Fruit Slicer feels like it rewards fast slashing. The engine rewards geometry. Every slice you land passes one of two exact hit tests, and every combo you earn is a counter with two reset points. Read the detection math and your swipe pattern changes immediately.
The two hit tests that register a slice
When your finger or cursor first goes down, the engine checks every fruit against that single point and slices it within its radius plus 8 pixels. That is the tap test, and it is generous.
From the moment you move, detection switches to segments. Each new position joins the previous one as a line, and the engine intersects that line with a circle around each fruit at radius plus 6 pixels. The test is a solved quadratic, and it also catches the case where a fruit sits fully inside the segment without touching either edge. A slow drag cuts a wide lane. A fast flick cuts only what the sampled segments cross.
The 3 pixel sampling gate
The engine ignores any movement under 3 pixels from your last sample point. Tiny wrist adjustments add nothing. Long deliberate strokes add many segments, and more segments mean more chances for a line to cross a fruit circle. The swipe buffer holds 30 points, so very long drags start dropping their oldest samples.
The practical rule follows directly. Drag through the middle of a fruit cluster in one continuous motion. Jabbing at the screen gives you the 8 pixel point test and nothing else.
Combo math, from the third fruit in one stroke
The combo counter starts at zero every time you press, and it clears again when you release. Every fruit sliced inside one stroke adds 1 to the count. From the third fruit onward, each slice also awards the count times 2 as bonus.
Four fruits worth 3, 1, 1, and 2 points sliced in one stroke score 7 base points, then 6 bonus on the third fruit, then 8 on the fourth, for 21 total. Sliced separately, the same four fruits score 7. The stroke you draw is worth triple the fruit you hit.
Fruit values and sizes, as coded
Watermelon pays 3 and carries a 38 pixel radius. Pineapple and pomegranate pay 2 at 30 and 27 pixels. Banana pays 2 at 24 pixels. Apple and orange pay 1 each at 26 and 28 pixels. Bombs have a 25 pixel radius, so any stroke passing within 31 pixels of a bomb center, its radius plus the 6 pixel line tolerance, detonates it.
Since points per fruit differ by only 1 or 2, the bonus rule dominates scoring. Cluster shapes decide your strokes, and the biggest circle in a cluster, the watermelon, is also the easiest line target.
Where fruit can fly, from the launch math
Fruit spawns just below the screen edge and launches upward at 620 to 900 pixels per second, plus 15 per difficulty point. With gravity at 980, the slowest launch rises 196 pixels and the fastest early launch rises 427.
That envelope shapes the whole screen. A slow watermelon spawns at y 1008 and peaks at y 812, inside the bottom sixth of the 960 pixel screen. Fast early fruit peak around y 580. The top half of the screen, above y 480, stays empty until a launch exceeds roughly 1000 pixels per second, which needs a difficulty near 7, or about 48 seconds of total play time. Early on, swipe low. Only late runs need high strokes.
Wave pacing, bombs, and the freeze power-up
Difficulty is 1 plus total time over 8. Wave size is the minimum of 7 and 2 plus 0.7 times difficulty, so waves grow from 2 fruit to 7 over the first minute. The wave interval shrinks from 2.2 seconds toward a floor of 1.0.
Bombs appear in classic mode only, after difficulty 2, with a chance that starts at 15 percent and caps at 45 percent. Slicing one ends a classic run instantly, whatever your lives. In zen mode a bomb costs 10 points instead. The freeze power-up appears on 8 percent of waves past difficulty 3 and runs the whole simulation at 0.35 speed for 4 real seconds, which quadruples your reaction window. In classic mode you have 3 lives, and each fruit of type below 6 that falls off screen unsliced costs one.
Honest downsides of stroke play
Long strokes raise your bomb risk, because a wide lane through a cluster also passes near bombs that spawn inside it, and 31 pixels of tolerance around each bomb is wider than it looks. The combo counter also resets on release, so a two stroke sequence on a tight cluster scores far less than one ugly stroke through all of it. Freeze windows tempt you into greedy clusters right when bombs are most common. Stroke geometry raises your ceiling and your risk together.
Slice routine checklist
- [ ] One continuous stroke planned through the cluster center.
- [ ] Bomb clearance of 31 pixels or more confirmed along the line.
- [ ] Release delayed until the stroke has crossed the last fruit.
- [ ] Early game strokes kept in the lower half, above y 480 nothing flies yet.
- [ ] Freeze window saved for the biggest cluster on screen, bomb clearance checked first.
Play the [Fruit Slicer game](/en/fruit-ninja) and test the two hit tests side by side, one tap and one slow drag through the same cluster. If a stroke you measured as clear still detonates a bomb, send the spacing between the bomb and your line. Near-miss measurements are the most useful data you can send back.
