. 'Fruit Ninja Traditional' was a Display font used primarily for large type and the other 'Fruit Ninja Simplified' a simplified variant for use in sentences, and for small labels.

And that was the last released project I collaborated on in my time at Halfbrick Studios. It was a great journey filled with lots of great people and learning. I made the decision to take a short break from mobile gaming but even that, as it turns out, was short lived.

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